Life as I see it

Of 'life events' or the lack of it

2011-10-04T15:05:00.000-07:00

Recently, our alumni bulletin at HBS asked for major updates or 'life events' from its members. This is what I wrote

The United States is a great country. really! Why else would millions of immigrants like myself want to leave everything behind and come and settle here in the medium term atleast. Do you think we do it for the money? come on!

2 years ago, moving to a tiny dorm room that is the size of the closet of my current apartment in chicago, IL did not feel like a 'life event' at all. Whats the big deal when a bed, table and chair are already provided to you and there s not a square inch of place left to accommodate anything else, including a few inches of fat around your waist. I sometimes think that the best way to stay fit at HBS is to live in the Chase dorm. Why spend so much on Shad?!

Anyway, I digress as usual. I think it was due to my incessant complaining and whining about the total lack of any 'life event' happening to me while the rest of my HBS classmates got married, pregnant, engaged, moved to Alaska and what not, that the powers that be decided that I had to be given an opportunity to experience a life event. So here goes

After a lazy 3 months at home spent trying to avoid my extended family from setting me up total strangers by telling me that my 'marriageable' age is almost coming to an end (seriously! they act like its a shelf life issue), I packed my bags to move to a lovely lake facing apartment in downtown chicago. Unlike my dorm move in 2 years ago, however, this time, there was certainly no bed or table or for that matter complimentary housekeeping. The only thing that was there was space- infinite amounts of it. Looks like I have to start going to the gym after all.

The real nightmare started when i realized that without a social security number (apparently 'non resident aliens' do not get one) , without a driver's license (we drive on the left side and seriously, in India, I would just walk into a road transport office, flash my pearly whites and get a license in a jiffy) and without a bank account (HUECU is great, but does not work very well outside of Harvard Square and the COOP), there was no way I could drive to IKEA or buy anything online or pretty much do anything at all until I start work and have a steady flow of income which I can then use to get social security or a bank account.

And so I wake up everyday in the morning in my make shift bed (made of a comforter and a squashed pillow that I used to pack my framed Harvard degree in) and look around at the infinite space around me which is yet to be filled or look outside at the swarms of cars moving effortlessly in the traffic, I wonder if my Chase dorm was a fairy tale after all.

Now if this does not qualify as a 'life event', I wonder what does.

A Lifetime of Good Luck!

2011-04-28T23:49:00.000-07:00

(Disclaimer: This post is very heavy. I felt heavy writing it and I hope people feel heavy reading it. I generally dont ask much of my readers and keep my posts fluffy. I promise to have a lighter one by the end of this week on the royal wedding and how similar Kate Middleton and I are. Hmm...perhaps Prince William would be marrying me in a parallel universe!)

When I was starting business school 2 years ago, I promised myself that I would hardly mention the word HBS in this blog. There was a reason for it. I felt that I was lucky to make it, not smarter than other applicants, not incredibly more successful, but just lucky. A few people are and I knew I was one of them.

And then on a fine August morning in 2009, HBS happened. 2 years passed away in a blaze as I learnt (aided in part by the school and a whole lot by my 'spirited' classmates) how to drink the cool aid, fly off to exotic lands for holidays, accumulate debt that would make my grandmom faint, feel a sense of entitlement and generally be incredibly proud of myself. And that, I did. Lucky? me? Of course not.I had worked very hard to be here, deserved every single compliment that I had been getting and got used to customs officials looking at my student visa, rolling their eyes and telling me that I was going to do great things. I had arrived and how!

If the financial crisis has taught us anything, it is that every boom has to have a bust and every bubble, its pinprick. My bubble burst too, perhaps not as spectacularly as the sub prime but just as definitively. However, I was told to sweep it under the carpet, to forget it ever happened, to externalize it.... B school is not a place to show weakness and my future successes will depend on how effectively I hide it. However, there is something very liberating about failure. Failure strips away all material things we have acquired along the way and leaves us with just our core, the person we really are. We fail not because of our degrees and our pedigree but in spite of them.

HBS students do not acknowledge failure, they do not normalize it, they don't even speak about it. But all of us wrote an essay for our admissions here about 'what we learnt from a failure'. Unless all of us have plain lied, we have all failed, some more than others, at some point.

As I am about to graduate, I want to tell myself again how incredibly lucky I am. And this time, I dont want to forget it. If you are reading this (phew! you must have some free time), it means that you have been lucky yourself. You are not among the 2 billion people in this world who are illiterate or do not have access to internet. If luck has brought you so far along, do you not have an obligation to give back to those less 'lucky' (or privileged, if you will) , or in the very least treat them with respect?

Go out and smile at someone today that you don't normally do, Speak to an old friend and don't make it about yourself, Donate something to your favorite charity or cause, Be less judgmental of your neighbor in your conversation, be genuinely happy for somebody's good fortune, leave someone happier than when you met them.

for all those graduating, congratulations. For all those not, thanks for reading!

An open letter to M S Dhoni

2011-03-31T17:46:00.000-07:00

Dear M S,

I have waited my entire life to see India win the cricket world cup and I have reasons to believe that this might well be our last chance. Without Sachin and probably even Harbhajan and Zak getting old, our future does not look bright. Yes, Virat Kohli might become a match winner all of a sudden (not through his fielding) and Gautam Ghambir might add on a few kilos and thus some more strength to his pulls, but I usually err on the side of being conservative, especially given the number of times my heart has been broken by the cricket team. As a result, I think Saturday's match with Sri Lanka assumes even more importance. You have to win it and I think there are a few adjustments required before we can be confident that we can in fact win it.

I am under no illusions that this letter will ever reach your eyes. Given your flamboyance, know-it-all-temperament and general disdain for the media (leave alone private blogs), this is more to calm my nerves than it is to make you see reason. And I am doing it in the only medium that is most effective for me, writing. Of course, I am no Poonam Pandey who, I believe has offered to get naked if you do win the world cup. Neither am I the Indian Government who has the head of states and arch rival counterparts seemingly at its beck and call. I have neither the guts, nor the kingfisher calender body nor do I have the power. Anyway, I am digressing.

I believe that there are some critical changes you need to do. Much of it is possible in the 24 hours leading up to the match and hence the advice. You might ask, what entitles me to give advice? Well! i am one of the 1.2 Bn (can you believe the 1.2 Bn number? perhaps families want 2 sons these days, just in case one ends up being a good for nothing or perhaps goes off to Videsh!) fans of cricket who has grown up in cricket statistics, missed classes to watch games, taken trips to temple to pray for the team, discussed players' forms to death and in general has been disappointed so many times that I refuse to take another. So, here goes. Take it for what its worth and if you do win the cup, excuse my injecture as that of an emotional fan who has perhaps lost it given our past results.

1. Improve your form- it was you who said that players should not play for the crowds and instead for the country. I wonder if you follow it yourself? If you dont want to play for the country, play for yourself. You know you are better than this. Yuvraj Singh has said that he is playing for a special someone. (this could be the latest woman in his life, and while it does break my heart, I am happy that its atleast working for him) I know you are married. Maybe you can think of your wife everytime you come to the crease, or your parents or your first coach. Think of someone, but do think! I found found you seriously wanting in that department.

2. Player selections- Please read the pitch right. I saw a picture of you in deep discussion with the curator of the Mohali pitch and yet, you did not pick up R .Ashwin. You might have gotten away with it, but I doubt if it will work with the Lankans. Just look at the form of U Tharanga and T Dilshan at the top. If you do not have the right bowler, they will not be as forgiving as the Pakistanis. Take help of veterans in reading the pitch maybe? or Gary?

3. Be more humble- Shahid Afridi came off as the person with the bigger heart after the match the other day. I know you are in general cool and smart under pressure and have been lucky more than once being the way you are, but it pains me that the skipper of the cricket team comes late for press conferences, fails to acknowledge a rival team's good performance or treats fans as nuisance, and if you do win and hold the trophy aloft, you might come across as less deserving. Well, atleast in my eyes.

4. Team fielding- to say boldly that, ' we cannot improve the fielding greatly in a tournament' and being defensive about it has perhaps cost you the SA and the England match. With Pak being worse than us, it perhaps was not felt upto that degree. But, have you seen the Lankans on the field? Sometimes, it just boils down to throwing yourself at all angles to save a couple of singles. it is no rocket science by any stretch of imagination. Its nothing compared to our batting prowess. So get the team to make that extra effort. Indulge in tandem running after the ball (with one cutting off boundary and other throwing it back to the stumps), practice fielding at the nets. Otherwise, players like Kohli will merit selection simply because of his fielding and feel smug and not work on his ever deteriorating batting. Fielding is simple. Period.

Thank you for your patience in reading this. I do hope you win tomorrow. As always, I am praying for you.

Academy Awards 2011- My predictions

2011-02-09T20:39:00.000-08:00

Wow! perhaps the most looked forward to post on my blog. I was thinking as I started this, that this would be the third year I am predicting the winners (find past posts here: 2010 , 2009 ; just for the record, I got just one wrong both years :D)

On the flip side though, it only seems like yesterday that i predicted the 2009 winners. Time flies. Well, not my time, apparently, but time in general. Somehow I feel like I am stuck in the same spot I was about 2 years ago while the world in general seems to have taken enormous strides forward; take Hollywood for instance - Javier Bardem is now being nominated for serious movies (remember Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona) and Colin Firth is so not Fitzwilliam Darcy anymore. And here I am probably wearing the same jeans I wore in 2008, a sweatshirt that says Harvard instead of IIT and an interest in movies that is still undiminished. And so, here it is, my annual predictions, a result of watching movies back to back on a 3 day weekend, much to the anguish of my good friend JM.

Best Actress:
Nominees:
Natalie Portman (Black Swan)
Annette Bening (The kids are all right)
Nicole Kidman (Rabbit hole)
Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's bone)
Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine)

Prediction: Natalie Portman
I first watched Portman in the Closer, with KR; we were both 20 and the movie was way beyond our comprehension (well, atleast mine, KR claims she understood it very well). But long after I accepted, internalized and appreciated the story and the characters, Portman stood out for making Alice (her character) so believable. I knew that it required either an intimate understanding of human nature or an incredible acting prowess to pull that off. After Black Swan, I am willing to bet it is the latter.
To be honest, Black Swan is not my kind of movie. I enjoyed her (no pun intended) much better in No Strings Attached than Black Swan. But I bet no contemporary actress can do justice to the role of the troubled ballerina as well as she did.
To me, there is no doubt that it will be Portman. Jennifer Lawrence is way too young and Annette Bening, I must agree was wonderful in The kids are all right, but this would just not be her year.

Best Actor:
Nominees:
Javier Bardem (Biutiful)
Colin Firth (The Kings Speech)
Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network)
James Franco (127 hours)
Jeff Bridges (True Grit)

My Prediction: Colin Firth
Ok, this one is quite easy. Bridges won last year, Bardem is good but the story lets you down, Franco is too good looking to believably cut off his own arm and Jesse Eisenberg is cute and has a lot of years ahead of him. Lets talk about Colin Firth. Since Pride and Prejudice in 1996, I don't think there is another actor who can play a role that requires the lead actor to be so restrained and mellowed down. Firth is a master of such situations. If the recent SAG awards are any indication, the film is picking up some great vibes and is peaking at the right time.

Best Film
Nominees:
Too many but the main ones in contention are :
The Kings speech
Inception
Black Swan
The social network
127 hours
fighter

My prediction: The Social Network
I think that this will end up becoming a cliffhanger between the Kings Speech and the social network. The social network, after riding high on the golden globes has kind of lost momentum recently and the Kings speech has done well to capture it. However, judging purely by the storyline, I do think Social Network will edge the King out.

Best Director:
Nominees:
Aronofsky (Black Swan)
Hooper (Kings )
Fincher (social network)
Coen brothers (True grit)
Russell (Fighter)
My prediction: Hooper (Kings speech)
If social network wins the best film, then Hooper will get top billing for the Kings Speech. The movie has an ensemble cast whose performance is purely fascinating and though the story falls apart at times, the credit goes to the director for extracting performances that stay long with you after the credits have rolled.

Best Supporting Actor
Nominees:
Mark Ruffalo (the kids are all right)
Christian Bale (Fighter)
John Hawkes
Geoffrey Rush
Jeremy Renner (the town)

Prediction: Christian Bale
If I were the academy, I would give the award to Runner for the cute sidekick role in the Town (mostly for being so goodlooking) but performance wise, I guess there is no beating Bale. A huge shout out to Ruffalo though in the modern family comedy 'The kids are all right'. He held his own against some very strong female actors and raises some important questions about the importance of the kids knowing the sperm-donor father. I would like to see more of him.

Best Supporting Actress
Nominees:
Helena Bonham Carter
Melissa Leo
and some others
Prediction: Hmmmm

Since I have only seen the kings speech and the Fighter and between the 2 actresses, I was not really able to pick one over the other. So, am going to leave this blank.

Recap 2000- 2010

2011-01-08T13:07:00.000-08:00

Whats is it with growing older and writing year end recap blogs? as the years go by, there seems to be more regret for the year that went by rather than expectations about the year ahead. Maybe its because I am growing older. Something tells me this blog post is going to be less cheerful than the other recap blogs I have written in the last couple of years (read my last year's recap here) Or maybe I am just preparing for the end of the world in 2012.

