My Life! as it unfolds..

Promises & Perils of being a trainee in SALES – part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 03:25:00 +0000

Still there are a few realities that need to be told to the new breed of sales trainees. Knowing things in advance is always good so that Jor kaa jhatka dheere se lage. My friends, these are few of the things that you should be prepared for(Apart from traveling in a trolley with goats and life threats from competitors :) -

1. “You learn swimming when thrown in the murky deep waters” is what people say with a big grin when they tell you that they are dumping you to some obscure place. Once there, you find zero social circle, no decent hotel or food, no fancy toys (like a cab.. so travel is through local buses/trains/autos), and within few days you’ll be amused at your own naivety and wonder “I was doing an MBA from a great insti a few months back, life was promising, now suddenly I find myself in this 8 by 8 room in Irinjalikudaa, the bed sheets are stinking and even this damn fan is not working.. Whaaaat went wrrrong?“

2. Most of the times, what you are doing is nobody’s concern. But the same could potentially become everybody’s biggest concern at times. So you need to have an updated tour program, just like that of a CEO, while what you are doing might just be a salesman stint.

3. Know everything under the sun: No of Sticks in XYZ Agarbatti pack to color of the Parle Marie packs, margin on Britannia Nutrichoice to price of the Sunsilk black. Number of salesmen at your Timbaktoo distributor to number shops in his area.. you are expected to know everything, otherwise be prepared for those disgusted “these MBA types trainees ..” looks.

4. No matter what you do, you’ll always fall short of expectations. Actually very soon you’ll realize that it is more of a routine. The best thing that you can ever imagine to hear is: “This was good guys, but … ".

5. Rote numbers that really don’t matter to you: You are just a trainee and will be on a different stint almost every other week. But there is a rather impractical expectation that at any point of time you will work as a living encyclopedia, and at your fingertips will be the data and information related to all of your previous stints that you have undergone till date. You might know the numbers that really matter to you at present, but that’s not enough. Branch numbers, Circle numbers, category wise numbers, sub-category wise numbers, MIS numbers, RCS numbers, historical numbers, other channel’s numbers.. blah blah, and you have to pretend that you really care about all of them.

6. Deal with those code words: if UOM1 is CFC and UOM2 is Packs, why not just call them UOM_CFC and UOM_PACKS instead?

7. Everyone feels that he can enlighten you about anything under the sun: You might have worked in the Google/SAPs of this world before your MBA, people will still give you their own version of what a SaaftWhere can do and cannot do, and the tough part is that you’ll have to agree.

8. After you are screwed, hazaar bonds will crop up. “Arre yaar pehle bataana thhaa naa”, you’ll hear this more often than the supposedly contextual product placements of MRF blimp in an IPL match

9. Your view of the world changes, mostly for worse. When your gf/wife is busy shopping, you’ll be found analyzing the shelf space of various companies. When travelling, you’ll look more at the outlets than the scenery. In newspapers, you’ll see more of the advertisements than the real news..same with TV. You start asking too many questions and doubting everything, phrases like Why, how, how come, where, let me check, gochi, show me, and ‘tell me’ become your new punctuations.

10. Overall, having a life is a crime. This world is yet to witness a happy sales trainee, and you better not try to be the first one

Promises & Perils of being a trainee in SALES part-1

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 03:22:00 +0000

So, my training is more or less over and here is my modest attempt to summarize what life is for a management sales trainee. The good things first:

1. Your business sustains livelihoods: From your salesmen to your distributors, from retailers to factory workers, from shareholders to your coworkers, you know that there are people who are dependent on this business. They are, in a small way dependent on you. Even as a trainee, the choices you make are important as they impact some of them directly (and in a big way). A smile from a retailer, a ‘thank you, Sir’ from a salesman, and you know that your job goes beyond the materialistic things of life.

2. Sales thrills: Sales gives you its own joyrides. You feel that you own that X% of this world. This ownership comes in many terms.. It could be the shelf-space, stocks, loyal consumers, sales-force spread across the territory. Then comes the thrill of numbers, if you are in to it, then the numbers belong to you. And when they belong to you, you chase them, you protect them, you plan for them and you try to achieve them and upon accomplishment you celebrate them..it’s fun.

3. Sales figures are not your headache, yet! Despite all the training and stints, the truth is that you are still in that so called ‘learning phase’. So people don’t really expect much fireworks from you. And even in the rarest of the cases that people do pull you over numbers, you just need a bit of thick skin to hear everything and conclude yourself by saying that you’ll try harder next time.

4. You hardly complain about quality if things are free. Your stay, food and numerous other expenses will be paid by the company.

5. Enjoy the ego trip: It’s a world of numerous hierarchy levels, and usually these levels are pretty hard to climb. In you mid 20s, you get a position which many others in the organization can only dream of occupying even in their late 30s. And it’s not the new age IT stuff, it’s a place where people really respect the chair that you hold.

6. Travel to new places: Explore and enjoy. You visit at least 15-20 new places in your training year. At least some of them are bound to be good tourist locations. You stay there at company’s expense and you wake up facing either the sea or a mountain range. How could you still complain about life?

In brief, take everything in your stride and move on. Dil rakhne ke liye to log ye bhi bolte hain ki Sales is what makes men out of boys : )

BTW, I can’t resist the urge to write the other side of this. So very soon, I’ll come up with a piece on perils of being a sales trainee : )

Taco Bell: Wait outside the store before you think outside the bun!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:26:00 +0000

So finally Taco Bell (pronounced as Taako-Bell) has arrieved in india. I was taken by surprise when suddenly I came across several TacoBell banners in Bangalore last week, announcing the opening of their first outlet. Then somehow I stumbled upon the Mantri Square link, which is being touted as India’s biggest Mall. Incidentally the Taco Bell outlet is in this mall only and the two made an irresistible combination for a visit on the very next day.

What I saw there was kind of shocking.. I saw a queue in the mall ..leading upto the Taco Bell outlet.. yes my dear friend! you got me right, there was a queue even to get into the queue of the outlet!

Then given our notion of fast food, I didn’t mind it that much (I thought that OK lets be in the Queue..and it reinforced the feeling that Taco Bell is something big and giving it a miss will be nothing short of a sin).

For about 20 minutes I was in this queue outside the outlet, then another 10 minutes I was just near the entrance, and then only I got the first glimpse of the counter. Order taking process was slow..actually, it was damn slow. Then there was another bunch of customers waiting besides the counter. I realized later that they were waiting for their orders to get executed, which means that even the kitchen people were also agonizingly slow and were taking their own sweet time in preparing the orders. The sad part is that they were not preparing some Mughlai Paneer, they were preparing Tacos and Nachos, and anyway why is any preparation time required for these items?

God! I waited another 30 minutes to get to the counter(total time in the queue according to my watch was at least 1 hour, though I felt like I wasted the entire evening in that damn queue)

I ordered a Taco combo and some Nachos. Then I waited for my order to come. And finally..finally the moment arrived. When I had that food tray in my hand, I knew that this effort of mine was a clear demonstration of my grit, mental and physical strength and task orientation of the highest order, and ideally deserves to get a place on my one pager resume.

I won’t get into too many details over here.. but the food was OK.. the Taco was good, twisters were just a poor cousin of our Kurkure, the Burrito’s wrap was a bit too maida based and I don’t like Pepsi that much anyways. I came out exhausted, when exiting I saw that the queue was still building up at the first floor entrance :)

Pluses:

The novelty factor: How can you not even try this?

It's American: and hence comes with a bit of coolness, after all we are a nation where you can proudly take your date to the McD for the fine dining American experience.

Free Pepsi: yeah mostly. I mean actually it’s free fill.. So you buy once and re-fill it as many times as you want to. Right now it’s so crowded that forget the free-fill, I won’t dare to go near that machine even if I am paid 100 bucks. I know that few daredevils might still relish this concept of free-fills, but hey! do they really care? Its fountain Pepsi.. carbonated water minus even the packaging costs.

The Price Factor: At the starting point of 18 Rs a Taco, they are quite cheap. In fact the whole menu is priced on reasonably appealing points. I read it somewhere that they want to occupy the sweet price point where they are cheaper than any other fast food chain and still a notch higher than the street food. Should particularly appeal to the college going junta.

Minuses:

Crowd: I mean “CROWD” in its proper English meaning :). Unless you really love being in a crowd, you’ll feel uneasy over there.

Time: Seriously guys, you invest this much time in a temple queue and you’ll get Niravana J

Mismanagement: Ohh where do I start. Just to name a few issues, Why-

- Can’t they have a pre-order taken?(just like McD does during busy hours) so people already have an understanding of what they’ll buy when they reach the counter

- Can’t they deliver the order faste?

- Is there a slightly jammed and handle-less door to the wash basin area and why is it so close to the counter? Imagine that you somehow get inside, and then you realize that you’ll have to push it(jammed) and there are so many people standing in front of it on the other side. Though I didn’t see anyone getting hurt this way, but I am sure this is a real possibility.

Can’t they at least show IPL on those LCDs? so that people can utilize some of the 1 hour plus time that they are gonna spend in the queue anyways.

Now my last complaint is that we get another exclusive Pepsi-contracted (this one also coming from the Pepsi spin off YUM brands stable), and that too at a time when they are running an extremely annoying “Youngistan kaa WoW” campaign. (If anyone, including the agency guys who coined it or the Pepsi guys who paid for it, got any understanding of what the hell this Youngistan kaa Wow means, please please please enlighten me)

Fun Fact: Incidentally Taco Bell has struggled to make a mark in the Mexico.. they were laughed out of the country in early 90s as Mexican people found the food to be a mockery of their beloved Mexican food. The company has recently re-entered the Mexican market and is now projecting its product as a fast food from America :)

Creating more meaningful jobs at the bottom of hierarchy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 14:33:00 +0000

Recently, I had to go through the arduous yet entirely worthless process of interacting with the customer care center of a reputed telecom service provider company. I took a new connection and within 3 days they withdrew the connectivity citing improper documentation issue. The irony was that I took the connection from their authorized dealer where their representative took care of all the documentation part. When I called them up, the agent wanted me to visit the same dealer again and resubmit the same papers, while I believed that it was unfair on their part to ask this.

I am not arguing about who was right or wrong there, my point is quite different. During my several calls in this regard, one thing was obvious- the call center agent was in no position to help me in anyway. Though he could understand my point but could do nothing about it(even resuming my connectivity for 1 day while I resubmit the documents). Now how many times do we see such inefficiencies in the system? so often we come across processes or the IT system making the organization extremely rigid.

It is a fact that your system may render you inflexible and may cause lost opportunities, but that’s a huge area in itself. Even if we leave the money calculations aside there are still lots of soft aspects of this issue.

Just think about the work life of a security guard, or a call center employee who has a written script that he/she has to repeat again and again day after day, or for that matter a salesman at the retail store.. the list is just endless. We say that a company’s policy and systems are in place if its workers are more and more a replica of each other, If all of them behave like machines, very professional on the face of it but hardly human when seen in perspective.

The company becomes stable but in its quest of stability it strangles its employees and their individuality, the worst hits are the employees at the lower levels. They have a script for everything, how to great the customer, how to handle him, what to say while taking the credit card and so on. The processes and their manuals go from strength to strength but do they really serve the purpose with which they were instituted?

We always like when we are treated by real human beings, people who connects with us, who understands us. Suppose I have already done all the research. Now I am in a mood to book a particular model of LCD TV in 10 minutes as I have to I go to my office, I don’t want to hear to those annoying cross/up selling pitches from the salesman, and if I am in a mood of just checking the price I don’t want him to come to me and repeat those mugged up lines again and again.

Moreover it felt great (alas! It’s past) when your fruits weighed slightly more than 2 Kgs and the shopkeeper told you that it’s OK. When the customer care representative assures you that he will try his level best to do something in your favor and calls back after half an hour to tell you that it’s done.

