Withdrawal Symptoms

Ever tried getting down a running bus? Yup, the inertia funda. Physics, class XI, CBSE.

My prolonged stay at home, after the months spent at IIMC, has put me in that kind of situation. When I was always chasing deadlines at IIMC, I would have laughed at someone had he suggested that nothingness can bore you. And yet here I am, toppled into the abyss of deep boredom. Despite the long sleeping hours, longer hours spent in front of the TV, the days just don't get over.

And the mercury is rising too! Its tough to imagine that the day I arrived here I slept in a rajayi. Now its almost imbearable to be out in the sun. The ceiling fan is no longer adequate to beat the heat. Glad that I won't be here to face the worst.

All's not lost tho', all the cricket happening about half the globe away keeps me company. The idleness compels me to listen to the pre-match chat show too, not that it makes me any wiser or happier. Tut-tut, India's out; but still the arena is wide open! My predictions: Semifinalists - Aus, SA, SL and NZ & Dream Final - Aus vs SA with SA claiming the cup. Long way to that though.

And I'm reading again. A lot, by my own standards. Some recommendations -

• A Corner of a Foreign Field - Amazing work about mostly pre-independence history of cricket in India. Even if the WC debacle left a bitter taste in mouth, don't miss this masterpiece, for the love of the game. Hat's off to Guha for doing all the hard work in researching the anecdotes and stories to present in such lucid form! (and if cricket still fancies you, pick Pundits from Pakistan also!)
  
• Above Average - Doesn't dwell too much on the IIT connection. Very interesting, very piquant. Very nostalgic for any IITian, more so for IITD junta (I guess). Its characters reminded me of many lost faces from my IIT days.
• Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan - The story is definitely very thrilling & impressive, though the narration lacks punch. It's told just like a chronological record of facts. Bit drab in parts, still quite enjoyable as a whole.
• Being John Mcenroe - Rather than being just descriptive, this book tries to analyze the reasons behind & effects of John Mcenroe on Tennis. Great insights about the genius and his times.
  
• A Short History of Nearly Everything - Masterpiece! Absolute masterpiece! Would appeal to anyone with slightest bend of mind towards Science & tiniest tinge of curiosity towards Nature. Simply unputdownable.
  
• The IITians - Just started this one. Starts on perhaps a bit too laudatory note, but is building up nicely. Should be a good read.
  

Apart from all this, I've also started reading blogs again. But my BSNL dial-up doesn't allow me to surf much. By the way, till very recent I wasn't aware that you can just put the BSNL phone cable in your laptop, do simple registration once and can start surfing @ ~40 kbps on totally on-use-basis rates! Check out Account free Internet dial up access based on CLI.

All my bags are not yet packed and I'm not yet ready to go, still another week left. But most of my shopping is done, barring some last minute items. Not yet thinking much about the upcoming internship, but I hope it would be interesting time. Reminds me of an ancient Chinese curse - "May you live in interesting times." Hmm, we'll see that.

Couple of things I have to do in London -

1. Watch a cricket match, county-shounty, anything!
2. Watch a soccer match. Some decent clubs whose names I know, hopefully.
3. Visit some typical Irish pubs (just to check out the atmo, Mom!)
4. Buy long-pending lenses for my camera and click loads of pictures.
5. Travel a bit. Bath, Oxford, some coastal towns, perhaps.

Time to hit the bed.

Film Review: Just Married

It seems a whole lot of Bollywood directors discovered Love Actually recently. The funda of having multiple parallel love-stories, capturing various shades and emotions, is literally beaten to death in last couple of months.

No "action" for Fardeen
No action for audience

In the race of duplicating ideas, its the laggards who lose worst. Thats why after Salaam-e-Ishq & Honeymoon Travels, its just impossible to digest Just Married.

And that's just first of the many MANY problems with the movie! The pace of the movie is another. The movie just drags and drones, without any point in sight. The story has loopholes of the size of India Gate where from Siddhu can pass with his tractor! I don't think there are still homes in uber-urban Delhi where US-return Marketing Heads would agree to marry some girl without even talking to her. And someone please tell me what actually was the issue in the film? Why was Isha Deol screaming - "Kya sex hi sab kuch hai aapke liye?" Because Fardeen touched his shoulder or because the cockroach touch her legs (eh.. talking to Fardeen or Cockroach)? Oh, and there were other couples too. Mostly artificial and boring. Faces from the TV serials, bringing the typical rude onslaught of emotions from the small screen. Waaaay over the top! See, the issue with the movie is - there is no story!!