Partly because, 2010 was such a blur for me in the global landscape and because its the end of one of the most meaningful decades in my life, I am going to make this a recap of the last ten years instead of just one.

Events:

Terrorism- Among global events, terrorism will probably take the biggest share when it comes to media and political time share. The decade saw 2 global wars, both of which are still going on, dozens of smaller but no less shocking events that brought some countries together even as it tore some apart. For me, the 1999-2000 plane hi jack in Kandahar is an event that is still as fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday. The nation's angst against the Taliban notwithstanding, the image of the then finance minister Jaswant Singh, handing over the 3 terrorists, 1 of whom, Maulana Azhar is touted to have masterminded Mumbai 26/11, sadly reminds me eerily of the old saying- what goes around, comes around. Looking at the military response the US has to offer to any entity that threatens its people, I wonder what would a terrorist faction have to do to irk India the same way. Or else, maybe we are a country of infinitely proportionate patience. Reminds of me something called Hooke's law from undergrad which proves that the strain on a spring s directly proportional to the stress by a constant called the spring constant. If India were a spring, it has a high spring constant indeed!!

Globalization- This one is tricky and its difficult to make a point without pissing atleast one individual group off. But protected by cyberspace, am going to take a shot anyway. I strongly believe that globalization for the sake of it is bull shit. A country has to be truly open and welcoming of the citizens of other countries if it wants to be considered global. Whats the point really of having huge restrictions in the work force including embargo on some jobs, lengthly and unnecessary paperwork stretching into years, lack of employment opportunities for spouses/partners for those who wish to enjoy the benefit of globalization and seek greener pastures abroad and on the flip side, whats the point in socially pressuring a developing country's population into leaving secure jobs, families and friends sometimes even against their will to find that dream education or that dream job abroad. I have seen friends get frustrated because they could not make it abroad and some get frustrated with their lonely lives abroad but still marching on because it would be such a huge shame to go back and some others still going back because the recession first showed immigrants the door in terms of layoffs. Not even going into the social fabric of a newly emerged caste system that has people being measured by the number of years spent abroad to stake a claim in the social hierarchy, it would be safe to say that globalization has proved to be a cataclysmic change in society.

Web 2.0- The decade started with the phenomenon (or the lack of it) of Y2k and the consequent crashing of the stock market due to overrated internet and tech stocks. At that time, little was known about web 2.0 and user generated content. Today, I read most of my news of blogs, share and book mark stuff through twitter, post photos on picasa and keep in touch through facebook, none of which I had heard of in 2000. While there is little doubt that these technologies are great for being in touch and connecting in this increasingly 'globalized' world, one wonders what their effect on people will be in the long term. My personal opinion is that web 2.0 is a happiness index. The happier a person is, the more he/she frequents and interacts with web 2.0 tools like facebook/twitter or picasa, which makes sense in a way, but is not really a whole representation of your life right? For the people who may not be in their happiest of places, but have a mad urge to check their friends' lives out (come on! who does not) only end up getting further depressed. Case in point, my entire facebook story from jan 09- to dec'10 reads like a fairy tale, when i know that its hardly been one. While it was not deliberate, I just stopped posting in the non-happy periods. The concept of web 2.0 should then be 'misery does NOT love company' , atleast not online.

Movies

My favorites in the last decade (no particular order and please dont judge me)

1. Vicky Christina Barcelona- Dec'08 - perfect cure for a lonely weekend- Javier
2. Blood Diamond- There is something about diCaprio (S Rath- if you are reading, i remember our conversations)
3. He is just not that into you (movie and book)- Mar'09, IIMB campus. :)
4. The Dark Knight - does it matter when and where one watches this to like it.
5. Slumdog Millionaire- Nov'08, the movie that made so many dinners such fun
6. Brokeback Mountain- 2005, IITM hostel room, me and KR, we could not quite stop the tears.
7. The English Patient- around 2004, IITM hostel room, me and KR, did not even try stopping the tears.
8. Rang De Basanti - 2006, 20 women , 8 AM in the morning
9. Dev D- Mar'09, its all about loving your self!
10. 3 idiots- Dec'09, California. I doubt if i can pull off an 18 year old anymore!
11. Jab we met- numerous occasions!

For all the folks who dropped by and reached the end, either by accident or by coercion, Happy New Year.

What am I thankful for?

2010-11-27T00:44:00.000-08:00

First off, I realize that I have not blogged since long. To say that I had absolutely no time is laughable since I am a student and sometime, I wonder why an MBA degree requires 2 years when it can honestly be done in 1. (shout out to ISB's model here though I am still smarting at them having not returned my Rs. 2 lac deposit) To say that I went through huge personal turmoil is also laughable since most people who read my blog know pretty much that my life is as eventful as a mosquito's ( No idea where that came from). So am just going to apologize and move on (which i realize I could have done 4 sentences ago! but server space comes free thankfully :D )

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, lets start listing down some of the things that I could probably be thankful for-

1. Friends- Some new ones this year that have been an absolute joy for sure. Some not so new ones who I have taken a surprising liking to. Some old ones that I can feel I am slowly losing touch with more because of my schedule than anything else. However, thats the thing about good friends- even if you talk to them after years, it feels like you just talked yesterday. Special mention to GG, KR, RK and SR for being out there in the world (somewhere) and bringing a smile to my face even though I know little of whats going on in your lives currently.

2. Family- The old ones are still gratefully around. the new ones are too new for me to start talking about personality types or characters. However, special mention to S who may have left the real world, but whose childhood memory I am still thankful for.

3. HBS- Despite the huge costs that keep me here, I am hugely thankful for the institution for considering me capable, an honor that I still question whenever I interact with my phenomenally successful classmates. oh well, maybe being Asian and woman does add some crucial application points! If it does, am thankful for being Asian and a Woman :)

4. Boston- Having visited a lot more cities in the US this year, I realize that Boston is such a great place to be. Definitely beats the city I stayed in for 7 years prior to that- Chennai. Chennai, was so hot and heavy all the time that it did not give me a chance to be hot and heavy. Boston does! :) (Hot and heavy is a real phrase. if you dont believe me, you should watch Seinfeld)

5. Gossip Girl- I am really thankful for this show, the most important reason being that it airs on Mondays, towards the end of one of the worst days of the week. And also, I love to gossip, having held the title religiously during my ITC days. If any of you ITC folk are reading this, I could have totally predicted the september breaking news if I had still been working, just in case you were wondering whether I lost my touch. :)

6. My new kitchen- well, not mine really, but finally there is a kitchen in my new dorm that I totally love. because I can just sit there and someone would come in and offer me a piece of whatever they are eating (never, ever have canned soup) Also, for the amazing tea that SP makes and often reminds me of the chai that RC used to make ( RS now, or maybe RS nee C, or just RCS ...whatever)

7. Chicago- A great city discovered this summer. Dunno if i am thankful or relieved to have found a place to stay that does not fleece you like Boston does. Order of City preferences- Chicago> Boston> SF>Chennai ?

8. Blackberry torch- Very very thankful! enough said.

9. Megavideo- Q: can you give me 1 reason why megavideo beats netflix;
A: its illegal! :)

10. Me: I am thankful for the wonderful human being that I have become. (Given a chance, I would have loved to substitute wonderful for other words like 'glamorous', 'rich', 'famous' etc, but one can only play with the cards one has been dealt )

To all living in the US, have a wonderful thanksgiving. To all living outside, be thankful that you are not subject to what can only be described as 3 days of consumer stupidity.

Cheers,
L

Shameless Pandering!

2010-05-04T06:30:00.000-07:00

Have been feeling a little lost lately, with nothing to do therefore want to take a shameless stab at boasting about my circumstances. I know this is lame and I promise to come back with a characteristic witty post soon enough.

So, some of the people I have met (in person) over the last few months-

1. Chidambaram- Home Minister, India
2. Rajat Gupta- Former chairman, McKinsey and Co.
3. Arianna Huffington- CEO, the Huffington post
4. Andrew Rashbass- CEO, the Economist
5. Jamie Dimon- CEO, JP Morgan
6 Preity Zinta- Actress, bollywood
7. Larry Culp- CEO, Danaher group

:)

The real life Veer-Zaara ?

2010-04-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

The tale of Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza is but filled with more holes than a tennis and a cricket ball can plug. However, I don't really care much about it. Hell! I would not have batted an eyelid even if Sania had married someone from Mars. What is most irritating is the amount of media time, money, effort and the collective consciousness of not one but 2 whole nations that got consumed and wasted in the process.

The media in Pakistan while welcoming the marriage (since apparently, now Sania is a Pakistani, by marriage) has brought out a dozen skeletons from Malik's closet, including but not limited to an angry ex-wife who reveals that their internet style love-story actually culminated in a marriage that Shoaib not only spoke of on national television but actually sang about on a Pakistan TV channel and then conveniently forgot about it in the days leading upto his marriage with Sania.

The Indian media, of course not to be undone, decided to bring out Sania's closet skeletons- an apparent affair with Shahid Kapoor, maybe Mahesh Bhupati, a hurried breaking of an engagement that was celebrated with much fanfare just about a year ago citing incompatibility issues.
Of course the greatest debate now seems to be which country will Sania play tennis for. At this point, I beg you to look at this in context. How long ago was it that she won a WTA tournament? What is her current world ranking? How many injuries has she 'nursed' this year? The answers- 5 years ago, 100 currently and slipping, about 20 and counting. Really, does it matter which country she plays for? Do you really think that with this new found cross border love, she will find it in her to actually up the ante? I doubt it.

And Shoaib? A one year ban for infighting within the team, a previous marriage now forgotten, some anti-india, pro-muslim statements that elicited response from Irfan Pathan's mom and many more such frivolous incidents.

While aam junta's appetite for gossip is understandable, to drag a story about two failed stars from two countries for so long is just pathetic. I wish the Indian media grows up. Of course, even asking Sania or Shoaib to grow up would be unthinkable.

Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar

2010-02-26T16:53:00.000-08:00

I was 12 years old in 1996 when the Wills World Cup (world championship in Cricket held every 4 years) was to be held in the subcontinent. The 2 most common running ads at the time was of that of Wills which ran "Made for each other" and showed various couples having a good time eating, drinking and making merry and Pepsi where different celebrities proclaimed "Nothing official about it". None of the 2 ads made any sense to me, but I kept repeating them to myself constantly throughout the tournament. Why? I had no idea. They were just considered so cool.
It was in 1996 that I first remember watching a full one day international match. It was India Vs West Indies at Roop Singh Stadium at Gwalior in India. India won the game and Sachin took the man of the match award for scoring the highest number of runs, 75 or something it was. Sachin, then already considered among the best batsmen in the world went on to score the highest number of runs in the entire tournament. The match was touted to be exciting because it featured some of the best fast bowlers from WI (Ambrose and Walsh) and of course Brian Lara. In the end, however it all came down to Sachin.
When India lost to the eventual winners Sri Lanka in the semifinal, I was among the thousands who cried.
It is funny more than a decade later, what I remember most about the Wills world cup are still the Wills and the Pepsi ads and Sachin's knock at Gwalior. However, once the tournament ended, both ads disappeared.

As I grew up and graduated, my first job was in ITC which owns the Wills brand. I learnt in 2006 that the ad that kept ringing in my mind was actually about a cigarette. And the 'made for each other' stood for tobacco and filter paper perfectly matched. It stopped featuring after 96 because there was a ban on tobacco advertising since then.
When I came to B school, I also learnt about the cola wars between Coke and Pepsi that have been going on since the early 1900's. The 2 firms came to a head during the 96 world cup with each of them wanting to be an official sponsor, a contest that coke won. Pepsi then cheekily came up with the 'Nothing official about it' campaign to counter coke's official sponsor position. It also stopped after 96 as its purpose was then served.

Sachin however, did not stop after 96. In fact he went from strength to strength bettering every single record that ever existed. Some of my most patriotic moments have been when this man has guided the country through a difficult match and secured a sweet victory.

It was ideal for me then that this man should create history as the only batsman in the word to score 200 runs in a single one day match at the same stadium that I first started watching him play almost 14 years ago. When will this man stop? God only know! Or maybe he too does not.

An ode to IIT

2010-02-21T10:35:00.000-08:00

Its often said that one realizes the importance of something only after it has served its purpose. Last week was one of the most interesting weeks I have ever had. However, one incident that happened during the middle of the week stands out. Let me try describing it-
I met an IIT Alum who had graduated very long ago, almost 15 years ago. He had gone on to do a PhD in the US and followed it up with an MBA from one of the best B-schools in the world. He told me that he was one of the few people who had not changed their job even once in their 12 year career. In the 45 minutes that I spoke to him, he changed my whole perspective of looking at my life. He told me how valuable the education I received in IIT was and how it will hold me in good stead my entire life. He also told me the importance of realizing early on what I want to do with my life and not what others think is right for me. He also described his classmates who graduated with him and what they were doing with their lives currently.
While I sincerely believe in not resting in past laurels and moving on with life, I cannot help but remember this incident and smile.
Sometimes, when you are lost in the drudgeries of the present, it helps to have someone else remind you of your past. :)

Academy Awards 2010- My predictions!