So, there are possibilities when people don’t want all those standardizations (of course we want them in place in life safety issues like aviation, security checking etc)

The point is to have some faith in your employees, though the destination and the suggested path is to be shown, but please! Don’t decide where exactly they need to land their next foot. Give them a breathing space. They are the ones who will be interacting with your customers and they need to believe that it is their job, they need to enjoy it. They need to believe that they are creating some value for the customers.

Let your waiter serve a new dish to some of your regular guests on the pretext that they pay for it only if they like it.(fix some amount per day that he should not overshoot), let your customer care representative tell your customers “Sir I am activating it right now, but you please submit your bill by tonight” Give them some powers so that they can really help, guide, care for and sometimes even pleasantly surprise your customers. You are not empowering them for just making their job exciting but actually you are helping your customers by making them interact with real people and not with dejected human machines.

Thamaraserry to Bangalore: Account of an impromptu journey

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:45:00 +0000

A.S: People who have never been away from B’lore(in a sense that they were missing it) might not relate that well to this post.

Well, my job has taken me to Thamaraserry these days. There is calculation that goes on in my mind all the time whenever I am shifted to a new location: How do I get to B’lore from here and in how many hours?

Now this is where Thamaraserry is a bit tricky. By road, it is just 313 kms away from Bangalore. To catch the flight you have to anyway travel 75 kms on road (40+35) and there is just one flight from Calicut and that too in afternoon. The train route, however comfortable that might be, will make you feel like being cheated for your time. Just have a look:

Fig: the red line shows the train route (includes the 35 kms road journey from Thamaraserry to Calicut), while the blue line is the road journey.

I decided to give the road journey a try, though it included a ghat section and an unpredictable service and also the risk that it might eventually take lot more time as well. But I perhaps had no choice either, I was not sure when I’ll be free on Saturday, so a flight was out of picture, and given that I only had a Sunday as the leave, I could have ill afforded the train and reach B’lore the next morning.

So I finished a meeting with salesmen, then accompanied one of them for sometime in the market and then asked him to help me in boarding a bus to Mysore. After a 15 minutes wait I got a bus going in the same direction..up to Kalpetta, some 35 kms away from Thamaraserry. I just boarded that bus and wow! What a feeling when you are finally moving towards home.

The ghat section was not that tough, though it had 9 hairpin bends. The scenery was good and the air became distinctly cooler as the bus moved up.

The bus took about an hour to reach Kalpetta and once reaching there I was in a state of cluelessness that could have put even Ravinder Jadeja to shame J

I mean that I was there at this station, having just 4-5 other buses. I tried to ask at least 3-4 persons about the bus to Mysore and none of them served any purpose but to impress me with their fluency and command over Malayalam and adding to my misery. After half an hour of wait and several such attempts, I got to know that I should go to the other bus stand for the Mysore bound buses.

Then I waited at this other stop for another half an hour, many buses came and went.. some going to Mananthwady.. some to Sultan Battery..which in fact was on the route. But I avoided these local buses and kept on waiting for a KSRTC bus. And then, there it was, I could read a bit(Ma..Sa..Ru)..confirmed the same and yeah, It was a Mysore bound Super Express..WoHoo! and I know that I am gonna be at home before the dinner time

The bus was true to its name.. a rattling Super Express being driven to the max speed it could afford. In an hour we were at Sultan Battery and had a half an hour break there.

Pics: Inside the SE bus and monkeys tormenting passengers in another KSRTC bus(on right)

Soon we entered the Bandipur Wildlife Sanctuary. I keenly looked outside to spot some wildlife but gave up after an uneventful 15-20 mins. After a nap, I woke up to find ourselves in plains. The time was 4:30. Soon we hit Nanjangud and I spotted the Mysore-Nanjangud KSRTC VOLVO shuttles, that sight made me feel closer to home.

I reached Mysore at 5:30. Ran across to catch a Volvo and did a mental High Five once I was in there.

At the end what came as a nice surprise was that Raja-Rajeshwari Nagar came as soon as we entered B’lore. I was at home by 8:30. Seeing my Mom, wifey n kiddu, there was no doubt that all the efforts were worth it : )

"what do you do in this company?"

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:25:00 +0000

Life is full of questions. We prepare for some of them, while few others just take us by surprise. While one can prepare for an exam, an interview or even the much abused 'let the boy and girl talk for some time' kind of instances in one's life, there are few questions which will just prop up suddenly and will leave you wanting for answers. I am gonna describe one of such situation that I faced during one of the many non consequential interactions that I have had with my customers/retailers in this sleepy town of Kottayam (yupp thats my base for the moment, and for the un-initiated, its located in kerala.. n for the out and out lucky ignorant bastards, it's in south India)

I remember an old joke about IT professionals. Which goes like this: A frustrated on bench IT guy vents his frustration on a poor restaurant worker. He says that after just 3 years of job he has a bank balance, car ..etc. Tumhare paas kya hai?

n the worker replies ki "Sir, mere paas kaam hai"

When I was in Wipro, we used to laugh our heads off over this.

I got myself into a similar situation a week back. Now I was with the route Supervisor(oops.. Team lead), completing my usual beat, interacting with retailers (mostly with the help of my TL) wherever possible.

We had visited about 20-25 outlets by the time. I was reasonably happy with the way things had gone till then, I had noticed quite a few things which would have ultimately help me in compiling a good report. So when my TL (OK for the IT junta: A TL in this sales business has little resemblance to a TL in IT field, We are talking about TL of hawkers/salesmen) went away to park his bike, I decided to engage the retailer myself. So here is how it went.

Me: Hello Cheta(means elder bro in Malayalam), Where do you keep Cigs?(looking inside the counter to check the stocking)

Retailer: (Gave me a puzzled looks)

Me: Wo mein company se(showing my ITC logo on the T-shirt)

Retailer: Still confused. said something in Malayalam.. which I could not understand at all(perhaps was asking what do you need?)

Me: (I looked for my TL..but he was not in sight.. I again tried my best) : Cheta, Cigarette company.. Scissors..

Retailer: Hmm .. you.. new supervisor?

Me:(Feeling rather offended): Nahi, m Area Executive

(Had it been earlier days, I would have said tht m an AUT and perhaps even explained that I'll become an ABM after 6 months .. but not now, I am comfortable with whatever stint m doing and living through it)

Retailer: (with a disinterested look) Gaon kya tumhara?

Me:(kya mein gaon kaa lagta hoon?): UP, ... Cheta stock OK hai?

Retailer: Haan, Iss se pehle kahaan kaam karta thha?

Me: ( :( what??): Iss se pehle IT mein thha.. Bangalore.

retailer: (Looked at me with renewed interest... came a bit forward): IT mein kya?

Me(looked back again to see the TL .. still no signs.. f*ck): Engineer

Retailer:(with a Smirk) Wahaan se yahaan :) kaise?

Me: Uske baad MBA kiya.. phir yahaan first job.

Retailer:(He looked at my condition.. my hair was in a mess, It was almost 3 and I was yet to even think about lunch, and then It was really hot outside and I was sweating like anything) Iss job ke liye MBA ki kya jaroorat hai?

Me: hmm .... hmm.. (30 sec gap).... Learning

Rretailer: what?

Me: Kuch nahi,..yahaan manager banne se pehle dekhna padta hai ki ground mein kya ho raha hai. Aapki problem aaj khud se dekhenge to kal office mein baith ke bhi samajh sakte hain.

Retailer: (whatever) Idhar no problem.. sab fantastic. He he he (with a ‘kat lo ab yahaan se’ look)

I gave him a smile and looked for our product availability and started filling the tracker. Though I might have answered the retailer.. but deep Inside I was myself searching for few answers.

Jet Airways: seek 'forgive and forget' from customers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:15:00 +0000

Last night, the Jet Airways management and striking pilots reached an agreement.
In last 5 days the company managed to lose more than 200 crores, for incurring the same loss they had to labor through whole of the last year.

The top management has bitten the bullet and in this moment of great embarrassment they have talked about “forget and forgive” for the pilots. The statement made by the management has all the expected lines of “back together as one family” ... ”will work together” and also a one line apology to the customers.

Now here is my point, whatever happened in those meeting rooms, a lot has happened outside. Pilots and Management might be too involved in this tug of war to think about anything else, but the reality is that there were thousands of helpless customers suffering out there, and thanks to the media, millions of the potential customers watched them. These are the people who were missing there exams, meetings, connecting flights, functions every day, or otherwise who burnt their hard earned money on purchasing last minute tickets from other opportunist airlines. Will they ever forgive and forget about this?

I believe it’s time for Jet to seek that “forgive and forget” from its customers. I would like to see an honest account by the management about this, and an explanation of why I can now believe that such things will not happen again in future. Doing something of that sort will require real guts and will actually show that the family is finally back. Till then, for me it’s a company in constant troubles, and when makemytrip throws those dozens of results in my flight search, I won’t mind spending a few hundred extra or travelling half an hour before if I can avoid them.

It is extremely difficult to build a brand, but as such incidents will show, it’s so easy to lose it all.
Jet is not all about the management, Pilots or the ground staff, yeah maybe the physical Jet is all about them, but the real Jet ..the brand , it lies with the public. And while it is easy to bring those few physical aspects back in shape, like to get the planes back in Air and back on schedule, it will be a gigantic task to regain that mind space among millions of people.

Michael Eisner, CEO Disney said this about a brand
“A brand is a living entity – and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures”

So those thousand small gestures of last decade could well get undone by this one major setback.
Let’s see!

Last exam of my career, and a mixed bag of feelings about my MBA

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:41:00 +0000

Tomorrow I’ll have my last exam herein IIMB, and almost certainly the last exam of my student life. Phew..it’s been around 20 years of classrooms, teachers/Madams/AcharyaJis/Profs, exams, Vivas, attendance, practicals, projects etc..and finally all of this will come to a rest tomorrow.

Can’t help but devote half an hour to savor the moment and reflect back on all this, especially the last two years in IIMB. It has been busy like hell, I have missed out on lots of other nice things in life to be able to write this mail today :)

t me try and give a flavor of this, however tough it may be but let me try and recap this in a paragraph, whatever comes to my mind:

..entry in the college, lots of new faces, unexpected ragging on the very first day, managing between being a fresher at B-School and a week old marriage, shuttling between Insti and home, first quiz that had 10% weight age, getting to terms with this grade system, taking the printouts and running hard and reaching the PGP office just a minute before the deadline, end of first term, seeing how people get bracketed into their respective boxes within a few months, Summer placements, when one piece of paper was all you had to show someone who you are, feeling awful and disgusted, sitting like call girls, waiting for 3 days and hoping that some tracker will come and call me (for an interview), bruised ego, learning some hard lessons of life, ending up with 5 offers to choose from, rejecting all others for Reliance, life goes on..scoring no As and no C grades in 2^nd terms..only Bs..was I also getting bracketed and learning the easiest way of survival? Continued shuttling as no room was available here, leaving the home at 3 am on the days of exams, waking up one day just 15 minutes before one quiz and missing it, a slightly frustrating summer internship, back to college, participating in lots of competitions, lots of back to back night-outs, launching a website, spending hundreds of hours on the site, getting to the finals of CTS boardroom competition, Catching the flight to Pune for the final presentations after spending whole night in completing the BDMDM project, continuously worsening economic meltdown, the exchange term, CMS course and the satisfaction of being the number one team by a great margin, the IBP course, going to Singapore and those 2 weeks over there, coming back to face the placements term, extremely bad job scenario, tracking the CGPA to the second digit .. 3.14 to 3.07 to 3.05 to 3.02 to 3.11(/4) is how it went in the last 5 terms. Directi’s lateral process, CTS’s laterals rejection, overall gloom, a few rays of hope.