Which is saddening, given the fact that it the debut movie of Meghna Gulzar, daughter of famous poet & lyricist Sampooran Singh aka Gulzar. Coming to that, the music of the film was another flop show. Only one song - "Gudgudee" - is worth noting.

Now the acting, Fardeen Khan gave yet another Man-Behind-The-Iron-Mask performance. He definitely beat Isha Deol in Look-I'm-So-Expressionless contest, but by a very narrow margin. I can imagine both set of celebarents (new term coined by me - celeb+parents!) scratching their heads (Firoz very delicately) about where to fit in their wards. Action didn't work, neither did emotion. No chance in romance and too young for bhabhi-bhaiya roles. Well, tough luck. But please move over and spare the poor audience.

And if you've read till here, you must be rewarded with my own PJ. The mention of cockroach brought it forth in my memory. So,

Q. What did the nephew roach call his uncle?
A. Kaka-roach! :-P

One year at Jokaland

The terms are done, exams taken & projects submitted. No matter how far it looked when I started, the end of the first year at IIM Calcutta came a little too soon. The year was more or less kind to me. Along with the usual stuff, I did many unusual things too. The campus band, JBS Baro-C, composed a song about the early days of students in IIMC ( http://music.cooltoad.com/music/song.php?id=296339 ). Song contains swearing/explicit lyrics! I made a video on the song along with some friends. Here it is -

The response to the video has been very encouraging. In the first 4 days at youtube, it gathered around 1200 hits! This encouragement has motivated us to make more videos under the banner of "Between the Lines" production.

However, the movie-making would have to wait, for the summers are here and all of us are to leave and join our respective organizations for the summer internships. I'm leaving for London on 9th April and would be back on 2nd June, good one week before the next term start.

One regret after the first year - I virtually abandoned this blog and my photography. Since this was something I really enjoyed, I'll try my best to revive my interests and devote more time to them.

That we'll see, for the time being, please check out the video and some feedback, may be?

A Rage For Perfection

McEnroe

John McEnroe
"Needed to lose head to play good"

named his autobiography "A Rage For Perfection." As Harsha Bhogle recently quipped in an informal talk here, perhaps he was the only player who needed to lose his head to play better. I'm on hunt for the book, if you find one, don't think twice before dispatching it to me :-)

Anyway, the title got me thinking. Quite recently I've realised something about myself - I don't have the "rage for perfection." This is not to say mediocrity doesn't bother me, but competition surely doesn't. I'm not someone motivated by the vision of the accolades reserved for the highest achiever. Even from the very start, in school, I was never pushed for the first place, by me or by my folks. I was among the toppers, but rarely "the" topper. During my preparation days for JEE, I didn't use to think in "top 10, top 50" terms. Till the results came out, I thought anything in top 500 would be cool. Then in IIT, I let it go loose. Even afterwards, in my job, I never aspired to be the best or whatever. I wasn't bad, mind you :-), just not the best!

Does that mean achievements don't matter to me? My proudest achievement in recent times has been my success (however miniscule) in photography. I started with absolutely no credentials and did reasonably well. Many, many people have looked at my flickr account and praised my work. Nothing makes me more proud! Same for my blog; I started as another anonymous blogger. Now after some 1.5 years, I've got more than 50,000 hits. No mean feat :-) And mostly I have written whatever fancied me. Not for the readers, just for me.

So the way I've explained it to myself is that may be competition doesn't push me, but once I set my eye on some job and if I really enjoy doing it, then I do it well. And so well that, often I would emerge decently placed in the competition!

Just wanted to tell someone.

An Appeal

Couple of days back, one student at IIMC met with an road accident and after about 1 week in the ICU, succumbed to the injuries. It was shocking, disturbing, but more than anything else, it was unfortunate. I personally didn't know the guy, but it disturbed me. "Could've-been-me" feeling! The guy was riding a motorcycle, without a helmet and possibly under the influence of alcohol. He crashed with a bus and hit his head on the road. Pity. Foolishness? Waste!

Kolkata road accidents data.

Couple of years back, I would've put the entire blame on the foolhardiness of that guy, but somehow it doesn't seem right anymore. Most of us aren't aware how easy it is to lose our lives. Just a little misfortune and there's no tomorrow! Most of the time, most of us don't give any thoughts to such possibilities and the consequences. I had my own little face-off with it once, about an year back. And it sets you thinking. One of our professor, whose tongue can sting at times, said,"This is perhaps the most mindless way of dying." And I couldn't agree more.