2010-02-13T18:28:00.000-08:00

Time for my annual Oscar predictions. Considering how close I was to the actual winners last year (find the link here), I am tempted to take a stab at predicting despite not having seen half the movies on the nominated panel. Well, who cares!

Best Picture:

Nominees:
1. Avatar
2. the Blind side
3. District 9
4. the hurt locker
5. Inglorious basterds
6 Up in the air
7 Up
8 A serious man
9 Precious
Prediction: Avatar
Going purely by the box office, its difficult to look beyond Avatar and James Cameron for this year's best picture. While 'up in the air' is my personal favorite, I think it will be Cameron's magnum opus that will take the cake.

Best Director
Nominations:
1. Kathyrn Bigelow (The hurt locker)
2. James Cameron (Avatar)
3. Lee Daniels (Precious)
4. Quentein Tarantino (Inglorious)
5. Jason Reitman (Up in the air)

Prediction: Kathyrn Bigelow
I think this one essentially boils down to Bigelow and Cameron but I think Bigelow will edge out Cameron and be the first ever female best director winner at the Oscars. Cameron will have to be content with best picture for Avatar.

Best Actor
Nominations
1. Jeff Bridges (crazy heart)
2. George Clooney (Up in the air)
3. Colin Firth ( A single man)
4. Morgan Freeman (Invictus)
5 Jeremy Renner (hurt locker)

Prediction: Jeff Bridges. The 5 times nominated actor deserves to take the award this time and the fact that he has picked up every possible award leading upto the Oscars should only work in his favor. My personal favorite for this role however was George Clooney for his ever so adorable performance in Up in the air. I must mention here that Colin Firth did a great job in the Single Man. For me however, to think of him as anything else apart from Mr. Darcy is a shame.

Best Actress
Nominations
1. Meryl Streep (Julie and Julia)
2. Sandra Bullock (The blind side)
3. Carey Mulligan (An Education)
4. Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)
5 Helen Mirren (the last station)
Prediction: Sandra Bullock
Sandra has in 2009 arrived from almost nowhere and become America's Sweetheart. Just when everyone her written her off in comedy, she comes up with 'The proposal' which is one of my favorite movies of 09 and also attempts serious cinema by starring in the Blind Side. I may be biased by the fact that she has always been one of my most watchable stars, but it looks like its going to be tough to beat her this year. Meryl Streep or no Meryl Streep. just a shout out to Gabourey Sidibe however. She may not win the award this year, but this girl is here to stay. Precious was one hell of a good movie!

Best Supporting actor
Nominations
1. Matt Damon (Invictus)
2. Christopher Plummer (the last station)
3. Stanley Tucci (the lovely bones)
4.Christopher Waltz (Inglorious basterds)
5. Woody Harrelson (the messenger)
Prediction: Christopher Waltz
This is one award that I am willing to bet my life savings on (or according to my current cash situation, my entire debt on). No one else even comes close to Waltz's sizzling portrayal of the 'Jew hunter'. It still sends shivers down my spine as i remember the

Best supporting actress
Nominations
1. Penelope Cruz (Nine)
2. Vera Farmiga (Up in the air)
3. Maggie Gyllenhaal (crazy heart)
4. Monique (precious)
5. Anna Kendrick (up in the air)
Prediction Monique
This is according to me the most competitive category for this year's awards. While both Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick stood their own opposite Clooney in 'Up in..' , Cruz was remarkable in Nine. But Monique will beat the rest of contenders purely purely on the intensity of her role in Precious. Moreover, since Sidibe does not have much of a chance against Streep and Bullock, the academy will award this to Precious.

Adapted Screenplay will be won by 'Up in the air' and original screenplay will probably be bagged by 'The hurt locker'.

Until the Oscars, xoxo

Sleepless in California (Part I)

2010-01-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

The urban Indians guide to achieving salvation-
1. Become an Engineer or a doctor
2. Get married and live happily or not ever after.
3. Work in or visit Silicon Valley, California.

I can now proudly say that by recently completing 3 above, I am now two-thirds salvated (if thats a word)

San Francisco-

I have always wondered by people make a big deal about bridges. They are everywhere, in tourist brochures, in stamps, souvenirs even T shirts. I wonder why India does not do the same. Its not that difficult actually, just make a big deal of the newly constructed bandra-worli sea link and make it a landmark of national pride and see the revenues pouring in. I have often believed that India just has to know how to market herself. While I stood in front of the Golden Gate bridge at SF, I wondered why it gets to be so popular- maybe its the brownish color or else the view of the sea it affords.

Alcatraz is an island about 1 mile off SF bay that has huge cultural significance as it was used first as a prison during the times of the civil war and later on as a symbol of Indian land by native American indians who used the island to lay claim to 'their' land. The island also called 'the rock' has appeared in many books and movies and is a very popular tourist location. What I remember the island best for however was a South Asian family complete with mom, dad, bro and sis who seemed to have been in the US for the most part of their lives, but were still debating the right Hindi term to address the driver of a car. What was funny for me as I listened to them was that not did they not know the correct expression, but also because the concept of a driver is fairly rare here in the US. Their anglicized Hindi and debate the ensued made the day for me. I couldn't help not putting up their picture :)

As we went around Alcatraz's prison cells, I was somehow reminded of my room back in IIT. Not only were the dimensions similar, but the bed was remarkably similar looking. If you removed the iron doors and filled it with 18 year old girls and painted it all yellow, it would not be any different from what I lived in for 4 years. Just a thought. Actually thinking about it, my room back then was even worse, we did not have private baths. :) My friend K in front of one of the cells in the picture.

Sacramento-

I never knew Sacramento was the capital of California till i actually went there. I always assumed it would be LA or SF. If Arnold Schwarzenegger (yeah, i googled the spelling) had to choose a city to conduct the senate from, I would have thought that he would pick LA. That way, he could continue working at the same place that he is used to working in, push some weights and then throw it around. No pun intended. :P Anyways, his senate room looked awesome what with laptops etc. I could not help but comparing it India's Lok Sabha (the senate equivalent). Not only are there no laptops, most of the time there are no people either.

Napa Valley-

California is known for its wines apparently. So napa has rows and rows of vineyards with small cottages that let you taste a sampling of wines. The entire process of the wine aging, storage, evaporation etc was explained and I felt like I was sitting in an operations management class, or maybe I was feeling so light on the head that I maybe was not thinking straight. Anyway, my friend K in a wine cellar.

Part II will cover Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. xoxo

Recap 2009

2010-01-02T21:01:00.000-08:00

Following my tradition (now 2 years old, you can find the 2008 recap here ) of having a recap of what I consider the main events and films and quotes of the year, here is to 2009. Before proceeding, I must mention that personally for me 2009 has been one of the best years of my life. However, I will reserve that for a separate post.

Events-

1. Barack Obama - Though he theoretically won the election in 2008, 2009 was the year in which the world actually witnessed the man beyond just his oratory. While his ratings are still very high, he seems to be relenting on his stand of low taxation for the middle class and the foreign policy with respect to Afghanistan and Iraq. 2010 will be the year that makes or breaks Barack Obama and will determine how he goes down in the annals of history.

2. Michael Jackson - This man's death was singularly responsible for bringing down the supposedly infallible web 2.0. Facebook, Twitter and Google websites crashed for almost a day and the world waited with growing disbelief until his brother Jermaine released a statement confirming the time of death. Whats amazed me about this guy was not how he defined the pop music and the MTV generation that came with it, but more so the single minded dedication he bought to his craft and the craft of dance in general. Yes, he was a flawed hero at best, with some of his reputation tainted by his personal lifestyle, but then which hero today is not. Think Tiger Woods.

3. H1N1- Not since Anthrax and the islamic chemical warfare scare has the world witnessed a pandemic as widespread as the Swine flu. The best testimony to this is during my flight from Hyderabad to Boston in August'09. There were about 300 or so people on the flight. More than 250 of them wore the surgical mask throughout the time of the flight, almost 14 hours. By the end of it, I felt pathetic breathing the stale air for so long. On a lighter note, many of my classmates who were hungover could miss classes and claim later that they had the flu and did not want to infect others.

4. Tiger Woods- Instead of reiterating what the tabloids and the popular media are saying about his 15, and counting, mistresses, I want to say a few things about the affairs that I think are important for putting things in the right perspective- This guy is worth almost $4b, he dominated what was considered as a white man's sport for almost a decade, he is of mixed racial heritage- chinese, african american and portugese and all his mistresses are White, blonde and thin. Go figure!

5. Global economic crisis - Spending half of the year in India and the other half in the US has truly brought home the reality of the economic crisis. In the long run though, I think the collapse of Wall Street has been a wake up call for many. There can be no short cuts to making money.

6. Indian politics- resurgent congress and the YSR demise- 2009 has been the year of the congress for India. Rahul Gandhi's emergence as a king maker and Congress' triumphant trumping of the third and the fourth fronts bodes well for the stability of Indian politics.

Movies- My favorites for the year in no particular order.

1. Dev D - I cannot get enough of Abhay Deol. Everytime I think he has rendered his best performance ever, he tops it with another stellar performance. I have also become a huge fan of Anurag Kashyap for his brave portrayal of modern Devdas including the changed ending. I loved every minute of it and I highly recommend it.

3. Luck by Chance- Though the film did not create any ripples in the box office, it touched a chord somewhere. I felt that somewhere it was because it represented the reality of bollywood today. Luck/connections and not true talent decides who gets to act in big banner movies

4. 3 idiots- From an IIT myself, the film got back both the pleasant and the unpleasant memories associated with studying in such institutions. While it did drive home many hard truths, it did not offer any solutions. As long as the system remains what it is, there will continue to be unfortunate student suicides and one dimensional bookish graduates. 3 cheers for Aamir Khan for carrying off the role of a 18 year old so convincingly.

5 Kaminey- This film signals the rise of Shahid Kapoor as an actor of reckoning in Bollywood today. Priyanka Chopra has also gone from strength to strength and essays the role of a Marathi woman to perfection.

Movies- Hollywood

1. Inglorious basterds- The star of the movie for me was Melanie Laurent, the little girl who escapes the Jew hunter and later on attempts to blow out the theater where the Nazis were viewing their premier. Very solid by the ensemble cast and of course, Brad Pitt.

2. Up in the Air- I loved the 2 women in this movie. Each of them so powerful in completely different ways. And yes, we cannot get enough of Clooney.

3. Duplicity - I love Julia Roberts. Thank god she is back!

Eagerly Awaited 2010-

1. Pyaar impossible - Priyanka Chopra and Uday Chopra in a film rendition of 'the Beauty and the Geek'
2. My Name is Khan - SRK and kajol continuing the now favorite theme of terrorism
3. Iron Man 2 - Robert Downey Jr :)
4. Harry potter and the Deathly hallows - Finally, the last HP movie
5. Salt - Angelina Jolie as a russian spy. The trailers look great.

Contrasts

2009-12-21T23:23:00.000-08:00

The difference between a bus ride in India and the US.

The essentials do not necessarily change. Its only the support system that is drastically different. The vehicle is still public transportation but the difference is the interiors, where before it was filled with crowded, sweaty folk, now it consists of people who are hooked on to their laptops or blackberrys. While I could not identify with the former as they were mainly illiterate or did not speak my language, I am not sure I identify with the latter even if they are from the same institution.
I still listen to the same songs while on the bus/train, but while before they played out through a phone that doubled as a music player, now I listen to them through an i-pod with distinctly better acoustics.
I used to look out of the window at vast expanses of sand peppered with small makeshift huts and people and now I look out at vast expanses of snow over well maintained sloping roofs but with no soul in sight.
I would wish that the heat would relent and make it cooler and now I wish the sun would come out and make it warmer.
I would curse the traffic and fear for my life in the face of rash driving and now I curse the driver and wonder why he does not go faster.
I would imagine how nice it would be to get out of what I was doing and come here and now I wish I were back to the carefree life that I had then.
I would wonder why people keep staring at me like I am descended from a different world that is not theirs and now I wish someone looked at me and made meaningful conversation.
I would be extremely hungry but could not eat as public eating was frowned upon and now I can eat all I want but all thats available is fresh organic cold food that makes me want to puke.
I could free ride on any conversation and posit my expert opinion as it would be about politics or cricket or movies and here I listen to conversations about the red sox or the national health policy and wonder what they mean to me.
I would remember my stop locations through landmarks like ICICI bank or Cafe Coffee Day while here I struggle frantically to identify a building or a landmark that is unique enough to be separately identifiable in the sea of similarly built architecture.

Which one would I prefer if I had to choose, one that offers security through the feeling of shared identity or one that offers comfort through clockwork operations? Right now, I am tending towards the former.

Traveling safe

2009-11-19T22:50:00.000-08:00

Not long ago, when I was still earning (sigh!), my good friend R was discussing with me her complicated relationship with taxi drivers. Continuous travelling to various cities in India not withstanding, she had to deal with the often bizarre taxi's that were allocated to her for her various trips. Since most of the taxi ordering and servicing system in India is outsourced by firms, she could never really predict who would service her on any particular day. Since the firm would pass her number along to the cab drivers, within 3 years she had the dubious distinction of having her number available with more than 50 of them, spread across all parts of the country. Worse still, they also knew the addresses of all the guest houses/hotels she stayed in.