That’s how it has been; overall it was an experience I will never want to trade against anything. All the hardships that we all go through in this environment are worth it. I have seen a transformation within myself from someone with dreams to someone with a plan and confidence to achieve them, a better understanding of what I want in my career, and on a more cosmetic level..from a timid speaker to a decent presenter :)

Perhaps this crisis is there to help us, to let us do what we wanted to do in our life and not what was offered to us(I don’t know if any good job will be offered to me at all). Perhaps this was the day for which I am much better suited after these 2 years than I was before. Perhaps it’s a time to reject those easy choices and take the decisions that might not please the majority..perhaps!

Lets not spring back!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:12:00 +0000

It's happening again. It's war on Mumbai, war on India or simply put war on humanity.
Oberoi and 'Nariman house' have been conquered by our brave army men and sooner or later Taj will also be secured. But what next?
A few days of continuous coverage over media, less about the real issues and more about bites from celebrities and politicians, some of them will come up with absolute emotional stories. Politicians in power will talk about not tolerating terrorism(but what else have we done in last 2 decades?), Opposition will term it as an intelligence/security failure and demand for resignation of the party in power(for nothing else but for early and favourable elections). This will remain the topic for hot discussions in offices for a few more days and then .. then life will go on as usual.

Rather than talking about the society at large, we can simply look at the conduct of our media and that will be a true reflection of who we are.

We have all seen this, besides some rare incidents of responsible coverage we have seen an all out war amongst media houses for that exclusive footage, that exclusive talk with eyewitnesses, that extra bit of drama, and so on. Here are some of the most appalling incidents -

Live coverage: No one sitting in front of the television set needs an up to date account of what is happenning there minute by minute. Things like "as you can see..just now a set of 20-25 commandos are entering from the backside of the Taj". Given that there was information about militants having satelite links established outside..such information could easily be available to them. and btw what value are you adding by doing this?(I noticed that surprisingly Star News refrained from using live feeds)

That extra bit of drama: A Zee-news reporter was lying on the road and reporting in a manner as if he is reporting while in serious cross-fire. While actually the whole bunch of media persons were right there.. half a foot behind him and all were sitting calmly (perhaps because they were not on air), Barkha Dutt was also seen screaming without much reason, looked desperate to be seen as doing a sensational piece of coverage.

Why troubling the forces:These media men are required to be cordoned-off repeatedly, a considerable effort of the security forces is spent on ensuring their security as many of these fools will just not respect the guidelines of reporting within the drawn lines. And then there stupid questions to the front line policemen, "Sir, whats happenning inside?", "How many terrorists are there?", "What are you planning to do next?".

Insensitiveness: We don't want you to pounce on the just rescued people as if they are your prey. If the person is in a sound state of mind and is willing to share his thought ..fine go ahead!
But in most of the cases the victims were not in a position to tell anything, they did not want this much intrusion and perhaps had nothing particular to share, but still they were virtually chased down by these media men. Someone finishes on one channel "I don't know anything..saw nothing.. were just guided out by the commandos.." and suddenly a desperate Rajdeep Sardesai(who will otherwise sound so refined, concerned and hard hitting journalist) will come and literally grab the victim with both hands.. He will resist but our media bigwig will not hear anything, he'll almost drag him and take him in front of his own camera to repeat the same thing.. will ask the same questions, knowing well the answers himself. What kind of journalism is this(and especially if it comes from the editor-in-chief of such a well known channel)?

Switch on any news channel and you hear the word 'exclusive' in almost all the sentences. I even heard a phrase called 'exclusive victim comments'.

Just extend this behavior of media and you will see hundreds of people, most of whom have no purpose to be there, thronging these places..looking in to the TV cameras to have there own moments of existence on national television or to simply experience a live thriller.

Coming back to media, it's an absolute certainty that in the next few days our media will run reports from all around the Mumbai to tell you that Mumbai has sprung back.. Mumbai is not threatened.. usual traffic..usual environment and so on..as if nothing happened.. and thats the true spirit of Mumbai!
But for God's sake please hold on, is this the spirit of Mumbaikers or just the fact that a common man is forced to go out for his livelihood? or a gross insensitivity on the part of our society at large.

Why spring back? Why not stand and assess whats happening around us, Has it become a part of our lives? Who is accountable for this? Why do we need to live under a threat for no fault of ours? and what is the solution of all this?

'Springing back' is a phrase that has been overkilled in India. A society bounces back from a shock, when it tries to get back to normalcy. After any big attack the perceived risk is likely to soar much higher than the actual risk.. so bouncing back is the process of bringing this perceived risk down towards the actual risk. Something what happened in America after the WTC took place. The Systems were reviewed, the actual risk came down considerably and the society bounced back.. back to its business.
But what about India? Have we done anything to justify this bounce back? are we feeling any bit safer now?
I know the answers, and just wish that we, as a society can actually bounce back in terms of our approach, mentality and response towards terror and not just through those shots of overcrowded CST to be shown as a sign of bouncing back.

(Perhaps I have been over critical about the role of media, many of the media persons were amidst all this and must have felt a real 'call for duty' while doing this coverage with all the good intentions.. but sometimes the pressures of market results in such filtering and tweaking of news that the coverage comes out as just a desperate attempt for higher TRPs at the cost of being completely insensitive to the situation)

50 dead and still counting.. God’s own man!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:48:00 +0000

Shaqeel was very anxious this evening. He could himself hear his heartbeat, as if it could explode anytime! Now, should he just keep quiet and recite the name of the God or should he switch on the TV to see this happening and enjoy the moment, the success, and the revenge.

It will be a revenge for the brutality and atrocities against his community. Whatever happened in Hashimpura, Meerut or Gujarat were just the more explicit and more known incidents of what has happened in this so called secular country in the last 6 decades post independence. The fact is that this country has never accepted and perhaps will never accept them as their own. He himself lives under a constant scrutiny all the time, people look at him with suspicion, as if he is carrying a gun or a grenade in his pockets.

So let it be! Yeah he has done it, in fact ‘we have done it’, and he knew that from today onwards life will never be the same for this Rajputana city of Jaipur. What he has done is just a small act of service to the community. Tomorrow even if he is traced and captured and then hanged, it’ll all in the name of the God. But....being traced out..exposed.. unimaginable torture thereafter before finally being hanged.. he shuddered at the thought. Who will take care of ‘Ammi-jaan’? What will happen to Aslam’s studies? After all this is his final year of graduation and he is doing so well in studies. And what about Aasmaa? What will she do without him, will she ever forget him? Forgive him?

All these thoughts left his throat dry; he looked at the clock, 7:05 pm. He didn’t know about the exact timings. All he did to help the mission was to procure 2 new and 1 old cycles from the city and arranged for 3 old bags for Haafiz-bhai. He was quite sure that today was the day, he got that hint by whatever conversation he could overhear, he wished to play a more active role in this but was kept out of the riskier tasks.

To think about something else than the possibility of his arrest, he focused back on his anger. Whenever he looks at prosperous Hindus, he feels that they are so because they have taken an undue advantage of his community. Even his boss Mittal-bhai whom they fondly call as Mittal bh****, behaves like he has done a great favor by giving them this job. Almost half of the workers in his shoe factory are from his community. He once overheard him saying jokingly “I have no option but to employ them, and any way these sons of pi** look good doing this kind of work”.

Today is the day when several such Mittals will learn a lesson; he was much less frightened now.

He noticed increasing activities in the locality, people started screaming, and telephones started ringing. He has switched off his own mobile phone as per the instructions of Haaafiz-bhai.

He switched on the TV. He was thrilled to see the destruction; the ticker was flashing “More than 50 feared dead”. Not bad, this is better than what he expected. He felt proud of what has been accomplished by them. Suddenly he heard a knock on the door.

His heart stopped for a bit too long, he regained his mental poise only after hearing Saadiq’s voice “Shaqeel bhai!”. He opened the door. “Shaqeel bhai SMS Hospital chalo jaldi… blast hue hain.. kam se kam paanch.. Ya Allah sab Illake waalon ki khair kare…. Aao jaldi se Aslam bhi wahin hai..phone kiya thha usne..appka switched-off hai ..isiliye mein…”

He could not hear any further.. the mere mention of Aslam left him almost paralyzed, He took a while to understand that Aslam is there only to help the victims.

He was talking to himself “What has this boy done? He is there in such a situation, this is not the time of helping anyone but to be safe yourself. These people and police together will search for any Muslims like vultures in the days to come, they will not leave him. This will take a communal turn anytime, I’ll have to go and bring him back before it’s too late” and he rushed out.

The scene outside SMS hospital was not for weak hearted persons. Just near the entrance he saw dead bodies of 2 young boys. Both of them wore identical clothes..very much like He and Aslam used to get from Abba-jaan in their childhood. He was pushed in to the gallery by a rush of new bodies brought to the hospital. Sounds of wailing were deafening. The helplessness of hundreds of mothers, fathers, wives, sisters, and children had a piercing power. Suddenly he found himself very weak. “Beta, tumhara bloodgroup-O+ hai kya? Mere bête ki jaan bacha lo” said a crying, helpless father. He looked into his eyes, the eyes that have perhaps seen the world for more than 50 years were filled with pain and utter despair today.. he has seen this face before.. yes it resembles the face of his late father he saw when Aslam was down with Malaria for more than 30 days. It just did not matter who he was.. his mental state was close to that of his own father when he saw his son almost dying due to lack of proper treatment. He just went with him.. Doctors took a sample of blood. He saw at the other corner of the room. He saw Aslam donating his blood. He could also see Rehmaan bhai, trying his level best to help the victims and their relatives.

Doctors returned shortly after and took him to the blood-donation room. He laid there thoughtless.. sounds of wailing were even more piercing now. Clearly more and more bodies were being declared as dead bodies, more and more children were losing their fathers and mothers.. wives were losing their husbands ..more and more homes were getting converted to permanent haunting houses.

After the process he felt dizziness.. but he walked out.. he wanted to walk out of this mess.. otherwise perhaps he would collapse there. Suddenly he hit a man.. he was.. he was ‘Mittal-bhai’. He was in a devastated state, he clutched his hands as if he wanted to say something.. no voice came out, but lips said everything “my son”.. Shaqeel did not know what to say or do, he moved a few steps further, then looked back. He was not the Mittal-bhai known to him, he was just a helpless father. He went to him.. Without much thoughts his arms were around his shoulders.. Mittal bhai looked up and clutched him again like a child.. he was trying to stop himself till then..perhaps he could weep now.. when his wife won’t see him weeping..Perhaps he didn’t care anymore know. It was a cry that Mittal-bhai was trying to control as hard as he could.. just those gasps for air would let it out. Shaqeel was shaken to the hilt. Mittal bhai recovered in a few minutes, sat in one of the corner.. with hands joined he started to pray for his son’s life.. Tears were still rolling from his eyes incessantly.

Shaqeel also found his hands together, subconsciously, this moment he knew that Mittal-bhai and he were referring to the same person.

The person that all of us remember when we are completely helpless is the same. It didn’t matter anymore if there was an Idol in front of you or not.. whether you call it Allah or Bhagwaan.. whether you are a laborer or a factory owner..with those trembling hands, sinking heartbeat, and teary red eyes.. you pray to the one .. you become a mere beggar.. and you beg for the lives of your loved ones.