More fortunately than unfortunately, early in my biking days, when I was still a noob, I had a little accident. I was learning biking and it skidded. I landed safely and absolutely no harm was done. But that incident never left me, it's always there at the back of my mind. Result: I developed as an extra cautious biker. Of course, I've had my moments of madness. Fortunately, I survived all of them.

There isn't much to say. The sad incident can end up being just a statistical data point, unless we take a lesson from it. Sincere appeal to all bikers - please get a helmet!

Skeptic Youth vs Confident Veterans

The panel discussion I mentioned in my last post turned out to be quite an interesting one. The topic of discussion was - "100 Indian MNCs by 2020." The panelists were -

• Mr Sandipan Deb : Chief Editor, Financial Express
• Mr Hemant Kanoria, Managing Director, Srei Finance
• Mr D K Chaudhuri CEO , Skytech
• Mr Barun Das, Exide, Company Secretary

Sandipan started with his views, which unfortunately didn't look very well prepared. However, he was lucid; talked much without saying much. Rest three had solid experience in industry, extending the operations at the world stage. They talked with more authority and shared their experiences. All of them were very sure that the dream of 100 Indian MNCs by 2020 is well within the reach and sort of underrated. It was quite inspiring hearing their first hand experiences.

Like all good panel discussions, this one too ended with a Q&A round by audience. Like all good audience, lots of questions came out after a little prodding. What was most interesting to note was that the crowd - comprising the leaders of tomorrow, yada yada yada - was quite skeptic about achieving the goal! There were questions about the government and its ineffectiveness, about sustaining the current wave of growth, about population & literacy, about infrastructure & investment - all of them showing how improbable this goal seems to be. On the contrary, the panel maintained its stand that India will have to do too bad to miss this one!

Their settling argument was that India has reached this stage even with the kind of government & stifling regulations we've had, so there is every chance that now that the condition have improved a lot, India will bloom even more. The post-lib generation hasn't seen those days, when Infosys almost died as an infant after frustrating experiences trying to work for global client, mainly due to the policies in 1989!

What will happen remains to be seen, but this skeptism in the youth of the nation, crème de la crème, worries me. Not like OMG-India-is-screwed-now worry, just a little concern.

PS: Just a small note, reply to Jeet's comment on my last post where he said, "I don't agree with Sandipan's only one answer theory.. I don't know about comp. sci and engg. but Civil Engineering was all about evaluating multiple correct answers and 'choosing' one of them." Still, you'll find the management education a whole lot different than engineering. CS is mainly about optimizing; space, speed, transfer, safety.. So in a way, you are confined in your pursuit of the answer. You can say that A is better than B and like that. Civil, as I understand, does have an element of subjectivity to it. In the managerial world, I'm told, there are many situation where nothing's universally better or worse. It all depends on what you decide.

MBA vs Engineering

One among various good things about IIMC is that it provides you opportunities to interact with various leaders from different walks of life. I attended couple of presentations from top consulting firms, basically pitching consulting as a career to us students. They had sent IIMC alumni, who were placed at top positions. It's definitely inspiring; sets you dreaming.

Tomorrow, that is Sunday, we've Sandipan Deb (Managing Editor, Outlook magazine and editor of Outlook Money) coming over to the campus for one panel discussion. He happens to be an IIMC alumni. Sometime back he was interviewed by the alumni magazine. Couple of interesting points he made:

We came from a very closed quantitative engineering system, in the sense that engineering education inculcates the philosophy of one right answer to any problem. That if you follow the flow chart, if you follow the algorithm, if you do the steps properly, there is only one answer possible. I think I gained hugely from the exposure that IIM gave me to - economics, sociology, political science, psychology, behavioral sciences etc. It really broadened my horizon.

That is exactly what I'm going through. But it isn't all rosy; atleast for me it's little tough to adjust. It's easy to think that it's much easier to give gyaan on such subjects, it's not! I guess, I'll take some time to get used to it. Sandipan further added:

Our batch was quite an exceptional batch. There were about fifteen of us in the same wing H2-top and I was very fortunate to have these people to interact with. We had toppers and we had bottomers. We had brilliant bottomers, we had people who slogged, and we had people who never went to class. They were also extremely talented. In those two years, most IIM Calcutta teams-quiz, debate, drama, music etc-had representation from our wing and we won almost every festival that we went to. So that made my two years totally worth it.