Last week, I had a discussion with one of my section mates C, who was telling me about his web startup that people could use to log into their account and provide information everytime they would travel from one location to another along with details of the taxi they were in (number, destination etc. ) . In case of an emergency, the information would reach a chosen contact who would then be able to use the information to track the taxi down.
You can get more information about this here

While not solving R's problem of having her phone number flying all around the place, if a critical mass of people used this especially in a country like India where there have been a lot of concerns around late night traveling in taxis, this could be a powerful tool in the hands of the public to safeguard themselves. Also, if the movement achieves certain momentum, taxi drivers will be scared to death of taking situational advantage.

Food for thought!

2009-09-29T21:53:00.000-07:00

It starts with one sentence uttered completely casually by someone who is not a close friend but is a recently known acquaintance. This person makes the sentence and leaves and has no idea of the impact it has on you. You start reflecting on the sentence, it is a partially true sentence that inadvertently judges you on some issue that you probably knew about yourself but never confronted it. In all probability the person who uttered it did not mean to be judgmental, but it hit a sensitive nerve in your body and you cant stop thinking about it. You obsess about it the entire day, it keeps coming back at all odd times, it is almost torture. With time, the influence the sentence has on you fades but it is something you never forget. Am I being neurotic or has this happened to you sometime?

We live in a world that constantly judges us. Especially in a new surrounding, where everyone around you is also new and settling in, it happens more often. One professor here calls it imprinting- unfortunately, imprinting works in a very different way than other brain functions. It is the strongest initially and then trends to drain off. If the initial imprint in a person's mind is different from what you want projected, its very difficult to erase that image. So, if you could be a totally different person for the first 6 months and go back to your normal state, you will be remembered more as the person you tried to be in the first 6 months than you were for the rest of your life. Is this not unfair? Is that why people tend to herd up and do the same thing as the rest of the majority initially in a new surrounding like a school or a job so they dont imprint a different image of themselves? But aren't we told constantly that each of us is unique and what makes a group so powerful is the diversity of our perspectives? Isn't there a fundamental disconnect between the two? How can one be part of the herd but still be diverse? How can people do stuff that is totally not them and still call themselves unique? Where does the uniqueness come from? I dont see it at all.

Review- Dil Bole Hadippa

2009-09-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

Some movies dont have to be a block buster for you to start liking them. Some other movies can be quite boring and filled with Cliches but have some nice personal story to go with it- like for example the movie that you went with your family after several years, or the movie that you watched with someone really close for the first time etc. For me this was the first movie I saw in a theater in Boston and will therefore be a very pleasant memory for a long time to come.
There is something magical about watching an Indian movie with an Indian gang in a foreign land. Add to it a story that speaks of peace and friendship across borders with some nice songs and good looking actors filling up screen space.

'Dil bole' is the story of an semi-literate girl (Rani Mukherjee) in Amritsar wanting to play cricket for her region. In order to fulfil her dream, she dresses up as a turbaned sardar for the team selections. Shahid Kapoor (Rohan) is the team captain and is impressed by her batting skills and takes her in. How she fulfils her dream is the rest of the story. There are great songs to keep the audience entertained and of course there is Shahid Kapoor. The story tries to touch upon some traditional stereotypes regarding gender roles and patriotism and at some places is not handled very well, but it is a good heart warming story told in a nice way.
for me, watching it on a big screen from boston, in a big group, with some of them trying to fill in the dialogs was a lot of fun. Cant wait for 'Whats Your Rashee' with Harman Baweja and Priyanka Chopra next week.

Sleepless in NY!

2009-09-07T14:55:00.000-07:00

An extended weekend and a break before school officially starts seemed the perfect time to plan a trip to NY. It was going to be almost a year since I saw G and S, that too in NY. I decided to try out this bus service called Bolt (www.boltbus.com) to go from Boston to NY mainly because the bus had wi-fi and I could use the net through my laptop. (Coming from India, this for me was a wonder)
I reached there friday night and then G and I went to pick up S from the Newark airport where he was supposed to land at midnight. S has not slept for about 2 nights previously and looked quite like like the way he used to back then in ITC, albeit better fed.

Statue of Liberty- The first thing that strikes you as you stand in the huge line for the ferry that takes you to Statue of Liberty is the number of Indians that make up the line. I will not be exaggerating if I say that every other face in the crowd that day was an Indian. And yes, they came in all shapes and sizes. There were 80 year old grannys, Sikh Children, ABCDs with their cousins from India, even newly married people on their honeymoon. It was not unlike a crowded market place in South Bombay. Half the money America makes out of tourism must be due to the Desis. Anyways, it was a great feeling to tick the box against 'Statue of Liberty' and tell myself that I have seen this. :)

Ellis Island- Apparently, they kept a track of the immigrants who came to the US in late 1800s and early 1900s through Ellis Island by tagging them through all kinds of paper tags and language interpreters. There is also an automated system where a person can find out which relative of theirs landed on the Island and which state they went to. The whole concepts of America as a melting pot of people from different cultures was well explained.

Wall Street- This is one place that I wanted to see since long. Whenever I imagine MBAs working, it was always in the plush offices of Wall Street in business suits etc. However, the fact that we had to be at Empire state building in about 15 mins and that we had yet to empty our bladders since morning, meant sadly the only thing we did at Wall Street was to go to G's office and use the restroom. Well! so much for Wall Street. Should remember to do more than just a passing visit (no pun intended) the next time. I might end up here after all in 2 years. :P

Empire State building- The whole line of Desis that we saw visiting Liberty were here too. We even managed to identify a few of them. The best part of Empire state building was the 2 $ discount that I got as a student while G and S had to pay 20$. The whole episode of flashing my student ID to the ticketing officer was so surreal. By the time, we ascended to the 86th floor of the building after negotiating a line of around 3 hours, listening to the cackle of Hindi, Tamil and Gult voices, I was so tired to even get myself around and look at the city of NY lit up so beautifully at night.

Times Square- Times square is quite unlike anything I have experienced before. I was just awed by the place. The ads, the ticker, Broadway, it was all so amazing. A good mixture of tourists and locals makes the place very vibrant and real. We saw the ads for the Broadway shows and told ourselves that we are coming back the next day to see a play.

Broadway- I finally saw 'Chicago- the musical' at Broadway with G and A and it was one of the best experiences in my life. As a self confessed fan of motion pictures, I was not initially sure how the theater experience would turn out to be. But the music, the actors, the setting and the fact that I was watching a 30 year old Multiple Tony award winning play just blew me away completely. I know for sure that the next time I go to NYC again, I am going back to Broadway.

Brazilian day- Sunday also happened to be Brazilian day at NYC. There were almost a million people in 42nd Street wearing the traditional 'yellow colored Brasil' T shirt and beating drums and dancing to Samba. I was reminded of the audience during brazilian soccer matches. They were so vibrant, happy and proud to be Brazilian that day. Also on offer was a wild variety of Brazilian Delicacies and Psychic palm readers at every other station offering to read your future.

Sleepless in Boston!

2009-08-20T16:24:00.001-07:00

Keeping with my standard style of titling every travel trip with 'sleepless...', I have labeled this blog too with the same title, the only difference being this time I am actually sleepless, well almost if you discard the 5 hours per day that I have been getting.
My friend Y from ISB told me that a B-school student has time to do 3 of the 4 things on any day- eat, sleep, study and attend classes. Have sadly realized that it cannot be more true.
There is so much written about the Indian diaspora in the US and I realize, I am totally unqualified to comment given the time I have spent here, but being me, I cant help it. Here are a few things I observed since I landed here-

1. There are no switches for any of the electrical plug points! why the hell would someone not have switches when it makes total sense to have them. Essentially it means that all appliances will have to be unplugged from the sockets after use which is stupid. Wonder what would happen if the same thing happened in India? 'Unplugged' then would not be associated with only MTV

2. Ok, this one might be boring but the traffic signals are totally useless. Apparently you have to push a button to cross the road and then wait about a good 10 mins , in which you could have safely crossed about 10 times. and the whole right-left confusion i guess is legendary among Desis in the US.

3. I got to learn about the SSN which is about the same as the unique identification thingy that Nilkeni is working on. Its like one number that you use for almost any transaction you make across any counter and it is like a running file for every person. Whats most scary about it is that it comes at a huge price, privacy. Why would anybody agree to be scrutinized to that extent?

4 Americans on an average talk so much, I wonder how any conversation ever ends here. If Americans have a saas-bahu soap going on, it would give Kyunki a serious run for its money. Oh! wait a minute, is'nt that what 'The bold and the beautiful' is about?

5. You can use credit/debit cards for transactions as small as 1 $. You can actually survive cashless for almost a week without any major problems.

6. When you get cell phones free with a service provider, why would anyone take anything other than the i-phone or the blackberry. Atleast in the cell phone market, there is no concept of treasure at the bottom of the pyramid.

7. Retail is so huge here that there are no Mom-Pop stores anywhere at all.

8. The food- A standard American size can feed a family of 4 in India, if they dont mind the blandness of it of course!

Reality TV

2009-07-29T05:03:00.000-07:00

Having a lot of time on my hands these days, and with all friends being busy with career/mba/babies and the like, I have made reality shows my good friends. When I started out, I had very little respect for them though I must confess, they catch on quickly. Here's a brief on each one that I am watching-

Rakhi ka Swayamvar- After having watched her in all those item songs and the infamous Mika video, it was pretty tough, I must say to accept her as a shy bride-in-waiting searching for the perfect groom. After watching a couple of episodes, however, I realized that this babe is serious about marrying and settling down that too in national Television. NDTV managed to get quite a few eyeballs on prime time telly. What can I say, except perhaps 'Good luck' to the groom.

Sach ka Saamna- The original US version 'Moment of Truth' was good and threw up quite a few shocks. Of course, it plays on the very human emotion of curiosity and watching someone else's dirty laundry being washed in public. This was one show I thought could not be adapted to Indian TV audience. After all the question 'are you married to your wife only for the children's sake?' would throw up an 'Yes' in 80 % of the households, maybe more. And really, polygraph? since when does that start to predict thoughts exactly. I Wonder what would happen if there was a third choice 'Maybe'. I think it makes perfect sense considering that when dealing with human emotions there is a whole range of grey apart from just 'black and white' or for that matter 'yes and no'.

Is jungle se mujhe bachao- To be frank, I liked this one better than the original 'I am a celebrity, get me out of here' crap. This show is the ultimate testimonial to the fact that audience love adventure and secretly wish their lives could be as exciting as being in a jungle and be eaten up by a crocodile anytime and having to fight for your basic needs like food etc. in manner of Robinson Crusoe or similar.

All that I can leave behind!

2009-06-26T08:35:00.000-07:00

The logical next post following the earlier sentimental recital of memories that I will carry with me, the ones that I gladly leave behind or forget.

1. Life tethered to one end of a cell phone. I call it the 'silence of the nokia tune'. I remember that I had set that ringtone for all landline numbers from the factory and by the end of the 3rd year, hearing the tune would signal the beginning of a bad day for me.

2. Late night missed calls. The operators in our factory had a strange way of communicating with me. They would give me missed calls at 3 AM to announce something as simple as a power cut or process defects. The funda was that I had to call them back everytime I got a missed call from a random number assuming that it would be an operator. Somehow, they all assumed that I dont sleep at all. Now, I wonder why?

3. Train journeys from Chennai to North Madras. Not that I mind trains, but this particular line had so many stoppages that a half hour journey would on average take 2 hours. Much better than the road though. Even if someone had a Mercedes benz, it would be a easier for them to take the train than attempt a road trip to North Madras.

4. Machine down alerts. So our IT department decides to come up with a masterpiece that would flash machine downtimes of greater than 5 mins through an sms to the manager concerned. Well! the fact that I had around 50 machines to manage notwithstanding, I also had to contend with around 100 sms a day, most of them stopped due to the crappiest of reasons that had nothing to do with any engineering breakdowns.

5. Lotus notes. Am not sure if the next firm I work also uses IBM's lotus notes mailer, but for now, am happy to turn my back to it.

6. Sitcoms. A big lonely house, no good souls around, cell phone switched off to put an end to insane alerts and stupid missed calls and a whole evening to kill with just me and my laptop. Enough said. (anyone who wants these dvds pl, write to me. am waiting to get rid of them)

7. Death by chocolate. What started off as a favorite dessert menu had by the end of 3 years become an addiction. Someone very rightly said that chocolate is a woman's best friend. Only for me, my best friend has been instrumental in me missing a train, vomiting all over a ladies room and leaving a dark spot at a very embarrassing location of my top at different points in time.

8. A whole host of words. These I can proudly say that I will never use again (atleast not in the same context). New site. SFM. Flexibles. Blown film (this can so easily be misinterpreted). Hickies. Penguins. Anna. Cry. Pallet. CPP. Pouch maker :). HLPs.

All that I cannot leave behind!