He got up.. moved towards the blood donation room once again.. he wanted to drain all his blood there itself.. he never wanted to come out of that hospital.. he wanted to die amongst those cries..those eyes..where homes were being destroyed one by one.. he did not want to be alive till the final count.. he just wanted to add one to it..If only the doctors could drain out all his blood.

who is the real king?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:43:00 +0000

Ok, I recently went through a torture called 'Singh is Kinng'. though m a singh n Akhshay is not..but in those 3 long hours he was the real king and I along with some 300 poor souls(-25 real singhs) was treated like an utter fool. It was a film that took its viewers for granted(n whats wrong in tht I had already paid for the ticket), the director assumed absolute liberty in the name of cinema, Can you imagine that a person who could wreck havoc just to catch a hen in a punjab village can neatly manage an underworld empire in Australia, 4 people boarded the wrong international flights so that our Akki can have a nicely picturized song in Egypt as probably was suggested by cinematographer(hence the story mein twist). Add to it a hell lot of stupidity interspersed with songs, forced comedy, mamta (motherly love), national pride and the repeated 'Singh is king' nonsense... thats wat you go thru in those 3 hours.

I am not writing a review, thats really not the point. Whats the purpose of reviewing a movie hundreds of whose reviews r already out there on the internet.

I am writing it to point out to a new theory that popped out in my mind while I was going through that torture. This theory has made me an even bigger admirer of Akshay Kumar.

I'll name my theory as "Theory of Stardom and Trashiness in Bolllywood"

'SIK' (wow how apt.. SI/C/K) was released and claimed the biggest opening of this year, there were houseful boards even after a week of its release and recently I read that the movie has already garnered more than 100Cr Rs worlwide..Given that the movie it self is quite pathetic, what all this tellls you is just one thing..that Akki has become the biggest star in bollywood.

Let me explain this with my new theory, fact is that in bollywood the biggest star is the one who can carry such absolutely ridiculous, senseless and entertainment less movies alone on his shoulders, get the returns from the box-office and force everyone to assume that the movie perhaps was actually quite good.

Sharukh did it with absolute trash like KANK and a mediocre movie like OSO and became the real darling of bollywood, this was after Akki had done somethin similiar with 'Garam Masala' and many other between the lines movies. But Akki has finally won the top slot with SIK, I believe that if he can sell SIK, he can sell any movie.

So it's simple,
Star's power = sigma(BO success*Trash quotient of the movie)

So if a 'Chak de' becomes a hit, SRK hardly adds to his star value as the movie was actually good and would have done well anyway(or the marginal utility was less). By the same logic Shiney Ahooja got nothing much out of his performance in Gangster(Huh..good movie thee yaar)

Now in my opinion the only way that someone can ever challenge Akki is to come up with an even more crappy movie(OMG thats a herculean task) and make it a hit or at least make an equally crappy movie(even thats not easy at all, going by the high/low standards set by SIK) and try to touch its BO results.

Both of these scenarios indicates that Akki is gonna remain the real King for quite some time, so just hope that after setting the new bar for 'Star Power' he will now try not to assert the same thing again and again and yeah, hail the new megastar!

A big doubt crept in

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:31:00 +0000

(wrote it some 3 weeks ago, when I was in Mumbai)

Well! It has been almost 8 months since I realized (for the first time) that I am made for a career in General Management. I seriously thought that 'Operations' is a field with which I’ll start and will gradually move up to a proper General Management profile. So the picture was quite clear. I could never be an I-Banker, don’t have the grades or the profile to make the cut for top3-4 consultancy jobs, and compared to whatever else was on offer I somehow convinced myself that this GM stuff is suitable for me.

But it was a new field, so that’s where I chose an internship in this GM company.
I believed (and still believe) that the main purpose(from the interne's perspective) of this kind of internship is to Provide the Experience. An intern must feel how his life is going to be after one year if he joins the same company. First hand experience is great but at least if he can work with people who are in that position (seniors who were offered the similar post), that will be just fine. I am saying this because an internship is not like a sales pitch for a small FMCG product, we are talking about careers. If someone likes the culture and joins in, the company is getting a great employee for the future; otherwise it is just wasting its money and someone’s time.

Needless to say that I am finding myself on the wrong side of this philosophy (Otherwise who thinks about such things.. even Newton thought about gravity only when he was hit by an Apple J).

In fact now I am more than apprehensive about a career in General Management. The fear is that it's not that professional a field as IT(that I've experienced). As the field requires you to deal with real issues/numbers.. Most of the people who are there for 5- 10 years, feel that all these MBA types are those hi-fy PPT types. Most of such companies are bureaucratic or even worse they are dynastic, family run types. And anyway a bad experience fills your mind with lots of doubts.

Leaving that field currently I find myself more suitable for the IT/domain consultancy types of jobs. And then yeah I may also go for marketing.

So overall I am a lot more confused than I ever was, Thanks to my internship experience :)
And the love with GM career is not completely over yet, anyway it is hard to believe that all GM jobs can be as worthless as I have seen them to be. Sometimes I make myself believe that it’s not the time to run away, but to fight. Migrating to a system that is easier to work in is no big deal, probably showing these Lo-tech baniyaa types the reality behind this hard earned MBA is a challenge in itself.

It’s odd, but the only incident that inspired me for a GM career did not involve any of my mentors or anyone from the company, rather ironically it came from a taxi driver. Here it goes..
I was coming to the outskirt of this village type thing (unfortunately where my Guest House is located) from the air-port. He asked me if I work for XYZ? As this part of the city is kinda owned by this company. I said yes. He asked me a few more questions and I told him that I am a manager there (no need to confuse him with the internship story).
He turned back and very sincerely he requested “ Sahab, Jab se aapka store khula hai tab se hamein bhi local kiraane waale saste mein saamaan dete hain.. waise sahab mehangaai bahut hai aap thoda aur sasta kar deejiye plz”

It was a big thing for me.. when I worked in my IT job, I could never expect a common man to have any connection with me.. I could never touch lives of those around whom I live, who indirectly shapes my life. My job was meaningless for a commoner, (in fact to an extent it was meaningless for me as well). And now you see! It amazes me how many lives you touch when you work in such mammoth GM companies. This thought pushes me back to feel that a career in GM is still not out of sight. Given the scope of this area, Perhaps I still want to come here and make a difference.

The Summer Ordeal

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:59:00 +0000

Ok so who ever is going through or has ever gone through a nightmarish internship (please include your engineering ones as well) should have a look at this experience

- Your internship is supposed to be taking place in a metro city, but you are miles away from any signs of civilization, OK there is a good guest house, but just outside it, is a place where people don’t understand that a toilet and a road are two different things altogether. You feel crappy to walk 3 kms to ur office at 11 am in the sweltering heat (btw that’s the office timing), when you wear your formals, hold ur heavy lappy-bag and walk through those dusty-shi**y lanes.. and yeah you walk because the company owes no responsibility for ur conveyance..and the location ensures that you won’t get an auto either, if sometimes you get a bus then you must be thankful to the great admin dept.

- You get no projects in the first 2 weeks, in those 12 days you go to ur mentor’s desk at least 30 times and each time he makes a typical face..takes 5 long mins to look up from his monitor.. and says “yeah we will meet this evening/morning/afternoon/ everything is fixed we are waiting for BOSS’s approval” and yeah he always says “I’ll call you” before diving back in to his monitor.

- OK 2 weeks over, you are frustrated with ur mentor so you contact those senior people whom you have seen in ur college, in those nice PPTs and selection interviews, distributing lots of goodies, giving gyaan about the company culture and the internship, looking ever so helpful. But what they do is that they call ur mentor, bash him up, reply to ur mail having all the top brass and ur mentor in the list and say “Don’t panic, we are shifting you to a new dept”.. Hurray! Tactically so awesome! N btw the new mentor and HODs are also in the reply list J

- Your new mentor doesn’t even look at you while you are being introduced to him by the HR, he says. “OK, he will work with XYZ” .. that’s it .. this XYZ himself is not a very nice person to start with

- As there is no place to sit in this new dept, you are sharing the seat with Mr. XYZ. Next morning he comes and the first thing he does is to unplug ur lappy power and put his mobile on charging, and points to a temporarily vacant cubic and tells you to shift there.

- Ohh! I haven’t talked about the work in the new dept. They hand you 2 crappy but ‘secret’ docs, you are not allowed to take them to your Guest House, each day you must submit them back to ur mentor. One day you do the same and then the mentor is off to a 2 day training, leaving you behind with nothing to work with

- Now you know that there is nothing much in the manuals, you take ur own initiatives to learn something.. you request to go to the store and see the things by yourself.. you do the same and meet the store manager on one evening. You go to the store (of course you go by local trains/auto) some days later early in the morning to see the store-opening processes. The guard questions you when you say that you are an intern (wtf is an intern? there are BOSSES, employees, temporary emloyees, contract workers.. but an intern ..aayla tum yahan training karne aaye ho), ur id-card doesn’t carry the company name and nyway its so pathetic that it is an insult even to the batches that school going kids wear these days. The manager is not there, and his deputy refuses you to observe the ‘secret processes’. You argue that you work with this n that team, but then you don’t have their phone nos, in fact they never gave you any. You try whatever other nos you had.. but yeah the company opens at 11:00 am and people are as helpful to their colleagues as Mr Mallya has been to Dravid n company throughout IPL. Absolutely frustrated, you walk out of the store, but yeah not before the guard frisks (yeah “FRISKS”) you and u could notice a hint of smile on his face( as if he is saying “looser..ho gayee teri training”)

OMG.. the list is never gonna end, But to complete the story, more or less all of this is repeated everyday in a never ending loop… but you see a ray of hope.. ohh its just a summer internship. Remember when sometimes you see those bad dreams..you missing an important exam, falling from a hight n all..and then you suddenly wake up to realize that it was just a bad dream. Sometimes you get a similar feeling with your internship.. you thank God that it is just an internship. I am so Lucky!! :)

Happy Republic Day!!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:51:00 +0000

Wishing all the Indians a very Happy Republic day, lets pray that our country, the biggest democracy in the world may go stronger with the grit and determination of over one billion Indians. We truly deserve to savor the moment when the tri-color is unfurled at the Red Fort..that moment is meant to feel proud of what we have achieved, and the very next moment we have to start again, get back to our work..as we still have a lot more to do.

m already waiting for the morning, when the Adelaide test will take a back seat and the national will be at a stand still for those 52 seconds.
(best of luck to the Indian team as well, Aussie ki Taissi kar do :) )

Vande Mataram!

Nikku and his bottle of happiness

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:15:00 +0000

8Rs 50 paisa, Nikku counted the money and quickly slipped it in the pocket of his pants. He was completely exhausted and his body was reeling under the pain, but still he was more than willing to work for that extra hour today as well. He was doing the same for last few days. Compared to the other labours, he was new to the job and thus the least productive as well. As a 9 years old he could hardly sew 10 bags a day, earning a paltry sum of 20 Rs for his family, Family…for him this meant his mother and his younger brother Raju. His mother, who usually worked as a labour in adjacent construction sites, once in a while she could find the job of house maid but then her love for the kids will overwhelm her honesty and despite knowing the consequences she would steal some food items for the kids and will eventually be thrown out of the ‘houses of those honest persons’.

And then Raju, his beloved younger brother who still goes to the municipal school, who still plays with his friends in the evening... For Nikku, he was living a whole new life in Raju. Late night he used to ask Raju about his day in detail, what was taught? how was the teacher? about his friends.. what did he play? How many runs he made? Whats happening in the neighborhood? and all sorts of things that he missed. Perhaps he was missing too many things, He was missing his Childhood!

India-pakistan series was going on these days, he remember that ‘Gupta Sahab’ allowed the workers(most of them were minors) to see the match for about an hour and after India’s win he even distributed sweets. Nikku brought that laddu back to his place, only to share it with Raju. He could not make much sense out of what happened except that India won and the enemy Pakistan lost, he also jumped and clapped like others did..but all that was empty and hollow.. much like his own existence.

