Diversity in action..

What's up with all those advertising wizards! I asked this advertising industry alum during breakfast what the backgrounds of his study group mates were. And the guy says - Me, three IITians and one engineer. 

WTF!!  %$#^@$ 

Doesn't he know that IITs produce engineers, at least on paper. Yeah, I put this modifier to the last sentence precisely because of that finger you are pointing at me. Loser!

Anyways. Even as I tried to forget this out of my respect for his seniority, this second creative jam in our section poked me in the rib, in the middle of the class.

"What man! What's with the handwriting of all those statisticians? All of them write like a doctor's prescription!" Said the former creative head of an Advertising firm, sitting beside me in the statistics class and gulping coffee after coffee to keep awake, dyslexic from having seen all kinds of greek symbols over the board in the last one hour.

"Just look at how he is drawing the simple differential sign everywhere. The guy can't even draw a 'd' straight." He said about the single letter he seemed to identify on the board, from having taken the pre terms in quants.

I looked at my (under)priviledged, diversity friend and felt a pang of Sympathy for the English Literature graduate who writes a new poem on every occassion here and whose straight face is already funny enough that I don't need such provocations from him in the middle of the class. The professor had indeed been accentuating the tilt in the 'd' of differential. Putting my hand around him to cushion the blow, I told him that the '∂' on the board was called a partial differential in Mathematics.

Poor guy looked at me, offended. "WTF is that!"

The dinner table laughed for 5 minutes non stop in the night.

Second among equals...

I am under tremendous pressure. Everybody here is so damn focussed on marks. Whenever in my past I have got marks, I have worked very very hard for them, forsaking everything else. And today I see two choices:

- Work single mindedly hard and match 'em.

- Keep getting average + 2/3 marks and work towards things I deem important for my personality.

Anyone with a common sense would tell me to choose the second. I want to do that. But it's not 2008. The pressure here in this market is tremendous. Consulting firms shortlist on the basis of grades and you got to be among the top 50 to crack one of those. Though there are several other relevant arguments too:

- If I only focus on marks, then I do not develop other aspects of my personality that I clearly find important. This might also come in my way of shortlist by the top consulting firms.

- I might harm myself in the long run too by not developing 360 degrees.

- Obviously, I am not happy.

But the market is really bad and all of us are in a huge debt now. What if we don't even land a decent paying job with average marks!

I always get myself into such situations when I want to fast forward life and be certain of what happened eventually. When will I start to live the present!

Rohm&Haas - the best case ever..

Huh...the days are flying by. Term 1 ends in another 10 days. Today was the first day in one month when I left my quad at 7.50 am and came back at 1 am in the night. It was one of those very happening days that define the life@ISB.

First, I and one of my study groupies were discussing the Rohm&Haas case on the steps of the academic building at 5 in the evening when the documentary guys spotted us and came to shoot a video on us. They are making it a part of the movie on life@ISB. This movie will be screened in all the admission information sessions across the world this year onwards. We were anyway discussing a marketing case and our animated discussion seemed to them a fit on the subject. CDs will come in about 3 weeks, they said. I can't wait!

Not long ago, we aspired to be a part of this school and today we represent it! I was so thrilled to be the part of this movie that I could not concentrate on the case anymore and used the time sleeping in the class room while the other groupies put together the slides. We are three IITians (one of them been in sales for the last 15 years), one CA, and one corporate trainer in our group. When I woke up an hour later, the sales guy and the trainer girl were almost starting to prepare the speech to go with it. We heard the two of them go through the ppt once when an idea struck me. Anyway, this case doesn't have too many numbers, the ppt is gonna lull the audience into sleep. Why not do a play on it. The idea fired up everybody's imagination. We dropped the idea of ppt, had a quick dinner, and met at Krishna's studio (single apt flat) to rehearse for the play. The way it has come out after an hour of practice, none of us can concentrate on any more pre reads for tomorrow. We just want to get to the marketing class and rock section A. Who knew a case on metal cutting fluid biocides could ignite a chartered accountant and a corporate trainer so much.

The two (CA and corporate trainer) got a touch of the creative diversity of this place today, just as we engineers will get from them some day in some other accounts or HR related case perhaps! Anyway, I have already begun to like balance sheets and financial statements so much that at times I have thought that a career in finance might be an interesting choice afterall, notwithstanding the scary market scene.

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21-May-2009

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The skit went really cool. Here is a pic of me (left) and Somesh (with the mic) performing.

Gone with the wind...

In the end, we hope that you say "Our car is not bekar", concluded Chandra after our presentation on our Concept car for a contest by SAE, IIT Roorkee chapter, in the second year of B.Tech. We had put in about 3 nights putting together our design. Prof Gakkhar announced a few minutes later that the first prize went to the 'certainly not bekar car'. Memories still bring a smile to my face.

That was 7 years ago. Times have changed. So much is different now. The carefree students of engineering 7 years ago are a bit seasoned with the life of the corporate and are almost entering the second phase of their lives. Chandra graduated from India's top business school, ranked 20th in the world then and begged one of the coveted jobs in consulting. Today he is the director of his own publishing house, is engaged to a pretty young lady and the couple are soon to start their new innings.

Yours truly is the current student at the same business school, now ranked 15th in the world and still exploring his options with jobs and girls, both.

Time just flies by. Today will also be gone before you know it. As I stare gloomily at my laptop reading the course pack for the looming mid term exam, an old thought strikes me - Live like there is no tomorrow.

PAN IIT booze @ ISB

Last night saw the PAN IIT booze flowing at the co2008 lounge at ISB.

We were not planning to have any formal thing of this sort among ourselves because we wanted to avoid forming a closed cohort but the head of admissions here himself invited all IIT grads for a high tea this evening to discuss on the future strategy to continue attracting people from the top technical institutes of India. Once that happened, people hesitantly poured in mails on whether we should all meet sometime. Sensing the underlying community mood, yours truly sealed the sentiment inviting everybody to put together a booze party for the Thu night when the classes for the week finish. Responses were immediate and elated. A number of people volunteered for booze, music, and system. Abhishek from section H, whose classes are in the afternoon, reserved the co2008 lounge in the morning when some of us were being tortured by the z- and the t- curves of statistics to predict the chances of us having a swine flu even though we had tested negative and others were being cold called by the marketing prof on the FedEx case. And while we cursed ourselves why we quit our six figured salaries for this BS, a pleasant surprise was the arrangement of lights and speakers too from the school side.

By 11.30 pm, almost 75 of the 112 IIT alums gathered in the lounge. Of course girls were hard to find but wasn't that expected! Towards the later part of the night, the consensus was to invite all the IIT alums and all the girls of ISB in any such future parties. Though the move is more likely to label us losers but what the heck!

In the end, some cheekily chosen songs and ghazals from the singers of the batch reminded everybody of their one sided, first love at college. We sealed the night with a 'Purani Jeans' from everybody together. The party was highly successful and left all of us wanting for more while we left the lounge with the memories of how farzi our journey to here had been - copying tutorials, bunking classes, sending proxies, abondaning studies with the full conviction that corporate would kiss our asses begging us to join them once we graduate (The enlightment was not to come till it was late), and all the while unconsciously evolving a personality that would instantly connect us with the other members of the community throughout our lives, anywhere in the world.

Isn't it all worth it.

Perception..

"Do you think any of you represents India?" quipped the marketing professor from Emory to a remark from one of the students.

And it struck me that to the eyes of an Indian-American Professor, I do not represent India today just because I am sitting in an Internationally renowned business school. If only he realized that the natural leaders of India all rise from the bottom of the pyramid and have seen all the hardships of its lower or middle middle class.