2009-06-07T06:29:00.000-07:00

As I finally end my 7 year chennai sojourn and head off to Boston, I cannot help but reflect on the last 3 years of my life in chennai. Try as I might, keeping nostalgia away from this post will be a herculean task for me in more ways than one. But hopefully I will not make a tear jerker out of this post. Let me start with all that I cannot leave behind in chennai (both memories and material)-

1. Averaging a movie a week at multiplexes and putting money and time on some real disasters knowing well in advance that it was going to be a disaster and still watching it as we had nothing better to do.
2. Sitting around in threes and fours in Y's crib room and lamenting on how much our lives sucked and having a list of whose life sucked the most by taking into consideration a complex weighted average of personal, professional and mental states.
3. Weekends spend writing Mock CATS, failing badly in them and treating ourselves to lunch to make up for our misery.
4. The long chats at night with Y, T and S where we had nothing to discuss and yet the clock would invariably strike 2 before we trotted back to our respective homes.
5. Chocolate fantasy in CCD. Pure delight.
6. People magazine for all its gossip and pictures of Brangelina
7. The dreaded 15 min walk from home to factory where I had to always be wary of some senior manager offering to give me a lift on the way and giving me a mounthful once inside his/her car.
8. My huge palatial 3 bedroom apartment of which I use only one room and the other 2 were locked up and not opened even once prompting some of my friends to start a ghost theory
9. Staying up late in T's house and noticing much to my horror,at 3 AM, that someone was trying the doorknob from outside to check if the door was open. I forced T to shift to a safer place and doorknobs still creep me out.
10. S' rhetoric on all things kgp and the whole pseudo kgp conversion that we all went through thanks to S.
11. 2 good romances. 1 bad breakup. 1 marriage
12. The office parties and the unsuccessful evasion of some senior managers.
13. The trips. Each not devoid of its own drama.
14. The numerous things done together including home shopping, passport photo taking exercise, late night returns to north madras fearing for dear life, hair cuts, exams and cooking.
15. A whole host of new vocabulary including but not limited to- dancing, saapad, TVT, papa, side se slide, vegetarian by choice, cry, wokay, baap, sigma, Plan A
16. A whole set of new friends- R,T,Y,S,S,D,P,M,C,T to letter a few.

The rise and the rise of Rahul Gandhi

2009-05-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

Decision 2009 has been spelt out clearly by the Indian voter and he seems to choose stability over caste and regional concerns. The various predictions of a fractured and hung parliament with the Congress and the BJP in a mad scramble for the magic 270 seats has thankfully come to naught.
Elections 2009 was coming of age for Rahul Gandhi, who is now PM in waiting for the congress. After being almost written off in 2007 as a politician, he has more than silenced his critics and how. Among his strategies that paid off in the elections were-
1. Go alone in UP and Bihar without any seat sharing arrangement with regional parties. Paid off handsomely.
2. Stick to 'Manmohan as PM' with no room for negotiation. This reposed the electorate's faith in the congress party as committed to reforms and development especially with the economy so precarious
3. Send out subtle messages to possible alliance partners like Nitish Kumar or Jayalalitha without being too blatant and being prepared to play the waiting game until results

I think, with Rahul Gandhi positioned to get a cabinet berth this term, the congress is in safe hands. India has showed trust in the Gandhi dynasty yet again and it will be interesting to watch if this is the beginning of a long reign of Congress party at the center.

Some more observations about the elections-
1. Its the end of the road for Advani now. Its ironic that the man responsible for the rise to prominence of the BJP could never net the top post
2. Looks like BJPs campaign of trying to move away from Hindutva has resulted in it losing the support of the strong Hindu community too. It should seriously introspect its next move
3. Emerging leaders like Sushma Swaraj, Murli Manohar Joshi, Varun Gandhi, Narendra Modi will start calling the shots soon enough in the BJP. However projecting Narendra modi as the PM candidate may backfire for BJP on the face of the newly secular conscious vote base.
4. varun Gandhi wins considerably in Pilibhit. The young man, having got the press that he so desperately wanted should try for an image makeover if he wants to succeed in politics. else, he may remain the lesser Gandhi forever.
5. Will be interesting to see the roles played by the Youth leaders- Milind Deora, Priya Dutt, Sachi Pilot, Jyotiraditya Schindia etc. in the new government
6. The emergence of Mallika Sarabhai, Meera Sanyal etc has to be encouraged further though they have lost heavily in their constituencies.
7. I wish Priyanka Gandhi joins politics.

Jade Goody- Too Good(y) to be true?

2009-04-15T06:27:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of weeks, I have witnessed the overarching public sentiment pouring in for Jade Goody, the reality show star who made racist comments on Shilpa Shetty in last years Big Brother reality show series. She died around 2 weeks ago to the dreaded disease cancer. I am not trying to attempt either a biography or an obituary, but instead am just attempting to piece together what is publicly known about her to understand both her personal, erratic behavior and also the public’s love-hate relationship with her for the last 2 years.

Goody was neither university educated nor was she a white collar executive, but she was loved by the educated middle class who could not get enough of her on TV.

Goody made racist slurs on Shilpa Shetty on the Big Brother show in 2007, yet when she was on her death bed, Ms. Shetty tried her best to meet her one last time.

Goody was not one of those skinny models sashaying down the ramp in all the fashion shows or modeling for the latest cosmetic or cola ad, yet she was the most recognizable face on British Television

Goody was Britain’s prominent hate figure till early last year, yet when she died, public’s showering of flowers and candles outside her home was second only to Princess Diana’s not to mention the Queen’s personal letter to her just before her death.

The more I read and found out about Jade Goody, the more she intrigued me. Both as a much ridiculed and hated public figure and as the endearing martyr dying at the altar of popularity, she elicited passions and reactions from people that were as heartfelt as they were vociferous. I cannot remember any other public figure who came as close as Goody in having such a vacillating love-hate relationship with the media.

Jade Goody, the British tragic queen extraordinaire exploited the media for her own end or exploited by the media to feed the gossip hungry British populace? Sadly, we would never know and Goody has taken the secret to her grave. May her soul rest in peace.

PS: I cannot help but wonder how her 2 small children will grow up considering her very publicized death. Will they court controversies too or will controversies court them? It will be very interesting to watch.

Its raining shoes!

2009-04-10T20:30:00.000-07:00

Just when we thought the George Bush Shoe hurling incident was a once off case that will be quickly forgotten, the practice has become the global benchmark for reporters showing dissent. It is strange that a profession that goes about stating facts and being politically correct resorts to such emotionally charged behavior that the entire reputation of the media now seems to be hanging by a shoe string. Not that I mind personally. I quite enjoyed the Shoe-slinging.

Now, I suppose the incident was the trigger for Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar being shown the boot (quite literally) by the Congress which augurs well for the country as a whole but one wonders how many shoes it will take to get all politicians involved in communal riots, hate speeches and other forms of minority/majority appeasement politics to get shoe’ed out of the political system.

While the reporter got promptly arrested for his ‘Shoe stopping’ incident, I am quite disappointed that his aim went totally off the mark. The same thing happened in the case of the Iraqi reporter while hurling his Shoe at Bush. An aspiring reporter should be a good marksperson. That should be made one of the journalists’ qualifying examination.

After the successful ‘pink chaddi’ campaign by the ‘Consortium of pub going loose and forward women’ (a community that I am quite proud of being a part of), maybe the next gift to our communal politicians should be Shoes. We all should have a pair of worn out, smelly and totally unusable. What say, we all send it to them. My favorite recipient would be Varun Gandhi. After his Foot in the mouth comments of cutting off Mulims’ hands and burning them (or something to that effect), I think he deserves to be gifted the most number of shoes. If he thought he could fill someone’s shoes (read Narendra Modi's) with those comments, the only thing he seems to have filled is the attendance book of the Pilibhit jail. Considering that nobody apart from Meneka and Shiv Sena have visited him so far, he should be quite pleased with the gift.

The Shoe seems to have shaken Delhi in a way that even the tree of 1984 could not. The shoe-stand outside 10 Janpath is suddenly overflowing. Sonia and her henchmen have relented to the public outcry and promptly dropped the candidature of Tytler and Kumar. This however is a small price to pay for the shame of 1984.

Academy Awards 2009!!- My predictions

2009-02-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

After spending the whole of Jan'09 torrenting and watching the oscar nominated movies for 2009 with Y, I am now qualified enough to have my own predictions for the same. Lets see how many I can get right on 22nd of Feb.

Actor in a Leading role
Nominees-

1. Sean Penn (Milk)
2. Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)
3. Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
4. Brad Pitt (Benjamin Button)
5. Richard Jenkins (The visitor)

My Prediction- Sean Penn for Milk
Playing the first openly gay guy to win a seat of a supervisor in San Fransisco in the 1970's, Penn is believable and endearing. Unfortunately, the film suffers as the rest of the cast does not stand up to him in terms of performances, but Penn's brilliant portrayal of a sensitive subject is too good to be missed. The overriding favorite however seems to be Mickey Rourke, for his role in the Wrestler though I preferred Penn's Harvey Milk to that.

Actor in a supporting role.
Nominees-
1. Josh Brolin (Milk)
2. Robert Downey Junior (Tropic thunder)
3. Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt)
4. Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
5. Micheal Shannon (Revolutionary Road)

My prediction- Heath Ledger for the Dark Knight.
This award was made for Ledger. I cannot imagine anyone else getting it. However, if we remove Ledger from the list, I think its almost an open house. Hoffman played the part of the suspicion ridden priest accused of abusing a boy in the parish to perfection. Micheal Shannon as the psycho tearing a young couple apart was as sensational as was scary and Josh Brolin had a very meaty role in Milk.

Actress in a leading role
Nominees-
1. Anne Hethaway (Rachel getting married)
2. Meryl Streep (Doubt)
3. Kate Winslet (reader)
4. Mellissa Leo (Frozen River)
5. Angelina Jolie (Changeling)

My prediction- Kate Winslet in the Reader
I would have liked it if Winslet's role in Revolutionary Road had also got into the nominees list. In the Reader, she was mesmerizing both as the strange older woman having an affair with a 15 year old and as a old woman more eager to remember her affair than her crimes in Nazi concentration camps. Brilliant acting. Sad that Meryl Streep has to be overlooked for this, but Winslet is just too good.

Actress in a supporting role
Nominees-
1. Amy Adams (Doubt)
2.Penelope Cruz (Vicky Christina Barcelona)
3.Viola Davis (Doubt)
4.Tharaji Henson (Benjamin Button)
5.Marissa Tomei (The Wrestler)

My Prediction- Amy Adams in Doubt.
The popular vote seems to be going for Cruz for her portrayal as the wildcat Spanish artist in Vicky Christina and to be honest, I loved the role too. But I guess as far as the Oscars go, Amy Adams' restrained role as a young nun in the church not knowing whether to conform to Streep's strict code of ethics or to be more tolerant towards children and the priest at the parish should get the award.

Directing
Nominees-
1. Benjamin Button
2. Frost/Nixon
3. Milk
4. Reader
5. Slumdog Millionaire

My prediction- Danny Boyle For Slumdog.
No two guesses for this award. What happened at Golden Globes and the BAFTA's will continue at the Oscars too. A brief word for all the critics of the movie from India- Get real! one need not wince because one Britisher descended onto Mumbai and got the pulse of it much better than many of the Indian Film makers. Having said that, we must realize that there are good Indian movies also which show similar/real poverty and struggle but dont necessarily make the cut as they can only be considered as foreign language movies.

Best Picture
Nominees-
1. Benjamin Button
2. Frost/Nixon
3. Milk
4. Reader
5. Slumdog Millionaire

My prediction- Slumdog
Frost/Nixon is good but feels like a documentary. Milk and Reader have exceptional characters really suiting the part played but the rest of the movie does not stand up to them. Button is good but not exceptional. Slumdog scores on all counts- actors, casting, setting, plot and the ultimate happy ending. It deserves the best picture.

Adapted Screenplay
Nominees-
1. Benjamin Button
2. Doubt
3. Frost/Nixon
4. The Reader
5. Slumdog Millionaire

My prediction- Slumdog
Adapting a Mumbai Slum story of lost love and redemption to a global audience replete with song and dance sequences is definitely not easy. and Simon Beaufoy has done a beautiful job of it.

Original Screenplay
Nominees-
1. Frozen River
2. In Bruges
3.Happy go lucky
4. Milk
5. Wall E

My prediction- Milk
Some of the scenes were beautifully etched. I have not yet seen In Bruges or Frozen River so am not qualified to judge exactly. But, i loved the film and I hope it wins this award.

So, fingers crossed in anticipation for Feb 22nd.

And yes, I totally believe that Rahman will sweep the awards in both the categories he has been nominated in. :)

To ISB or to USB or to IIMB?

2009-02-04T10:12:00.000-08:00

That is the question. If the economy was all right and I was not crippled by my personal circumstances, this would be a no-brainer for me to answer. But things are unfortunately different now and then add IIMB to the whole thing and I am now in serious soup.

People tell me that when you know what you want, its very simple to decide. Maybe they are right, maybe I dont know what I want. But what if I know exactly what I want? What if the confusion is between going for what I want and what is easy? Am I foolish enough to give up what is arguably the biggest brand in the Business world simply because I feel my life will be turned upside down? Considering the market and placement scenario abroad, should I not be going for a program that costs me lesser? Should I just give up the IIM brand after craving for it for almost 3 years?

Sometimes there are no easy answers. I know that ultimately I will need to figure it out myself and then be responsible for the future. If only, I could get some kind of a divine sign about the economy and the H1B thingy by 2011......