What probably impressed him most was the Pepsi advertisement. The theme of “Yeh Pyaas hai badi” was still afresh in his mind. He was used to work in that 10 by 10 feet room with atleast 15 others in the extreme hot conditions of north Indian summer, and the water tap outside the room was the only source of respite. But now he had seen that image of so many happy persons having that chilled bottle in their hands… probably that’s the reason of their happiness, at least he will be extremely happy to have something like that. He still remembers how cold an ice-cream was when he and Raju shared one last year. Probably this Pepsi is even colder and even sweeter than that. Suddenly all the Pepsi billboards started to make a lot of sense, crates stacked outside local shops were teasing him and looked like they were waiting for the fortunate ones to come and taste them.

He mustered all his courage, waited outside one such shop till the owner got a bit free and then asked “ Paepsi kitneki hai?” (how much will a pepsi cost?)

He looked at him, his eyes were like questioning his shabby clothes, disorganized appearance and to some extent his whole identity as a human being and then with complete rudeness he answered “aath rupe” (8 Rupees) and immediately looked otherway with utter contempt.

8 Rupees, that was the difference between him and a moment that he will really cherish for a long long time.. purchasing something and then enjoying it..like all others, and that too with his own money.

His daily earnings were known to his mother and then they have to arrange for the meals, Raju’s fees, his books, the rent of the kholi ..nothing left on that side.

He then thought of an idea, he will work an hour extra and then while returning he will run hard towards the Kholi so that mother doesn’t suspect much.

Now he was doing this for last one week or so and finally today was the day when he will go to the same shop and the same shopkeeper will have to walk to the fridge and get him ‘his bottle’, after all today he had the money..and was paying the same 8 Rupees as any one of those more or even extremely fortunate ones pay.

It was late in the night, today he was not working overtime so he was walking at his own pace, completely immersed in the thoughts of his bottle of pepsi, How all the heat accumulated in these last few months will get released with those few sips, how and where he will hide the bottle, and then will take Raju out with some excuse to his favorite place..the basement of an under construction ‘Paradise apartment’ (the dimly lit place where no one see him..where he is away from his day to day troubles and can be the old Nikku as he was a few months back), and then how will he surprise Raju with that bottle of Pepsi, They will take their own time in finishing it, He could already see the smile on Raju’s face. He could not wait any longer now!

Everything went as he thought earlier, untill the shopkeeper asked him “Abhi khol doon?”(Shall I open it now?”

Nahi, mujhe de do, ghar par kholoonga (Give tht to me, I’ll open tht at home)

Abe nahi, phir tu 5 Rs bottle ke aur jama kar, kal bottle deke 5 Rs waapas le lena(then gimme 5 Rs extra for the bottle, when you return it, take them bck from me)

He requested a lot and even swore that he will return the bottle ..but all in vain!

He felt extremely stupid, useless and betrayed ..came out of the shop..it seemed that all those hundreds of bottles along with that shopkeeper are laughing at him, a thin layer of tears helped him by obscuring the huge and well-lit billboard of Pepsi, he started to run again, harder than he had ever run.. probably away from this ruthless world ..so that he can weep loudly at the basement of his favorite ‘Paradise apartment’ before returning back to his kholi.

Indian traffic

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:15:00 +0000

amid the concerns that are being raised about the TATA-nano and how it will impact our already congested roads, I came across this interesting video. I don't know why? but somehow I find a method in all this madness.
Jaako Rakhhe Saaiyaan maar sake naa koi :)

ps. though we can see that the video is playing at a faster rate to amplify the effect but still we can get an essence of how the traffic moves here:)

TATA nano, ready for the Giga impact?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:03:00 +0000

Westerners may have never thought of anything except millions and billions and may have found any other term (like lakhs crores) a source of unwanted confusion. But on 11 th Jan 2008 this other part of the world was seeing the videos of an Indian car launch across all major US/UK news channels, After all the world’s cheapest car was launched, priced at 1 lakh Indian Rupees. Many minds were stressed to figure out what exactly that means, probably near about 5000$( Current cheapest car model the Chinese Chery QQ3),

Calculations started trickling in, and astonished many,1 lakh Indian Rupees equals only $2500. WOW!

All Auto journals around the world were awe struck by this car, for $2500 an Indian company is offering a real car. A French reporter exclaimed "It seems like a real car. The windows actually wind down"

The nation watched the event closely; our news hungry news channels had a hot property at hand, something in which everyone was interested (unlike Jurm/Sansanee – wo maut ki saudagar, Vish-kanya etc). The common man wanted to see if the promise made by TATA was actually fulfilled, can he afford the "four wheeler" so that he need not do daily acrobatics to load 2 adults and three kids on his poor scooter, is he really getting a car within his limited budget and if it is anything more than a glorified AutoRickshaw?

The other opposite segment was curious to see if it is actually possible to have a car at 1 lakh Rupees.. and then in the modern world you always have a third category..some people who drive in their own patrol guzzlers to these sites to lead a protest on the name of Green-peace and environment protection.

The event got an unprecedented coverage, news channels were gearing up for the event for the last 3-4 days, and the live streaming started on some channels as much as 1 hour before the actual magic started to roll.

Hundreds of photographers were elbowing each other to get the best shot of the People’s car, while hundreds of teenagers also flocked to the Pragati maidaan to witness the history in making.

I am not interested in covering the event, that has already been covered all over media and anyway I am writing what I saw or read in the media so no point in doing that..

What I want to portray is the tremendous interest the event generated,

How years of hard work from a team of 500 engineers and anticipation from millions condensed into one moment of sensation.

Curiously I looked at interesting discussions going on various forums of some US and UK news site..you can also view them, after all TATA-nano is all over J .. at least here here and here

One thing that was evident was that its something that catches everyone’s imagination, its not an incremental product, actually it’s a potential revolution, something that can create a storm at the world level. The US car companies rose to the hard reality called Japanese manufacturing in the 80s and 90s..many terms like JIT, SMED were floated and they were not only appreciated but also adopted by the world. Are we going to see something similar soon? Am I hearing TATA?

I am not pegging all my hopes on this tiny car, probably that will be a bit too much for a 624 cc car, but if you see the larger picture its a lot more than a car. Its a strong statement about the India’s capability to challenge convention, to innovate, to force the world to stop and take a note and in this case “Applaud!”.

Before the Software/Services saga, we were known as a nation of snake charmers, then it was changed but it was really not enough, all of our success was attributed to our cheap labour force. A colonial view will say that the Indian software industry had to succeed despite their questionable quality .. after all Indian engineers come at one fifth the price.

..who cares and who will believe that you are as capable as we are!

Probably for the first time we are getting out of that cheap labour mould, the nano is not only about cheap labour, its about a vision, a promise, about aspirations of millions, top design work and courage. Had the cheap labour been the driving force, the Suzuki’s and Hyndai’s of the world who operate and manufacture in India would not have termed the project as impossibility and insanity.[ Statements made by Osamu Suzuki — "Tata will not be able to make a one lakh car" — flashed on large screens during Ratan TATA’s presentation. Cudos!!]

It’s the first time when the world is looking at India in a new light , this small car has changed a lot at a bigger scale. Above all it has given Indian middle class a new Hero.

We as a nation lack such real Heroes, Probably the last time we saw them were in the form of Dheeru Bhai Ambani and JRD. But now we have another in the form of Ratanji TATA who believes in his, his team’s and his nation’s capability. A person who took over the major responsibility in 1993 after the demise of JRD, has made many bold statements. Probably the most significant of them were entering into car market (Indiaca’s success story), Tetley and then Corus(mother of all Indian acqs) acquisition.

Even five years back a 1 lakh Rupees Car was not a joke(or should i say that it sounded like one?), Car prices were still very much the same as they are now…Steel and Oil prices have soared considerably from then but still TATAs have managed to fulfill what they promised. "A promise is a promise," Ratan Tata said during the presentation.

The kind of coverage that TATA got could make some so called richest persons of the world/India feel a bit uneasy. But it shows a big reality ..”You think about the common man and the world will think about you if you are honest about it”. The common man is once again in focus..at least for some days..Bajaj is planning something similar in collaboration with Renault. Probably this common man will come into focus in other industries as well.

The true success of TATA nano will be decided in another one year or so, but the kind of inquiries that TATA showrooms are catering to in the smallest and farthest towns/small cities in India, the kind of Thumbs-up it got from international/national auto media and Indian Auto industry is enough to conclude that if the whole journey matches the debut than this car will redefine the Auto industry of this country and who knows, it may redefine the whole country as well. As it inspires millions of youngsters like me to be proud of what we are..INDIANS!!

I Salute you Mr. TATA, Jai Hind!!

this dullness is a norm for me

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 19:39:00 +0000

Guys before I write about my experience(not a good one though) about the summer placements process I would like to to clear some blog inventory, wrote this sm 15 days back..

Well after all I got some time to write an entry. I never knew before joining the college what exactly this hectic study schedule would mean, given my track record I never accepted that I will follow all the rules, I considered myself fundu enough to live here on my own terms, but alas! I was nothing but overconfident.
The system is too rigorous for anyone to come and challenge it, I don't know what will happen if you do, because at least I could never do that.
There is a difference between being busy and hectic, i had my fair share of busy days during my career, but hardly experienced this hectic sort of happenings. Busy is something when you are not getting spare time, but still hopefully you are working on a single problem at hand, But here in this land of sacrosanct time limits, its hectic. what this means is that on a given day there are 5 resume submissions to be made, 2 online forms to be filled(some times they run into 10-15 pages, asking nonsensical and non relevant questions like my marks in all the subjects throughout my education, relative position/grade etc, all of my family background, even my birth place..all this given that they will definetly reject my resume after reading the first 3 lines itself, a poor MNNIT grad with a 75% marks) , add to that the ppts of companies that you have to attend and suffer, project group meetings, gyan sessions, tutorials, surprise quiz fear, and you know that you are in a virtual hell :)

OK this was a particularly depressing picture maybe because i had to attend two painful ppts today. there is a brighter side as well, you get great subjects and profs, great learning opportunities and if looking from a different perspective a challenging schedule as well.
Like sometimes when i have to run hard to reach the lecture room in time, I love it, it reminds me of my school/college days :)
its all together a different experience, which is bound to make any one a lot more mature, self assured and ready to face any problem in the outer world.
don't feel like writing more ..will end this abruptly..its already 3:30 am and we have a class from 8:30 onwards.

Ohh… AaaaI' ll be joining AAIAAIMB

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 22:37:00 +0000

Attitude! that’s the thing that I have noticed in past few days. Simply because I am also joining IIMB..I have seen/interacted with lots of my future class mates recently.

I have seen some very weird reactions of these future IIM students and that have forced me to write this particular entry.
I understand that there is very fine line between being proud of your achievements and being arrogant, but still i am very interested in defining this line more clearly, When exactly a highly successful person starts to look cheap thanks to his constant bragging.

This also reminds me of my earlier days of college life. How we used to mock all the private colleges in our MNNIT days, How it gave us extreme pleasure to tell someone that we study in MNNIT.. and how we thought that the other guy must not be knowing our real value if he failed to respond accordingly.

Coming back to the topic..no need to say that most of these guys must be having a great profile, then they have cracked CAT and must have had a great day on their GD/PI day.

But still, what does this say about them?

1.they are very good at cracking a CAT like paper(OK I extend it and say that they have good aptitude)

2.They have an impressive profile/personality.

But I can still not allow someone with these limited (proven) credentials to be an egotist.

Tomorrow if they become successful businessmen and create some value for this society (that has otherwise given so much to them) I will have absolutely no problem if they ridicule every second person and open every gate with a kick. :-D

But not now, I feel extremely uncomfortable with persons who don’t show minimal respect that must be granted to every human being.(and not boasting about your IIT/IIM tag when you are talking to any other guy or at least concealing that condescending attitude should be a part of that)

I thought a lot about this and then I thought about some really inspiring personalities..(In Indian context, for me it will be Mahatma Gandhi, JRD Tata, Ambani, some gallantry award winner soldiers like Capt Batra, Lt. Pandey, stars like AB Bachchan(you may hate him, but you can’t ignore him), A.R.Rehman, great doctors, architects) ..very few of them have these IIT/IIM tags.