That is so true! You learn a lot even outside the class, among such a great gang of selected few. I've had the same experience at IIT Bombay and I guess I'm in for good two years in Calcutta too.

PS: Not getting much time to read/write. Hence this inactivity at the blog.

The Campus

The IIM Calcutta campus or Jokaland, as we call it, is almost like an island amid lakes.

The IIM Calcutta campus, courtesy Google Earth.

As it's evident from the Google Earth image, there are three major man-made lakes surrounding the academic block, the campus KV and library. Our hostels are along the lakes on the outside. The setting gets more clear in the Wikimapia image, as it has proper labelling too.

Compare it to the IIT Bombay campus and you'll find many similarities. Both the campus have the serene presence of beautiful water bodies and dense greenery. Right now the similarities get thicker, since the Calcutta weather nowadays is quite like Mumbai monsoons; it stays cloudy with frequent short showers. Due to the lakes, it stays humid at the campus and if it's not windy, it can get really stifling. The IIMC campus is much smaller than IITB campus, and obviously since IITB is meant for much bigger number of junta. It used to house 4 BTech batches, each of roughly 500 plus huge number of MTechs and few PhDs too. Here at IIMC there are just two batches at a given point of time. My batch's strength is around 310 and that's the largest number they've ever had.

One thing paining me is the distance from the downtown Kolkata. Last night I enquired about ordering pizza and I got to know that the minimum order they take is something as obscene as 6k!! That's because the nearest outlet is at Camac Street or like that :-). But, the food in the mess & (almost) 24 hrs canteen in the hostel is much better than IITB. But eating out is still an issue. Nearest Metro station is some 100 bucks away from IIMC and there aren't many options to reach there. I guess things would get brighter once my bike reaches Kolkata.

Today I took some pictures at the campus. I've uploaded them at the Flickr page. Most of them need little bit of postprocessing, which I plan to do soon.

Kolkata Chapter Begins :-)

This would be the longest stretch when I didn't blog, since I started blogging, but it's like that, and that's the way it is. First I was stranded, disconnected at Jaipur for a while, which now seems like pretty comfortable setting.. sigh. Then, once I touched base at Kolkata, things got hectic, and I didn't have a computer for a while. Now that things have more or less settled and I've bought my self a rather sleek Compaq Presario v3000, it's about time I resume blogging.

First things first, Kolkata and the neighbourhood, looks totally amazing from air, after first few days of showers. From my SpiceJet flight, I was gawking, spellbound, at the marvellous view below.. lush greenery, numerous big & small canals and all! Then we hit the ground (pun intended). Let's just say, for someone new to the city, it's not very tough to not like the city, going by the first impressions. The IIM Calcutta campus is good 90 minutes from the airport! The area neighbouring IIMC, it's called Joka, is rather unimpressive to say the least. However, the campus is breathtaking with its 7 lakes and lush greenery. My hostel room, I found is more comfortable than the room I had in IIT Bombay. It's bigger, better planned and it has a balcony which opens to the patch of jungle behind my hostel. I haven't clicked snaps of the campus, but I intend to do that pretty soon. The downtown Kolkata, essentially Park Street area, is light-years away from the campus and it takes huge effort to make it to there. Till now I've been there only once, and even then it was disappointing as we couldn't catch any movie! The movie buff in me is still very pleased to be here; the LAN is virtually full of movies! My new 250 GB external HDD might getting full to the brim, is looking like a possibility.

The academic load looks manageable. I have five courses, all of them interesting. Especially the Organisational Behaviour course, which has interesting mix of Psychological studies in it, pretty impressive! Then there is Indian Economic and Political History, which is also pretty interesting to study. Midterms are still (just?) 2 weeks away and things are chill (as we say here).

I guess, I'll start with such banal posts; it should take time to get back the flow for blogging :-)

Back to Home

Reached Jaipur on 5th morning. Since then, life has been laid back. Sleeping late, waking up early (!!), going for morning walks and sleeping again after that. Eating a lot and having long siestas during hot afternoons. Lots of TV - cricket & tennis. Soccer should start in some time. Meeting with lost acquaintances, uncles & aunts; explaining everytime what I was doing and what I am going to do. Taking all the insinuations about my marriage & elbow-in-ribs jokes from middle-aged uncles with a straight poker face.

Not all rosy, but closer to it. I'm loving it and praying it to end soon :-) Bundle of contradictions, eh?

Leaving for Calcutta on 23rd. Taking SpiceJet this time, after vowing to never take an Air Deccan flight again. That's a long story, some other time.

Be Good people,
- Varun