Recap 2008

2009-01-01T07:07:00.000-08:00

The best and the worst of 2008-
2008 was marked by extremes. The extreme ends to which the human body could be pushed to win in sports, the extreme ends to which people believing in the terror ideology can push the common man, the extreme ends to which language can be pushed to articulate and bring fiction to life and so on. My list of the best and worst of 2008.

Events-

1. Mumbai Carnage
I think enough has been said, written, showcased and sensationalized about this by our uber competitive news channels. I just want to add that its sad to see that the cost of 180 lives has been reduced to the size of Vilasrao Deshmukh’s resignation. If you really see, beyond the noise, no other concrete steps have been taken by our government.

2. Barack Obama-
I should consider myself as extremely fortunate to be spending the best of my youth during the ‘Obama years’. I cannot help but feel jealous of the United States for having people like him spring up and lead America at the time of global terrorism, financial turmoil and environmental damage and compare it to India’s pathetic, impotent and weak leaders immersed in racist, regionalist and sexist vote bank politics.

3. Banking collapse-
I remember feeling extremely sad about not making it through Lehmann Brothers when it had come to IITM in 2006 and was offering the highest on campus. Today it does not exist. Nobody yet knows the full extent of the crises given the total lack of regulation and the wheels that exist within wheels of this mess.

4. Beijing 2008-
For me Beijing’08 stands for a series of improbabilities that have been proved possible. Firstly that no country can beat the US in the medals tally at the Olympics. Secondly that one man cannot win 8 gold medals leave alone 7 of them with world records. Thirdly, that nobody can win both the 100 and the 200 meters sprints in record time. Fourthly that India will always be an also ran at the games. For me, Beijing’08 stands for 4 distinct names - China, Micheal Phelps, Usain Bolt and Abhinav Bindra

Books

1. The White Tiger-
I have to give it to this guy. When the whole world was agog with India shining and India on the way to being a superpower thingy, this guy writes 300 pages on the India that we try desperately to ignore and outsiders don’t know of. Though I personally thought the Sea of Poppies deserved the man booker, this story has to be read for its sheer intensity of feeling and the bluntness of its narrative.

2. Tales of Beedle the Bard-
For all Harry Potter fans, Albus Dumbledore is back in action. Though it is just his comments and not his self that takes us through half a dozen children’s tales ranging from the mystical to the occult, the book takes us back to the magical realm that is still intact in our minds and awakens the child that is hidden amongst all of us.

3. A thousand splendid suns-
Khaled Hossieni has a knack of telling good stories that are phased over 2 or 3 generations through a tight narrative. It is not something that comes easy to most authors. While the Kite runner was endearing, this novel has even surpassed its predecessor. Throw some of the now well known religious extremism, and you have a great novel before you.

Movies

1. The Dark Knight- There are superheroes and there are superheroes. And then there is Heath Ledger. I have him to thank for singularly making 2 of my weekends so pleasurable with his intense and brooding joker act. Without doubt one the finest films of 2008. His death is a huge loss to the film fraternity.

2. Quantum of Solace- Craig cements his place as Bond in this fast paced action thriller. It was a little disappointing to see none of the previous ‘Bondly’ clichés like ‘shaken not stirred’ or Bond’s philandering in this movie but definitely worth watching for Craig and the stunts, not to mention a longer and a more pleasant role for Judi Dench.

3. X-files (I want to Believe)- I love the series. So, I will love the films. Period.

4. Wanted- Coming of Age film for James Mc.Avoy. And of course throw in Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. Delicious recipe. Fast paced.

Eagerly awaited (in 2009)-

1. Harry potter and the Half Blood Prince

2. He is just not that into you (Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Scarlott Johannsson)

3. Terminator Salvation.

4. Revolutionary Road (Indian release in 2009, DiCaprio and Kate Winslet)

5. Slumdog Millionaire – A Hollywood movie about Mumbai.

Movies (Bollywood)

1. Rock on- How many of us would pack being a successful investment banker, patch up with old friends, revive the dwindling influence of rock music and still manage to make all this sound plausible? That too in 2.5 hours. With great music and some lovely performances added to the fray. We love you Farhan Akthar. Please give us more.

2. Fashion- Behind the scenes action of the glamour world. Though a little bit of a drag towards the end, it made us all sit up to the grime behind the glamour.

3. Race- Bad is good, evil is right, revenge is cool, heroes are villains, girls are sluts, men are murderers. Is this the beginning of the glorification of violence in Hindi movies and the rejection of the classic good-will-prevail-at-the-end farce? Whatever it was or was not, it definitely was one hell of an enjoyable ride.

Eagerly awaited (2009)-

1. Chandni Chowk to China (give me as much of Akshay Kumar as you want, and I will watch)
2. My name is Khan (Karan Johar and Shah Rukh Khan)

People making news-

1. Barack Obama
2. Hillary Clinton
3. John Mc.Cain
4. Sarah Palin
5. Ajmal Amir Kasab
6. Benazir Bhutto
7. Asif Ali Zardari
8. Mayawati
9. Micheal Phelps
10. Aravind Adiga
11. Amitav Ghosh
12. Paul Krugmann
13. Heath Ledger

Memorable quotes-

1. “Yes we can”- Barack Obama, Victory Speech, 4th Nov, Chicago.
2. “Why so serious”- Joker, The Dark Knight
3. “ Such small crimes are bound to happen in big cities”- English translation of the Maharashtra home minister’s statement about the Mumbai attack
4. “This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog”- the Iraqi reporter who threw his shoe at Bush during his (Bush’s) visit to Iraq.
5. “So?”- Bush when asked by a scribe about the apparent lack of weapons of mass destruction or terrorist bases in Iraq, wrongly claimed by the US President.
6. “I am a fucking redneck!”- Levi Johnsten, Boyfriend of Bristol Palin, 18 year old pregnant daughter of Sarah Palin.
7. “I hope the nation and the people will forgive my mistakes”- Parvez Musharraf on his resignation speech.

Mimbos (and Moobs)

2008-12-22T07:54:00.000-08:00

I am not claiming to have invented the word (I actually picked it up from a sitcom), but look around you and the world seems to be filled with Mimbos (short for Male bimbos). Of course, I dont mean it derogatorily at all. Infact , its more of a compliment. Let me explain.

I recently saw the movie 'Dostana'. I have a lot of problems with it in terms of portrayal of gays etc., but am not going into all that now. What has now emerged as a leading trend these days is how the hero gives a serious run to the heroine in terms of skin show. Priyanka comes out of the water in a golden swimsuit and John parades around in the briefest of Briefs. Song and Dance sequences were more about who reveals the most, John or Priyanka. By the end of the film, John had emerged as the clear winner leaving Priyanks gasping for breath despite the gold suit.

Gossip columns for the last 1 year have been more about male hairstyles and 6 pack abs than evening gowns. In fact Aamir has gone one step ahead and is now flashing his 8 pack for all to see in his to-be-released 'Ghajini'. And its not restricted to Bollywood alone. Dhoni's and Ishant Sharma's Hairstyles are the talk of the town as is Vijendra Singh's ramp walking skills.

When Unbuttoning around 2 buttons was the norm for men before, now Akshay Kumar advertises us to 'live unbuttoned' and he is not talking of the shirt here. When waxing was a term meant exclusively for women before , now men sport chests so smooth that even the shirt most of the time slides completely off it. When fairness creams and lotions were a girly thing before, now even Shah Rukh Khan advertises for it.

To be frank, all this sudden interest in the dressing up (or down) for men is flattering for women. Equality seems to catching up in more ways than one. And we are definitely not complaining. So keep them coming, guys!

PS: Of course, i do hope you got what 'Moobs' stands for (along the same lines as Mimbo). In Dostana, I could not take my eyes off John's.

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via FoxyTunes

Sleepless in London

2008-12-08T10:13:00.000-08:00

I thought the hugely Victorian architecture shown in movies like Pride and Prejudice and Elizabeth were of Victorian times and hold no relevance to the buildings of modern London. I thought that perfectly clean roads and walkways were a myth propagated by the government in order to lure tourists. I also thought that the notion of Londoners minding only their business and maintaining a strict I-respect-your-privacy policy as something that is just not possible by today's gossip driven, info crazy world.
I was wrong on all 3 counts.

Day 1- 3rd Dec'08

The cold chilly wind blowing at 0 degrees C is the first kiss hello to any tourist landing in london especially in the winter/autumn months. If you are somehow stranded without woolen clothes, god help you!! Even with all sorts of protective gear, making me look like a small rounded elephant, I could still feel the wind stealing its way into my body. Surreal experience. As I was traveling in the bus from Heathrow to Hertford, where I was staying with a friend, I noticed rows and rows of Victorian residential buildings- groups of them identical on both sides of the road throughout the 2 hour drive. I felt almost transported into one of those old English movies. Whether the houses are still built that way or they have survived 200 years, I am not very sure, but they sure were a treat to watch. Not to mention their very colorful sloping roofs.

Day2- 04 Dec'08

The mayor of London definitely knows how to make tourism work for the city. He makes sure that travel from one place to another is a piece of cake by maintaining a very effective underground tube system and charges exorbitant amounts on all tourist attractions in the form of tickets. He makes sure that tourists can reach any place so easily that he/she need not be burdened with the lack of knowledge of the city or take cabs which will cost them the heaven. The ease of finding the location tempts them to pay the visitor tickets to see inside the attraction. A very neat trick, if you ask me but of course, I fell for it too. No wonder then that i spent around a 150 pounds only in tickets/passes to all tourist locations. That is a neat 12000 bucks for 2 days.

Day3- 05 Dec'08

After 2 days of rushing back home before 4 PM to escape the icy winds, we decided to explore the nightlife at London. The first stop was obviously London Bridge or the Tower bridge as it is called. Apparently, the tower bridge opens just 4 times a week to allow ships to pass through it. Imagine our luck when we landed there and it opened right in front of us. It was a magnificent scene. The tourists there were absolutely delighted to see such a huge bridge break in half like a piece of bread and then re align itself. To most of the Londoners though, it meant a 15 min disruption in their schedule and the irritation was quite visible.

Day 5

During my last day at London, I decided to check out what the big hype about Madame Tussads is anyway. Every orkut album about a visit to the USA or the UK invariably has these pictures of the common man with a celebrity theme. As I went around the place, i realized that the statues do not seem all that human when you view them from such close quarters. Somehow on camera though, they come alive. I predictably escaped from going through the chamber of horrors and scream sections after deciding that my feeble heart will not be able to take it. The best part of the thing though was the spirit of London tour where they make you sit on some kind of a train which then goes through this 'london through the ages' thing, all made out of wax with good effects like sounds and lights. Unfortunately pictures were not allowed here.

A few random thoughts about London before signing off-
1. Londoners have a strict no-interference-in-your-life policy. The take privacy to a new level. I could be caught naked in a London street but nobody would as much wink in my direction. (of course, i will freeze first before anything else. :P)

2. London underground tube service is one of the marvels of the world. Go to London just for this.

3. If you have the option, do not visit London in the winters/autumn. Go there in the summer

4. It is most economical to go in a group of 4 for all the tourist group tickets/train group tickets/dorms

Redemption

2008-11-27T08:43:00.000-08:00

Does it ever happen to you that you wait for an event to occur for perhaps years to come and when it finally does, you feel that maybe it was all not worth all the angst after all.

Its almost been 2 years since I wrote this post-
http://networkingthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/01/numb.html

I remember exactly how that post came about. I was returning in train from Hyd to Chennai and was depressed as one favorable result had not come my way. I had written the post specifically so that I could revisit it when things get better for me and I could write about the eventual victory.

How exactly do I feel right now? well, there is a definite relief and a promise of a brighter future. But, as I move forward, the devils of the past still linger. As much as I hope that I have shaken them off, they still remind me of their existence through sounds that refuse to fade- of trains on railway tracks, of paper being cut, of steam going off, of a van chugging along on a saturday evening, of shadowy sniffing, of sarcastic laughter, of tearful goodbyes, of guilty chuckles in a first floor corner room, and so much more.

Humor in uncertain times!

2008-10-24T08:27:00.000-07:00

I wonder what someone wholly unconnected to the credit crisis will think of all the new jargons that are floating around the financial world. A farmer in rajasthan perhaps? or a mom and pop store owner?
Let me call him L.Lets say L overhears a phone conversation between some banker or IT professional sitting next to him while traveling in the train. I present L's reaction of some of the sub prime related statements made by this banker/IT professional guy.

Of course, L does not actually word all these stuff. he just thinks it.

1. "I have got a pink slip"
L: "Pink? god!! you must be one of these newly turned homo guys!!"

2. "XYZ has laid off 10000 people".
L: "XYZ must have a very active libido"

3. " I have lost all my savings in the sub prime market"
L: " You should have obviously invested it in the prime market"

4. " Its a bear run at the stock market"
L: "Since when are they left out of the zoo?"

5. " Lehmann Brothers is dead"
L: " What? all of them? don't they have any sisters?"

6. " IIM grads are anxious about their placements this time"
L: " I wonder what the guy who got 1 Cr. salary from IIM doing now. Did he not go to some company called Layman Bears?"

7. " The investment banks converted the home loan securities into something called collateralized debt obligations"
L: " I should check my Post office security account. I invested around 10000 10 years ago, if it matures to around 3 lac at least, I can pay off my debts."