Now coming to my list, what sets these greats apart is not the degrees that they hold but its their focus, passion and talent/intelligence.

In fact most of them were not that promising in their early 20s(now most iitians are on seventh heaven at an age of say 17-19 ), they had moderate talent ..which they were able to grow just because of their passion and focus.

I would like to talk about intelligence as this is one of the most difficult word to define.

To me it has many parameters. You need not be too good on all the parameters to be called as intelligent, if have an spectacular command on some parameters, its enough to show that given the time and desire you can master any other parameter as well.

Here are the parameters –

-Logical ability

-Quantitative analysis(may in turn have many parameters like number crunching, problem solving, correlating powers etc etc)

-business sense- ability to think about how to do your work by hook or by crook.

-memory power

-consulting power(how you can reach a good solution and how well can you put it across)

-Creativity(if you can create an awesome piece of art, which can be anything ..music/painting/movie whatever, you can never be dumb)

etc etc.

The only point that I want to make is that getting into an IIT or IIM is surely a great thing to do ..but its not the ultimate thing. And though a person insures that he will be earning a lot in future ..nothing else is insured(compared to the kind of dream that we usually have.. like being the Jack Welch, Gates or Branson of tomorrow).

So why get so obsessed with this IIT/IIM tag, its not the only thing to define a person..he himself will have to define him in future.

I could never join an IIT because of my low rank..but had I got 15-20 more marks I would have got an under 1500 rank for sure. Similarly had I got one more question wrong in Language section of CAT this year ..i would have probably got 0 calls. What I mean is that we all are different in so many aspects. Very few lucky ones get the chance to get into IITs and IIMs ..but they have to understand that there are thousands of others who would have replaced them for sure had they got a bit better opportunities, guidance and maybe luck.

Ps. I can blabber on this issue for hours. So I might be posting again on the same topic once I get an insider's view :).
And one more thing is that the issue here is a lot broader, I have seen such a weird behaviour of so many govt employees towards common junta, Comp Sc students having such behaviour towards Civil Engg guys. Indians having such behaviour towards Africans(though they receive the same in much more quantity frm Europeans n Americans) n all that.

We all are guilty of evaluating others based on face values specially when it is none of our business to do so, we forget that the God has used the greatest of algorithms to diversify talent and skills across all possible parameters like demographic groups, classes, gender etc.

Current Affairs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 21:42:00 +0000

there are so many new things that i want to share over here..the most important one is that i am getting married very soon(19th june).
another is an update that i got final calls from all the IIMs except IIMA, so i'll be joining IIMB :)

i am already out of my job, so these days i am absolutely free and thus i am into too many things.
listing them in order of priority -

Trading - these days the rate at which i am looking at or hearing of or maybe thinking of Sensex and Nifty is definitely more than my heart beat itself. I just entered it on this Monday and look the market is already down by around 400 points from then. i have currently invested in Unitech, ZEE, CINEMAX and Power India Finance(probably the weakest link) and making losses in tune of 5- 10% in each of these stocks. Don't worry i have invested hardly 5-6k till now, so the losses are not more than 300-400Rs. Hoping to come in green very soon. :)

Web Site:- It was on highest priority before this trading bug got me. I am planning to roll out some lessons on quants. i mean an online resource of not only questions but also for theory in very lucid form supported with great and hand picked examples. i know its tough and i hardly have any time left to do so in near future..but i am still trying , still figuring out the right pattern and flow.

Body Building:- It has been more than 3 months since i joined the Gym, its another thing that my attendance over there is not that great(maybe 50-60%). but still i have gained a lot of muscles.. the only sad factor is that my stomach muscles have also joined the party, so the tummy has slowly but surely started to bulge out of T-shirts.
my advice to everyone is to focus on cardio, i almost stopped any cardio to save some time after initial 10-15 days, it may be boring when compared to weight training but its very useful..it will help in melting some fat so that all the form is visible in those newly building muscles(and obviously it will keep the tummy in check)

Serials - I am guilty of watching a lot of tv programs these days..during day time its business channels, late night its news channel and in between i don't mind watching a "Saathi Re"(9:00 pm, Star One) or even "Teen Bahuraanian"(10:30 Zee Tv) and i am feeling a bit too embarrassed but i don't mind watching even "Jab Love Hua"(11:00 Zee TV), apart from this some weekend shows like SaReGaMa or Antakshari(Star One - m nort sure about the kids series .. but this one was very good) or Indian Idol and Laughter Challenge -3.
So you know what i am doing most of the time these days..m glued to the idiot box.

Coaching - I am also working in PT as a guest faculty .. have only taken 3 classes till now .. but whenever i have a class i do enjoy the experience.

Sketching - its a long time dream to be able to make sketches. i have got hold on some good books and now i am trying hard to get some time for that.

Shaadi Prep - its again a huge task. apart frm all shoppings of Sangeeta in which i have to give her company like a dummy of her future husband(i don't like this kinda expensive shopping..kinda miser you know :), n then i really don't like the idea of wasting 3 hours of time..unwinding! and i mean unwinding so many shops, walking from on end of a street to another just to get something 200 Rs cheaper or maybe coz the blue pearls used in a saree were not that much in sync..uff) i have to buy something for myself as well.
tried hard but could not buy a Sherwaani, could not convince myself for spending 8-10k for those embroided kurtaas. I will try to buy smthing cheaper from Agra itself.

there are other things as well..like currently i am in between of at least 4 books(Freakonomics, It happened in India, Loosing my Virginity(Richard branson) and The Clocks.

I hope you can imagine the whole picture, i am having absolute free time since this monday..but still i can always complicate things and have a habit of taking more on my plate then what i can eat(though literally in this case i end up eating whatever i took ..hence the tummy :) )
and i am thoroughly enjoying all this confusion, panic and uncertainty.

IIMC- the final interview of the season

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 09 May 2007 23:48:00 +0000

same case as with A, will try to post asap

IIMA - can it get bigger than this?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 09 May 2007 23:45:00 +0000

Ohh, i am totally confused about where i have placed the notebook in which i wrote about A and C(didn't create the soft copy then).. planning to find that out on weekend. So i will write about this later(but for sure :) )

IIMB - All that matters..Love, Life, Peace and IIMB

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 09 May 2007 23:32:00 +0000

Felt victorious on reaching the campus at 2:25(for the 2:30 pm batch, 26th Feb), strolled to the admission office, just to realize that the group/(profs) is just waiting for its last absent member(yours truly).

We all are led to the GD room, having chairs around a large table.

The GD :- GD topic was about a problem being faced by Mr Ambrose, principal of a small School.

There is a maths teacher in his college who was excellent in his job, since he joined the college, the grades of students in maths have improved considerably, and most of them no longer have any fear of maths.

He is fully focused and even helps students who need extra care through special classes.

But now all of a sudden parents of 10 students have complained against the teacher accusing him of Sexual misbehavior with their children.

Case asked us about the options ahead of the Principal in this case?

Well, as a group we started with the analysis of the problem, while 1-2 of the guyz jumped in with the solutions well within the first minute itself. I came up with points about the priorities of Mr. Ambrose, Like – First of all was to avoid a police enquiry by resolving the issue quickly and placate the parents ..take them in confidence blah blah.

Then the discussion focused on this teacher. Whether he can be allowed to work or not..or maybe if he can be allowed to take classes in school and aborting the special classes(as the incident happened in special class), or if we need a proof to take any action against a teacher having a great proven record. Whether to install CCTVs in every class room.etc etc.

I said that allowing him to take classes in the school alone will also be difficult as the atmosphere of the class will not be like it was earlier.

About Mr Ambrose’s options I said that placating parents of 10 students will be very difficult in this situation so he should talk to this teacher, tell him about the situation and assure him that without a proper enquiry he is not guilty in the eyes of management.. but being a responsible employee he should understand the situation and that he will be suspended till the enquiry is over.

I also came up with a point that we need to look about such incidents happening in large companies and that usually they have a zero tolerance policy(keywords matlab good funde) about such issues. This is a small school so they may not have any such guideline or proper rule to follow. Mr Ambrose should take it as an opportunity to lay down some rules and guidelines about what should be done in such kind of situations related to ethics/morality or criminal activities of teachers… blah blah

The Interview:-

Our panel had two profs (age around 60 years) .. one was a bit thin and serious(SP) while the other sir had a jolly attitude.(JP)

SP - You have mentioned something about Feather in my Cap award that you got in wipro.. tell me something about why was this award given to you?

Blah blah

SP - Is it just given from Project manager level?

Yeah (it was just the starting so jyada fenkne ki himmat nahi hue J)

JP - You have also written something about your father working in Dehradun on some Hydroelectric plant?

Yes sir ..blah blah

For how many years have you lived in this place?

Me - Almost all of my schooling has been done from there, Right from my first grade to class 12th.

JP(smiling) - Is it a beautiful place?

Yes sir , very beautiful. In fact its a hill station for tourists.

JP - What are the other places that you have been to?

Me - Sir Dakpathar, Dehradun, Mussoorie, Allahabad, Gorakhpur, Sitamari, Bangalore, then I have been to Sakleshpur for a trek, pondicherry(just before the infamous sting operation..lucky me :-D), Mangalore, Malape blah blah..

JP - Was it through college or company trips?

With friends..just casual tours.

JP - Which one is the most beautiful one?

For me, Dakpathar is the one, probably coz that’s my place J

JP - Have you find any cultural differences between your dehradun and >:Place>Bangalore>:Place>

Me - Sir, I would like to compare Allahabad and Bangalore, because of there stark contrast. In Allahabad life is different you don’t have so many engineers around you..low literacy rate..low labour rate..poverty ..ppl bein happy in what they are less materialistic blah blah..

JP - Allahabad is a spiritual city, so can you tell me something about that?

Me – (ohh spirituality ko to mein bhool hee gaya) blah blah ..talked about Sangam snan and that upto 30 lakh devotee take dip on occasions of moni amawasya or Kumbhs.

JP - So when 30 lakhs people take a dip, doesn’t it get dirty.

Me - Its already very muddy, so.. not much scope left.. laughs all around.

JP - No, what I meant is that people take dip in such polluted water, so y don’t they fall ill?

Me - Sir, as such if we see then they are just bathing and not drinking it..so there is no big chances for any illness.

JP - But maybe some skin related deseases..

Me - Actually it is not that much polluted, it is just coming through smaller cities like Bulandshahar and Kanpur(not small by any means, atleast for pollution)..unlike Yamuna which comes through a city like Delhi and then Agra etc.

And then after all we in our mythology believes the ganga water to kill all bacteria and remove diseases.

JP(getting interested now) - OK is this the spiritual belief that saves them, if I inhale polluted air will it not affect me if I have some spiritual belief about that.

Me - No Sir .. Spirituality can only give you a confidence and belief..blah blah..

JP - Ok what are the benefits of Spirituality?

Blah blah

JP - Does this mean that if I have mental strength then I can do anything?

Me - Sir, there are two cases –

1.I have the strength but due to my fears or mental weakness I will not be able to do that, in thius case spirituality will surely help me. It will induce the required self belief and allay any fears of failures.

2. If I don’t have the physical strength at all to do something then I guess that spirituality will also not help me much.

SP - OK bhanu so you are from MNNIT…. so in MNNIT, apart from studies, what else did you do?

Me - (stumped.. silent or 5 secs, I was doing well with JP..but what is this? First of all I am guilty of not studying that much over there.. and he is asking about what else??.. can I simply say that I didn’t study and did nothing else as well)

Aaaaa….. Skits.. continuous learning experience…. continuous pressure .. transition from a student to becoming industry ready..blah blah ..(real fenkupanti)

SP - So what are the benefits do you get by doing these skits?