8. " Its a long road leading to darkness"
L: " Its getting dark, should go home before 7. No point working late hours. Will miss my time with my family."

Something makes me feel that L has probably led his life much more successfully than any good investment banker guy in this world.

Abhinav Bindra

2008-08-13T11:29:00.000-07:00

I am writing this blog after reading this http://abhinavbindra.blogspot.com/ I have posted a comment there :) feels almost like i have talked to him.

I was in school when I saw the hype around the Atlanta Olympics in 96. And wept when I saw Leander Paes with a bronze medal.Americans then were all talking about Micheal Johnson. I was in college during Sydney 2000 and was jubilant when Malleswari won the silver in weightlifting. Americans were then talking of Marian Jones. I was in IIT when Athens 04 was taking place and was ecstatic when Rathore won silver at doubles trap. Australians were then talking of Ian Thorpe. I now work as Beijing 08 is unfolding and am speechless at Abhinav Bindra's feat. Americans are talking now of Micheal Phelps.

The one crucial difference is that other countries know their athletes much before the games go live and the whole nation is aware of their practice schedules, coaches, significant others and the like. In India, the country wakes up to its Olympic heroes only after the feat is done.

Abhinav Bindra will never be the same again. India will never be the same again when it comes to describing sporting legacies. Abhinav will now have his place etched among all columnists who write about India and the Olympics. And why should he not. He deserves every bit of the adulation.
Just a couple of thoughts on the whole Olympic show till now -

1. Bindra is so calm and composed. A bit of thought on some of our over paid but useless cricketers.
2. Most of Bindra s expenses during training and travel were borne by his rich industrialist dad. One wonders what happens to other potential winners who are not so lucky.
3. I will never forget his composed half smile after he won. No theatrics, no hysterics, just a simple acknowledgment. Legendary stuff.
4. Shooting is a sport to be invested in . 2 medals in 2 successive Olympics.
5. China is the highest in the medals standing. We share a border with them.

(It) Sucks in the City

2008-06-20T22:12:00.000-07:00

Movies made out of a book or a series always tend to deviate a little from their path. When you have to compress a 500 page book or a 200 episode series into a 1 and a half hour movie, you are definitely biting off more than you can chew. However, in essentials, they are the same as their original. Which is why I had great hopes on Sex and the City , the movie. As someone who has loved the series, grown up watching the series and idolizes the series, I must admit myself disappointed. As a movie it compromises on the basic premise of the series- that these 4 girls come to Manhattan to find careers and love but are not hung up on either of it.

Carrie Bradshaw eats, sleeps and breathes labels. The combined worth of her apparel, accessories and shoes would probably put Bill Gates to shame. Her singular line throughout the series was ‘Love is one label that never goes out of style’. So I wonder, does Carrie have to end up the way she did in the movie. I mean come on! Big is huge, boring and very unimpressive. Not to forget the cold feet just before the marriage. Somehow it seems like a sad end to the Bradshaw we know.

The series was about successful New York women living life on their own terms. The movie is about how each of them has to be morally vindicated through a relationship. The series was about 4 women who enjoy sex and discuss/write about it. The movie hardly had any sex in it. The series was funny. The only funny scene in the movie was when Samantha is naked and covered in Sushi. The series was intricately linked to New York. The movie was mostly indoors.

Last but not least, the series was about 4 extremely hot and good looking women. The movie is about 4 old, vulnerable and impassive women. No wonder the best scenes were the girl bonding in the honey moon place.

Thoda Wish karo, Dish karo

2008-06-18T04:27:00.000-07:00

Cable TV has never been the same for more than 5 years at a time. There were good old days when our entire family would be hooked on to the 9 PM news as that was the only way one could get to know the major events of the day. So even when Rahul Gandhi was assassinated or Princess Diana was killed by paparazzi, we only got the news at 9PM through the sweet, gentle monotonous voice of the news presenter on DD who would never get perturbed by the intensity or the magnitude of the news item that only he had the power to deliver to a national audience.

Cut to 2008, where there exists a 1000 news channels of various languages to choose from, where each of the channels has a running news at the bottom of the screens, where everything from Vanisha Mittal’s colossal marriage to the earthquake in China is labeled as “breaking news”, where the news presenters are as intense in intonation as the news they are presenting, almost like they have been there and experienced it, where everything from cheesy and sordid affairs to the winner of Indian Idol constitutes news.
Not to forget, the other forms of news like the Internet and the mobile phones.

People say that the 21st century has found newer and faster way of keeping in touch with friends, family, news among other things. However either through an overdose or otherwise, I feel the whole human element is has been completely missed out. Gone are the good old days where the entire family watches news and discusses it over dinner together. There would always be that total silence when the news is being read, so much that if anyone even coughs, he/she would be banished from the TV room. Today I read the news on my mobile phone, my sister on her laptop, my mom from the TV and Dad through the newspaper. Sign of things to come? I wonder.

International women's day

2008-03-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

When in school, pompous ass that I was, I had this absolute airs about myself. You know, like I could do anything I want including bunking classes, ridiculing teachers, reading cosmo from the last bench, discussing sex with a group of friends and what not. There was this steely resolve that I wanted to be known as this cool girl who would do all wrong and still come out tops in exams and life in general. In short, I was god and believed in behaving like one.
Also in school, there was this group of girls whom I would almost never speak to. They included these (in my wrong opinion) ‘conservative’ type who were from these typical patriarchal families. They were these very sober kinds always mindful of how they were coming across in public, mightily afraid of their dads, sincere in studies, fall into the 80-90 percentage bracket and would invariably be shy and insecure. I hated these kinds, though now I hate myself for doing so.
On the occasion of women’s day, I happened to be at one seminar organized by some association celebrating the day. During lunch, I chanced upon this lady who looked vaguely familiar, but I could not place her. I caught her staring at me also a couple of times. Just as I was about to leave, she came up behind me and said ‘hi’. She added that I probably wouldn’t remember but that we had studied in the same school where she was in a different section from classes 6 to 10. I was shocked. Of course, I know her, she was one of those who I had casually tossed into my ‘weak-girl’ category and promptly forgotten about when I left school. She had gone on to equip herself with an engineering degree and got herself a job in TCS. She told me that she was happy, living in Chennai with some friends. Let me call her S
I realize that the problem with me in school was that I was actually blaming the victim. How is S at fault if her family believes that she, by virtue of her gender, is weak and dependant? How is S to blame if her relatives force feed into her that her marriage is more important than her career? How is S to blame if, over the better part of her 18 years, she has been brainwashed into believing that all that her family is saying is for her own good?
I have been brought up to believe in myself, to consider myself as independent, to take my own decisions and have been helped at every point to achieve success. Infact, I have not done much myself. The road has been so clearly laid out, all I had to do was walk. S, on the other hand has had to clear so many debris out of the way, both from the road and from herself. Relatively, I think she has done much better than me.
Yes, we ought to celebrate women’s day. But not for women like Indra Nooyi or Kiran Mazumdar Shaw who have broken the glass ceiling, or for women who through understanding families or partners manage to get good degrees from prestigious institutes and get marketed around by corporates to show gender friendly work places. Women’s day is for those nameless, faceless women who will probably never get famous or have their names and photos splashed all and sundry in magazines, but have managed to pull themselves out of a totally discouraging household and stand up on their own today. Even if, due to circumstances, these women are not able to give themselves the lives that they wanted, they will make sure that their daughters are not so impaired. And of this, I am living proof.
This article is dedicated to S, if she will ever forgive me for being such an arrogant toe rag at school

Hillary/obama

2008-02-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

Was recently discussing with a friend about the US presidential elections 2008. Years are usually embedded in my mind with a significant event. Some personal, some global. Will reserve the list till the end of the article anyway. I thought that for 2008, Beijing olympics would take the cake, however it is fast losing out to the Clinton/Obama race.
Whatever the US has done, especially when it comes to breaking stereotypes or myths, it has done it in style. Large in scale and proportion and unrelenting in efforts, whether it is searching for the Weapons of mass destruction or the next democratic candidate.

Clinton, a successful advocate of the women and children's rights, a well established lawyer, and twice first lady of the White house, probably has all the numbers and history on her side, not to forget the charismatic bill. Obama however is not willing to go down without a fight. The champion of the change campaign, with half the youth of the country backing him, has the "audacity to hope" that he too stands a chance.

In all likelihood the next president of the most powerful country in the world is going to be either black or a woman. With the problems of racism and gender equality still two of the most pertinent global issues (apart from climate of course), this has come at just the right time.

May the best 'person' win.

The devil wears Bata

2007-11-23T08:44:00.000-08:00

Well almost.... In our case however, its a steel factory shoe, with a brand name called 'tiger steel' .However, come saturday, when you are allowed to wear casual, it is always 'Bata'. Like in the movie, we are also ploughing on, hoping that someday, the end result will be favorable. The greatest mystery doing the rounds is ... What if, its like this every where? The eternal debate, that none of us have the guts to even begin to explore, let alone answer. Anyway, I am digressing. Lets get back to the devil

Some experiences (covers a range of us)-

1. It starts with a phone call. you pick it up. The inevitable question, "Where are you?" you mumble something stupid like "sir, am at the warehouse, there's been a leak".
Then the even more inevitable " come to the module urgently" and the familiar click of the line going dead. You reach the module. You are made to wait for 20 mins. Apparently , it was not urgent enough. Then as you are finally called, it is something as stupid as " So!, this purchase order has to raised by tomorrow morning. I will not be available (of course!). you take care" and then you are dismissed , with neither a thanks nor a nod of the head.

2. "So, you have to come tomorrow without fail". Your turn to say something "but sir, it is a sunday... (very feebly). The tone now attains the dreaded pitch "you think the factory can stop because of that? Where is ur customer focus? dont you want us to do the deliveries on time this month? blah, blah," you know you are screwed. Another weekend bites the dust.

3. " Your phone bills will be scrutinized by me from the next month, looks like you are spending a lot on these". Again the feeble attempt at an answer- "But sir, i pay for my personal calls". Falls on Dead ears of course, What did you expect anyway.

4. "You guys seem to be having too much fun. Its almost like you are paid for nothing. When I was ur age, I was literally at the factory till 10 every night." Well! if you did not have a life then, it is not my problem.

5. " How are you finding your job, you seem to be having some problems to deal with?"
F#$%!!! Why did he have to take it in that direction? You mumble "Yes sir! I am doing my best!" A little to enthusaistically, a strategic error. Pat comes the reply . "Then I would say that your best in not enough!" Well! you invited it.

6. The big boss from HO is coming down to visit. You are supposed to ensure housekeeping of your area in general. Takes around 2 days of full focus to attain that. Moving pallets, cleaning, dusting, removing cob-webs, Fresh coat of paint, flooring what not. Then , he does not turn up or worse- turns up and does not bother to visit your place or your machines. You stare at your neatly polished floor. You can almost lick fudge off it. Or wait, maybe your own brains.

7. " Give me a time when the machine will be up and running?". You are innocent and you give them some time based on some illogical calculation of yours. Turns out, that it will take more time given the screwed up nature of the machine electronics. But on the dot that you announced, there is everybody right from the factory manager downwards standing all around you and staring at you. You are hassled, your people are mortified. You can kiss good bye to the machine starting anytime soon. you wait for all these peoople to finish their bitching and go before you can get down to solving the problem.

8. It has been 3 nights since you slept properly. There are perpetual calls " Sir, the material has stocked out" , "madam, the boiler has failed", "Sir, there is no contract workmen". You think that enough is enough, you switch off your phone and fall asleep at home. Let the factory go to hell, it survived without me for 70 years, I am sure it can do 70 more. You are in deep sleep and suddenly there is a knock on your door. Thinking that it is one of your friends, you get up and open the door, still in half sleep. You gasp as you find your boss there. He starts rambling "How can you switch off your phone, dont you know that the machine is critical in the supply chain. The 2 machines before it and the 2 beyond it in the line have all stopped and blah, blah". You suddenly cant help smiling. It is 9.30 in the night, you are in your pyjamas and ur boss is at ur doorstep.

A century of upliftment

2007-09-19T04:39:00.000-07:00

As a recent fan of the google desktop, there is a gadget there that throws up updates from my favorite sites. One of which threw up this article celebrating the 100 years of the bra. It also chronicled the history of the bra with timelines. It made interesting reading. Am rewriting the same with my , well, expert comments. :P

1907: the first resemblance of the undergarment surfaces in France (where else?). it was quite different from the earlier rib crushing, waist reducing whale bone made ancestor and also manages to, ahem, uplift. While it did well, it was more for small and firm breasts. At an age where silicon was just an element and implants were something to do with saplings, it worked!! It was called the corset.

1914: Mary Phelps started the backless brassiere with 2 handkerchiefs and a ribbon. It was the birth of the first modern bra and was patented with Warner brothers whose profits for the same raked up millions.

1920: Probably spurred by the birth of the feminist movement, women suddenly had a huge identity crisis and thought probably that being equal to men first begins with flat chests. It heralded the birth of the ‘boysh’ brand where the breasts were squeezed to the point of suffocation and as the experts claim, the first instances of breast cancer. Reminds me of my experience in grade 10 when my mom made it mandatory to you-know-what and for a week, it was quite an effort to breathe.