Me - Nothing much, apart from the fact that people starts recognizing you- .. laughter all around.. you get to hear things like “look he was the guy who played the role of Osama”

Sp - Is there anything you learn from this?

Me - (thinking hard) - Yeah sir in most of the skits I played the role of Director and script writer, so leadership skills..team work, balance and how synergy adds to your work blah blah..

JP - Was thr any constant theme in your skits?

No..blah blah..

Sp - But it is not necessary that a good leader in skits will also be a good leader in managerial scenarios of industry..

Me - Yes Sir it is not necessary but they are somehow related, ultimately it is about team building and working with a team , explore synergy etc..

Sp - If I had to make a choice out of Set top box and DTH, which one will you suggest and why?

Me - Sir I will suggest DTH because of -

no issue with cable faults.. sometimes there is no power in the area from where you get the signal so you too can’t watch anything and things like this..etc etc

SP - OK but what about customer lock –in? Should not the government come with guidelines regulating the tarrifs?

Me - Let the market forces decide that..(y the hell govt need to jump into everything, n that too in ensuring that everyone is getting the daily dose of Ekta Kapoor serials at a nominal prize ..don’t they have anything better to do?)

SP - OK lets take it this way, should not the government set guidelines that only one type of disk should be used.

Me - No ..blah blah ..that again is similar to helping monopoly..etc(I missed the point he was trying to make, I thought he was trying to say that we will use only DD Direct disc kinda thing but in fact he was talking about having some common standards for enabling interoperability, so a DISH tv disc can be utilized to get services from DD if the need arrive.. realized it hours after theInterview )

SP - How many DTH satellites should be there for >:Place>India>:Place>?

Me - hmm..

Sp - I mean 1, 10 or 100 ?

Me - more than 5 for sure

SP - Can you name a few?

Me - I don’t know exactly but as far as I remember there was an INSAT – 2B launched in 2001, it had some DTH related components, now the PSLV launched in January this year also had some DTH related components. But I am not too sure about them..

[He said that that’s all he wanted to know.. in a tone that was like he is satisfied, but this INSAT 2 series was launched in 1992-1996 period , and after that we had 3 and now we have INSAT 4_ series, donno much but if he had any idea about it he must have caught it. But that PSLV launch in Jan was a fact, its another case that it didn’t have any DTH components.. but who knows? Kya pata hon bhi J . maybe I could have resigned saying that I don’t have any idea, but I just went ahead.. names of INSAT and PSLV could have gone well with the interviewers if they themselves didn’t have much knowledge about this, that is more likely as they didn’t stretch it after that .. or maybe it was just because of lack of time]

Sp - Compare Wipro and Oracle

Me - blah blah ..work culture..service company vs product company etc..

Sp - Competition for Oracle

Me - blah blah..

Sp - What do you know about banking product of I-Flex (acquired by Oracle)

Me - funde about Citi group’s earlier holdings and the related difficulty to get a share of the US market and how the Oracle’s brand name can help it to do so now ..

Sp - Compare FlexCube with Finacle

Me - blah blah ..mildly bluffed about how finacle was launched by infosys(like time and the strategy ..i didn’t have much idea but still wanted the answer to look genuine and impactful)..

That’s it..and my luck was sealed.

I did my level best, now lets see if my best was good enough.

IIML(Formal Shirt, pants, black shoes, tie, that lock of hair in place… but but Look out for the zip as well :) )

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 09 May 2007 23:14:00 +0000

Comedy, before the drama could start: - IIML, the institute that I would love to attend if i am lucky enough to get an opportunity. Not that I am belittling IIM K or I, but just because L is very near to home(comparatively) it had a place right after A and B for me.(donno what I would do if at all I get L and C call ..I am just talking about what I feel now).

So it added some pressure as well, because for me somehow it was an interview for the big one. Lets start with the fateful morning of 15^th Feb itself.

This time I was determined to reach a bit early, as the PagalGuy forums indicated that the GDs are starting at sharp 9’o clock. I knew that reaching on time is as impossible for me as taking wickets is becoming for Irfan Pathan. The harder we both will try the more difficult and impossible it will get for us. But still I tried and induced my mind into believing that I have to reach there(again the familiar Monarch Hotel) by 8:30.

But I think that getting late is always in my fate, its an habit that I should meekly surrender to. Its an eternal law, Just like a S/W engineer can never find an intelligent manager, I can never turn out anywhere on/before time. Accepting the fact, at best I should try to minimize the damage.. because even if I try to change this, my luck will make sure to discourage me further ..just like the way it happened this time.

I was getting dressed when I looked at my mobile..it's hard to read screen had “3 messages received” on it, believe me since when my love story has stabilized I only get 1-2 promotional messages per week, interrupted with 1-2 forwarded messages from friends/3 months(holi diwali types). So out of curiosity I decided to check them out. All of them were from ICICI they were like –

Msg1- the entered pin is wrong ..card will be blocked if tried more than thrice

Msg 2- 500 Rs withdrawn from your account/card

Msg3- balance enquiry done

I panicked as I had applied for an ICICI credit card(with some debit limit) and had not received it yet(a day before this also I got 2 msgs with saying wrong pin etc ..but I ignored them). Maybe it was already in some wrong hands.(and the guy now knew the correct pin as well)

Though I know that my fears were a bit stupid but frankly I am still not fully comfortable with cards, so I tried to call ICICI call center.. to my surprise they open their shops at 9’oclock for complaints. Wasted around 10-15 mins on this.

Then opting for the old trick I went in to the enquiry/new cards queue to finally get hold of a customer executive.

He confirmed that I have only one card in my name which is still to be used for the first time…that lead to a written mail from my side to customer care etc etc..

Time –8:35 a.m. :(

Rushed out of the flat, I had the Scooty (courtesy Sangs) to bank upon. Gave it the full accelerator..my tie was flying like a torn flag of a ship that was about to sink in the storm. You can understand the frustrations I went through while facing the Bangalore traffic and its jams when I was counting each and every passing minute.. Finally reached at brigade road(Time 9:05), parked/dumped the scooty wherever I got the space..thought about tackling the traffic police later incase if the take it to the station(wow! So much for sangeeta’s scooty, thats called gratitude :D) ran into the building..sprinted through the stairs..just to find another guy hesitantly getting ready to knock at the door.

Seeing me in this bizarre state he felt a lot better. Very similar to the feeling that I had when a fellow programmer had 11 bugs against his code within a day of QA taking it, while I myself had 9 :D or probably even more close to what you feel after scoring a zero in some test to discover that there is at least one more person sharing the regal score with you.

We were in the same panel(I was just so happy to see him with me that I almost forgot to worry about my own pathetic situation, .. standing outside a closed GD room which according to the attendant outside was closed since 8:55 am.)

At last we knocked(while he knocked .. I prayed.. [-O< ) A Prof came out, looked quite disgusted to see us there. I peeked in to see that guyz sitting inside had already written about half page of summary.. I knew at that instant that its gonna be really tough from now on.

We pleaded .. gave excuses of Bangalore traffic(which magically strikes a cord with anyone who has faced it even once) etc etc ..finally he went in to talk to the other Prof..and ..and EUPHORIA ..he signaled us to come in. :)

But just when I was about get in with a much relieved state of mind..the attendant asked me to come to a side., signaling in a manner that could have easily been mistaken ;)

I was greatly annoyed.. asked him in quite a crass manner.. whats the problem?

He still asked me to come a step towards him..(now everyone from inside was looking at me through the door)..

I was really not amused and with my eyes straight on his face I advanced towards him..repeating my words ”Whats the problem?” :-L

He said in a contrasting low voice “Sir your zip is open” ..
WHAT??
Whew !!
OMG.. zipped the pants ..thanked the kind man. Cursed myself and entered in the room with a smiling face as if nothing happened outside.

Guyz who were in there looked at us coldly(saale ye kahan se tapak gaye..7 hee bande rehte to achcha thhaa)

He gave us the chits and told that we will get only 5 mins to read it and write the summary.(others were stopped after a couple of minutes)

The GD:- I opened the chit and the sentence written on it was –

“In business world, the rear view mirror is always clearer than the windscreen”

I knew that I had less time so tried to come to the point quickly ..the only point I could think of was about relating the windscreen to future and the rear view mirror to the past. I opted for the TATA example(as they had recently acquired corus) how there is uncertainty about their future while their past is certain and clear to all of us, was about to add something when we(both) were stopped.

Now the GD started.

The lines on which I was thinking were put forward by someone else..i knew that this is the time or otherwise I will be too late(even in the discussion :O )

I quickly came up with my TATA-Corus example to support this view.

This was well heard by the group(and hopefully by the profs as well) , but it started a flurry of such examples(you know everyone goes through ET with a renewed sense of interested in these GD/PI days.. taking every merger and acquisition as seriously as if the multi billion deal is done for the sole purpose of pushing the reader into IIMA through some backdoor entry)

This mayhem went on for about 5 mins ..the topic was lost in this GD in which the group suddenly became very much interested about all the mergers and acquisitions that have taken place in near past..i just contributed with the correct figures whenever I could. Then somehow it came back to track with someone talking about viewing this from competition point of view….like some competitors ahead of you(windscreen)and some behind you(rear view ) and tried to fit the analogy. Great diversion.

I felt that I need to get in again with something substantial.. realized that my mind is still working and came out with this bluff(purity guaranteed) –

“When we are talking about competition I would like to quote Michael Schumacher who once said that when he is on racing track he never try to see who is behind him, he believes in just focusing ahead to see who is ahead of him”

Didn’t try to relate it completely to the topic given..but still It had its impact..looked like I am talking some substance and got much respect from the group after this.

After contributing here and there in the end I again came up with one point relating this to entrepreneurship..like an entrepreneur is gonna have the road clear when he starts”(as he is the only one on that road).. but as soon as he starts to make big profits others will start to jump in ..making the road crowded and his windscreen/future less clearer than his rear mirror/past .. something like this ..

Group supported this and 1-2 guyz discussed further, I supported it with Indian aviation industry example..saying that Jet and AirDeccan had it easier as they had early advantage when compared to newer airlines ..most of whom are running in loss blah blah ...

Overall a pretty satisfying GD(satisfaction of getting away with the bluff included)

The Interview:-

Interviews were very short, guyz were going in and coming out within 10 mins. Maybe the profs were worried about their lunch.

Finally it was my turn –

Both the profs were just typical middle aged(I mean around 50) profs. Not much to differentiate so I will call both of them as P. they were not much interested in the answers so I expect something similar from you as well, so I will not provide my full answers as such-

P - Tell me something about urself

Blah blah ..

P - What was this JOSH? (I had a certificate of the same)

Sir it was our cultural festival..

P - but it is about Volleyball

(WTF) :-S Sorry sir it was our Sports festival ..(hee hee ..great going)

P - Why do you want to do a management course?

Blah blah..

P -Don’t you get learning opportunity in ur work?

Sir I do get ..actually I learned a lot in my initial days ..but these days it is getting easier for me and there are fewer new things to learn now given my work constraints.

And about IIMs, I would love to have that great learning opportunity of 2 years..where I will have some of the most intelligent persons of the country as my class mates and will be taught by some of the best professors, in an area that excites me.

P-Don’t you have intelligent persons around you in your company?

Yes there are but you can’t compare all of them with the batch of IIM..different settings ..blah blah

P - Dhiru Bhai Ambani, Bill Gates didn’t have MBA weren’t they good entrepreneurs?

They were ..but they still had to learn the things in a hard way..for example Dhirubhai had to directly interact with small vendors/employees and customers in his initial days..he acquired his man power management/ HR skills through such interactions. A formal MBA can help in this process. And I do believe that DBA or AP would have become even better managers had they undergone through a formal course.

What do you know about entrepreneurship?

Blah ..blahh

According to you, who was a better leader, Azim Premji or Bill Gates?

Bill Gates ..bacause of vision ..etc

But Bill Gates was charged with AntiTrust law?

Gave some gyan over Antitrust ..like the parameters considered predatory pricing , customer lock-in etc etc ..and tried to say that all of them are debatable. Whether they are good or bad for open business is questionable..so antitrust is not a crime as such. Its just an attempt to control few things. A business decision can come under its scanner even if the company’s intentions were clear.

(Could have given funde about great leaders working for the junta that they lead)

Do you know that Bill Gates has adopted a village in India?

1-2 more questions followed ..thats it

very brief interview. They were just stressing a bit on why MBA kind of questions..apart from that they were keeping it really short. Maybe the profiles are going to play a greater role.

18th Feb, 2007

IIMI's GD/PI..the smooth performance

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 09 May 2007 22:46:00 +0000

The Settings :- My IIMI interview’s venue was PES management institute(PESIT campus), As usual, again I got very late, left my flat at 8:40(for the GD that is supposed to start at 9:00 am… height of stupidity!)

Never knew that it is that far away.. almost drove out of City limits.. finally reached the campus at 9:10.. ran into the main hall, asked about this IIM GD/PI thing..nobody was aware of this :(

just then I saw a group of well dressed guyz going upstairs in a herd, followed them quickly, finally saw a Prof who was holding some papers, informed him about my coming(should I say arrival). He gave me a hard look and then ticked my name and told me that I belong to group number 3.

Straight away we were asked to enter respective rooms for the GD.

I just shuddered to think like what would have happened if I were late by few more seconds, I am sure that getting this info that the whole group has gone to the fourth floor was not easy. I mean nobody was there on the ground floor to inform this.

But then nobody expects that morons like me will descend there after almost half an hour of scheduled time(8:45)

The GD:-

I am trying to reproduce the case to the best of my memory, while omitting minor details(though it is possible to come up with winning points from those details in many of the GDs..but nothing of that sort happened here)

An IIT grad Mahesh joined a petroleum company. He had other offers as well but opted for this one as he was very much impressed by the company’s policies of giving emphasis on ethics and integrity. He was posted in heartland UP and around 100 dealers were under his area of supervision.

After getting a hang of the things for a while, he was displeased with the way things were going on. He sent a letter to the higher management about the complaints that he received from the dealers and customers about the inferior quality of their oil, He wrote that no customer wanted to put their sluggish product in their vehicles. He said that their product was quickly loosing its market to their rival and something needs to be done in this regard..blah blah.

Within a few days his Area manager called him, he asked him if he has sent a letter to the Higher management and said that the management is very displeased about this. He said that you need to send only the things that please them and not the truth, and that such things are never viewed in correct light...

He felt very disappointed and started thinking about if he should leave this job to join another company or about going for higher studies..

The topic asked us to discuss about what Mahesh should do..

The group jumped at the prospects of portraying the Area Manager as the real culprit and the need to talk clearly to the higher management..(someone even suggested to register a formal complaint against un-ethical behavior of AM).

I started with a mature sounding(or is it too cliché ?) pitch of looking at why exactly the AM behaved in this manner, what are his stakes in this-

1.He may actually have some links with adulteration racket.

2. and more naturally he felt bad about not being included in the process, after all Mahesh sent the letter without taking him in confidence.

I could not continue much as someone else grabbed the airtime. :-@

But I came back again saying that there is some fault in the approach that Mahesh adopted.. He should have talked to his AM before sending anything to the higher management, by involving the AM not only his report/letter would have had higher value in the eyes of management but he could have also won his AM’s confidence.

Only after confirming that he is not getting any support from his AM, he should have thought of doing something on his own.

Now more guys pitched in to find faults in Mahesh’s approach. We all came up with very valid points like

*He should have been more specific about the problems the product has rather than saying something like it is sluggish.

* Rather than saying that customers and dealers complain that …. , he should have attached their responses with his report to make it more authentic.

I also added that he should not make sweeping remarks against the product without much research.. like Firstly he should confirm if it is happening only in his area or elsewhere as well. He should -

Talk to his peers to know if they also feel the same.

See if they are loosing the market share countrywide(by going through reports)?

To this we added that the geography or climatic conditions of this area can also be a reason behind poor performance of this mobile/automobile oil.(too far fetched may be..but we were just giving more n more breadth to the discussion..)

[nobody really cared to discuss about how to tackle AM if he is really the culprit or discuss about leaving the company/higher studies point :D]

Finally we got the stop signal after about 15 minutes of discussion. Good one for me, contributed well enough and always remained active in the discussion.

The Interview : - Then the interviews started, but first let me introduce the panel-

LP- the Lady professor, about 50 years old.

KP- The kind looking Prof, about 40 yeaars old, was very helpful and polite in the GD.

I was quite skeptical of LP, coz of her stern and shrewd look.

KP started the proceedings,

KP: Similarities between Windows Vista and Windows 95?

(my first impression was that he is talking about Vista and Windows multimedia PC, probably there was some confusion.. I tried confirming it and he said yes, then as he still didn’t look convinced by this multimedia name I further said that is he referring to the XP variant that was released in smtime in 2004, now he was shocked and said that he is talking about Windows 95 and Windows Vista.. huff donno wat happen here..)

I started with differentiating between the two when again he interrupted by saying that he asked for similarities :| .

(Ohh.. am I having hearing problems or are they just playing with me? Maybe I lost the original question in this 95/multimedia thing.. anyway lets carry on)

Me:- As for the similarities both are GUI based, as a matter of fact with 95 itself MS started its GUI based OS systems ..prior it was command based DOS.. so we can say that being GUI based is one of the similarity.

KP: - what do you mean by GUI based?

Me: Explained(Menus, icons, mouse coming into picture etc)

(by the confusion about 95 and so I got an idea that KP is not a harcore techie as such, and maybe this question came to his mind coz Vista is recently released, I was founding this similarity question a bit awkward to handle, so thought of leading him to a territory that will be totally alien to him and conquer him in the process :D)

Me:- sir as I worked as a windows programmer so I can say that the basic windows architecture is going to remain the same.. I mean that though I am not sure about Vista(as if I am sure about 95 :D), but still there is something very common across all windows Opr Systems. Like for example the message passing, triggers and event handling, whatever we do with mouse is ultimately a event for the OS, and it handles it through an event handler function so these things will remain the same.

(KP was listening all this quite patiently ..nodding in between to let me know that he is getting it all..encouraging me to get further into technical fundebaazi..I just believed that actually he is not getting much :D)

KP:- Ok that is fine but can you tell me something on the marketing and sales front as well.

(this came as a spark, and this fool, who was loosing it badly till now got the control back.. the voice got louder and more assertive)

Sir, if we look at this from that angle, Vista is a major release for MS ..just like 95 was. I mean that if we look at releases like 200Me or Windows server/Multimedia all these were intermediary releases.(unlike 95,98 or XP)
With 95 MS hoped to change the PC landscape and in fact they did it, now with Vista as well they are hoping to do the same .. they are again claiming that with its enhanced efficiency and better GUI it will revolutionize the PC market. Blah ..blah..

KP - looking a lot more satisfied)U could have come to that point in the starting itself….

Me;- Sir being a technical person(ohho ..funde to dekho :D, please don’t take my manager’s views on this) and being from the windows programming background that was the first thing that came to my mind..

Now he started asking about various specs of Vista like minimum required memory etc etc..

I didn’t have much idea ..so I said about ideally it requires 2GB of RAM,

KP:- Do you mean that it will not install on a PC that don’t have 2 gb OF ram

Me:-No sir I was talking about desired config.. I don’t know the minimum config ..but I feel that till 512/256 there should not be much problem in installing the Vista though the performance will be pathetic due to its heavy graphics ..blah blah..

Some more question followed and I gave some non committal answers ..giving general funde.. He asked me whether I have not gone through the Vista launch(in India) news.

Me - I have gone through that sir, but probably the flashy release party that featured dances from Priayanka Chopra n Akshya Kumar were noticed more than the specifications. ;)

Smiles and laughs all over ..

KP - have u heard about xyz?

.. NO

KP - Have you heard about Tablet pc? ..YES

WHAT IS IT?

Small portable PC, blah blah..

What should be the functionalities of Tablet PC according to you?

though I have never experienced it first hand ..but as a person is going to carry it with him almost always, so we can expect functionalities like calendar management, ability to save quick notes, ability to open various formats of documents etc etc..

What should be its size?

No idea .. should be small enough to be hold in one hand while operating with the other one ;) ..and bigger than mobile :D

He further grilled me on this size and asked me to choose between A4 size paper(the board he was holding) or its half or fourth or ..

I betted on ½ of A4 size .. (had to ..no idea as such)

KP-OK have you heard about Windows Mobile OS?

Yes sir ..designed specially for the mobiles as there are limitations with mobiles wrt processing power and memory etc.. MS came up with windows mobile version5 recently

KP -What is the difference between this and Desktop?

Again reiterated the same points in different wordings and the need for specialized OS for mobiles..symbian etc

KP - What will be the difference in case of a word software?

Blah ..blah, clarified that both will be compatible to open documents with extensions like .doc or .txt etc.

And if the question is asked from the design point of view, then as developer I will try to keep it as light..i mean of smaller size and memory print as possible, keeping the limitations in mind.

KP - What will you consider?

Striping the flashy features while keeping it just as a reader.. like all animations or cascading effects will be removed to keep it simple and light.

KP seemed quite satisfied( or maybe fed up with this continuous globe from my side J)

LP takes over…

LP - Was there somebody else as well with the same name?

Nobody very popular as such, but yes as far as I relate this name there was a politician in UP with the name Bhanu Pratap, but not much sure..

Is he still active?

No, definetly not

LP –From which party?

Congress

LP –Are you sure?

Yes as he was active in 80s, and till 1989 we only had congress govts in UP, except one govt by then janata dal(though I wasn’t too sure about this JD thing).. so he has to be from Congress.

LP –Do you follow Football?

No..not much..

LP –OK bhanu then what are the sports that you like?

I like VolleyBall and Cricket

LP –OK assuming that you know something about VolleyBall and Cricket, tell me the names of players of some other sports?..

If I take tennis then Bhupati, Paes, Sania MirzaJ etc if we take football then Wayne Roonie, the there was Maradona from argentina then Ronaldo, Ronaldinho Carlos etc from Brazil etc, Shooters like Jaspal Rana ..etc ..

LP:- OK thats fine

LP-Have you heard about Orkut?

Yes

LP –How is it ? good or bad?

Definetly it is a great thing..talked about networking and finding your old friends etc.

LP –Who is owner?

Google

LP –Some other products of Google?

The flagship product is the google search, apart from this they have google earth, gmail, spreadsheets, answers..which is discontinued know, picasa etc.

LP –OK how is Outsourcing ? good or bad?

Good, creates value..lower cost and beter service for the company that is outsourcing and revenue for the one which is getting it. So over all good from the business point of view.

LP –What different types of Outsourcing?

Outsourcing within the country and Offshoring.. explained

LP –Only these two?

Actually that is when we look from the geographical point of view, we can similiarly differentiate on the basis of kinda responsibilities that are being outsourced. Like outsoursing of just the customer support/call center services, or maybe outsoursing of just one of the processes/modules , or in an extreme case outsoursing the whole manufacturing and other processes…blah blah

LP –What is BPO?(coming from answer)

Blah blah..

LP – (probably overwhelmed by my answer) OK tell me in a single word, what is the most difficult problem that the BPO industry is facing in India?

Employee retention (wah wah .. maza aa gaya)

LP –Second?

Data privacy

LP –explain

Explained …

Thank you..

Exchange of smiles ..

I came out with a real good feeling, kind of knowing that I should make the cut.