1931: The cup, the elastic adjustable strap, the sizes from A to D. This I think was the beginning of the great male fascination with breasts. Navigating their way through hooks and pins, the mystery of the journey probably made the result so much more, err, satisfying(?)

1951: Women love to play games. Especially when they have men hooked (quite literally). So came the built in pads, the removable pads, the inflatable pads and what not. I guess the mood was that if you could change your hairstyle, lifestyle and apparel style, why not your bust style?

1962: Slicone breast implants enters the stage in a big way. Suddenly size matter as much for women as it does for men. Pamela Anderson was probably being conceived at this auspicious moment.

1992: Anderson makes her Baywatch debut. The world was probably never going to be the same again. Throughout the nineties as she did her now on, now off routine with the silicone and redux, her famous lines, “I can see my feet again” and “I need to have my pals back”, are probably immortalized the world over.

2004: Janet Jackson decides that it is time to let loose. And she did not mean just her hair. Whether deliberate or not, the magazines devoured it, columnists still mention it, internet blew is out of proportion and Justin Timberlake’s popularity suddenly sky rocketed.
Every woman I am sure has a story to go with their experience with it. As it completes a 100 years, this is an ode to every girls secret (why is it only Victoria who should have one?)

Of soups and muddles

2007-08-07T10:58:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered why recipes have to be made so artificial. I mean, consider something that reads- 400 grams of sugar in 4L of water mixed with a tablespoon of salt , brought to boil and allowed to simmer for 4 minutes. How the f@#$ are you supposed to have a weighing scale, a timer and a striated cup all at the same time. That too in a kitchen. Not to mention in my case, a new kitchen. Would it not be much simpler to show the quantity through photographs or something.

Anybody who has been at the receiving end of one of these make-fast-foods would understand. The other day I was trying to make some soup and failed miserably thanks to such lousy instructions. The fact that it was the first time that I was trying to some meaningful cooking of course did nothing to help the situation. After half an hour of around 5 failed attempts where my soup had gone from totally dilute to a heavy paste, I finally gave up and settled down with a big bottle of cold water. :(

August/september in chennai is the time of rain water muddles. If you do not have a 2 wheeler and are unfortunate enough to walk to office, then you are definitely going to be soiled with brown spots all over your jeans by the time you reach there. the worst part of it is that you cant even gauge the depth of the puddle of water before you set foot on it. You would think the innocuous little brown surface must be a wet patch and your feet once you place them on it will tell you a totally different story. Then you would reach office with smelling shoes which go 'pach-pach-pach' every time you walk and will make the whole world look up from their desks and look at you. Here is where the great recipe enthusiast's knowledge of measurements would come useful. If instead of printing insane instructions at the back cover of their food product, which helps nobody anyway, they would just go around Chennai and mark each of the muddle with the depth, if would do the poor foot commuters of Chennai a great service. Now they can make an informed decision about which puddle to set foot on and which to ignore and thus reach their destinations much faster and much cleaner. It would also save them some time. Maybe they can use the extra time making soup at home. :)
Long shot, I know. But its worth a try. what say?

Self appraisal

2007-07-18T08:40:00.000-07:00

Its been a year of work life now. Time to take stock. Let me appraise myself against my said objectives laid down a year ago.

1. I will strive to deliver excellence in all my endeavors.
Well, considering that I was given maintenance of 20 state of art machines, which I assumed do not breakdown often, I thought this objective was a given. I mean, I had 5 fitters and 4 electricians with me. Surely they can handle it. So what if I did not know much about bearings and shafts and drives and compressors. As it works out, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Apparently maintenance is the least sought after and most thankless job in this entire world of career options. Maybe just better than a suicide bomber. Because unlike a suicide bomber, atleast here I have a future. So what if it sucks. Nowadays, I have stooped so low that even if someone from production calls me inefficient, lazy and having no technical skills, I manage to forget it in an instant. Call me thick skinned and useless? Well!! Who cares?

2. I will make my bosses happy, no matter what they entrust me with
This again is such a bad objective to set. What was I thinking? Obviously it is not possible. Especially if your boss wants you to find and kill the lochless monster. Well, almost. Only the lochless here is some stupid problem which has been continuing for 10 years and nobody has been able to so as much spot it, let alone deal with it. Unless my bosses here turn gay, I see no other way they could be ‘happy’.

3. I will have a life after work other than just movies or books
A big let down once again. This time though the cause is genuine. I mean, when you are doomed to stay around 2 hours away from the city in some obscure village, I can really not be blamed right? So its been a year and I seem to have forgotten almost half of my classmates names from IITM and the surnames of the other half. My yahoo chat group which used to grow at the rate of almost 10 every month now has hardly been hooked onto for more than a month and worse, my even books and movies seem to have stopped now. Gosh! What is it that I do after coming back??

4. I will write a book.
DOA. Period.

5. I will save atleast 50% of what I earn.
This one has been easy. Considering that I do nothing the whole month, no merriment, no fun, no movies and spend only on restaurants, I have infact saved more than the intended amount. Atleast one objective satisfied.
6. I will be the model employee whom everyone who joins will look upto.
Well they defy look up to me. Most of the times I am at some obscure corner at a height on one of the machines that everybody who comes to complain about some new problem will have to look up to see me.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths:
• Have managed to discover faster ways of doing things/getting things done- Simply call the supplier, and don’t allow him to go home until the work is done.
• Have managed to divert select calls on my cell phone so that the tone would appear busy though am actually not to some ‘important’ people
• Start looking annoyed around the shop floor so that people think I am so loaded and busy that they do not disturb

Weaknesses:
• Do not have 2 separate sim cards so cannot switch off cell phone after work hours (recommendation: have another cell)
• Not completely adept yet at the blame game; the art of transferring blame on someone else though it belongs with me.
• Should learn more efficient ways of coming late and going early without being caught.

overall score : Barely adequate (2/5)

Primates of the corporation- At wits end

2007-06-13T07:48:00.000-07:00

Location- conference room 1 at the factory
Agenda- meeting to decide on the improper lux levels (unit of lighting for the non-enlightened) of some of the flame proof light fittings
My boss, some guys from accounting and me are sitting around a table and the accountant is explaining, why we have screwed up the costs once again. I did not know how I was even involved in the discussion as I was neither an electrical engineer nor was I a CA. However as the culture here demands, I am found sitting there with a bored expression on my face and lux soap running in my mind. Was it Shahrukh who had last advertised for Lux, with the bath tub and the rose petals all over him. Man!! How gay could he be? Ideally I think Paris Hilton is best suited to advertise for Lux for the sheer amount of pink that she wears. Now that she has all the time in the world, being locked up in some jail, she can bathe all day, much to the pleasure of the jail staff and fellow inmates. What if she is in an all-women jail? Well, I am sure there must a couple of Lesbians at least.

Location- Banquet hall in Chola Sheraton, somewhere in Chennai
Agenda- Batch reunion for all of us who joined last year for work (23 of us in all)
The grand old man who hired all of us is lecturing us on how to handle tough people and tough situations and how all of us are facing what we are facing not due to the system being wrong but instead by our own bashfulness and ignorance. Having heard this one speech a lot of times before, I am obviously blissfully immersed in my reverie. ‘How much will this guy be earning for all the speech he makes at various places. 70 lacs maybe , maybe even a crore. Not to mention the millions he must make out of ESOPs. There was a recent controversy about CEO salaries being determined by the market and the company’s performance rather than any other. I wonder what this man thinks of the whole thing. I wonder what I will do if I am in that position. I mean , when you earn so much that a couple of millions makes no difference whatsoever, will you still be worried about your salary. On second thoughts, maybe the CEOs are the only ones who can earn lower in the next year compared to previous. It never happens with us regardless of our performance. Man!! My salary sucks. How do people start families with this? I don’t even have enough for my own survival.’ The old man is going “So, I need all of you to be influencers and not just be influenced, you have to be motivators and not just be motivated. How else will you develop leadership?” Hmm…been there, said that, nothing official about it.

Location- Dublin, A pub in Park Shereton
Agenda- Same batch reunion, this time in a pub.
A couple of cocktails and some tequila shots and the whole group is cackling away to glory. A few people are revealing their deepest secrets, some others are dancing like crazy, and some are watching Rafeal Nadal beat the pulp out of Roger Federer. Poor man! Someday he will win the French open. While right now the man-child Nadal is taking all the glory. A white couple in the group is making out and all of us are unabashedly watching. Soon the group filters out into the dancers, the drinkers and the sober guys. Some people who have never danced before in their lives are shaking their leg. Why do good things last only momentarily? Soon we will be back to our homes and will have to get up the next day to the same boring Monday morning.

Location- office canteen, during lunch
Agenda- Thankfully no agendas during lunch!!
B is speaking of changing the system in which we work. S is the totally given up dude who has risen above all this crap. Y still has some fire left. We are all sitting around and joking about our respective situations. A typical conversation starts. Someone says “so, what did you do tonight?” and then it goes like ‘I raised a purchase order’, ‘I fought with this guy and got this done’, ‘’we had a totally dumb useless 2 hour meeting in the morning’, ‘my boss did not let me have breakfast and started dumping work from morning itself’, ‘I want to go home’.

Location- our flat, shared by 6 of us.
Agenda- crib!!
There are just 4 chairs around which all of us need to accommodate themselves. At any given time one is always on the phone and one is so passionately talking that he/she need not sit at all. So it all works out. Someone makes maggi and we are helping ourselves. Zoom TV (that’s all we get!!) is belting out some Hindi number and some of the guys are rating the actress on a scale of 1 to 10. Any conversation if it does not involve work , will involve books or movies or books and movies. It is fascinating, that in this entire world of topics, we have nothing else to discuss. The world could be crashing to its end, the US might stop Indians form immigrating, India could declare war on another country and we couldn’t care less. Brad Pitt and Al pacino are coming together in Oceans 13 and Deathly hallows is about to be released and that for us is the most important thing in this world. Apart from work that it.

The Vagina Monologues

2007-05-19T05:39:00.000-07:00

Be not alarmed, that this post will be a pervert description of the female anatomy or a feminist piece on the great Indian (single :P ) woman's struggle for existence, which though I espouse, do agree can get quite boring at times throwing up a lot of genuine questions and none of the answers. However, it is a little bit of both.
The Vagina monologues is a play which consists of a series of monologues by women on various aspects relating to fellow women which somehow relates to the Vagina. It can be as beautiful as watching a birth or as painful as marital rape or as horrific as mutilation. They have started a campaign called the V day with the slogan 'Until the violence stops', with V standing for Valentine, victory and of course, the Vagina.

Television has made the funniest use of the term.
Friends- "Unless you have had a cupboard coming out of your vagina, it does not compare"- Rachel Greene, while debating with her sister, which of the two has been through a more troubling time (Rachel has just had a baby and her sister has undergone botox)
Scrubs- "Yeah! I mean, I might eventually need a vagina transplant"- Elliot, to JD after several hours of continuous sex.
Coupling- " Breasts!! Vagina!! bottom!!" - Jeff Murdoch, who finds this woman who does not understand a word of English and decides to say whats the first thing that comes to his mind when he sees any woman.
Coupling- "VAGINAL DISCHARGE! glug, glug, glug and down the plughole" - Susan Wheeler, heavily pregnant, gets mad when commented on the size of her breasts. so decides to psyche out the poor guy who made the observation and is generally shy with women.
Family Guy- "my other penis is a vagina"- Bumper sticker on the family guy show.
Seinfeld- "Aretha?, Mulva? Loleola?, Doloros?"- Jerry, who forgets his girlfriends name and is trying to guess it. All he knows is that it rhymes with a part of the female anatomy. (Not directly related to the word in question but a personal favorite of mine.

The print media is not bad too. Since by and large speaking openly about it is taboo, euphemisms are the order of the day. Some hilarious ones are - Birth cannon, flower, bottomless pit and what not.

Somewhat tangentially related but still relevant is the way in which society or government deals with women. in todays world, at least in India, we suffer from what is called as the 'punish the victim' syndrome. So the government of Karnataka in order to reduce the number of rape cases decides to announce a ban on women working between 8PM and 6 AM. Ridiculous is it not. Based on that logic, we could soon have eve teasing completely stopped by disallowing girls on roads, infidelity avoided by banning women in public places, marital rape avoided by banning women from marrying. (now that would create quite a ripple though it is simple extension of logic if you ask me!! )

Anyway, what is life , if we cannot find humour in the darkest of places (Pun totally intended ).
Next article - 'The Penis dialogues' :P

Designations- design or default?

2007-05-14T10:01:00.000-07:00

Being a part of this huge corporate bonhomie can be quite revealing at times. For whatever they are worth, managers are very finicky when it comes to roles, profiles and designations. While the roles and profiles get smoothened out with time, the designations are the most interesting.

Unlike engineering profiles, where you can have a lot of roles- like junior engineer, Sr. Engineer, lead engineer, lead scientist and what not, in management however you can atmost have an Asst. manager and a manager. The next thing would only be a VP or a CEO or for that matter a Chairman. There in lies the difficulty. With just 2 designations on offer, how can you designate (if that’s a word) a factory filled with say 100 managers. Plus this is a very sensitive issue. I mean, you are actually branding a person with a designation that he/she would bear for the better part of his/her time in the company. It better be worth it. How did we resolve it? Well! We took the funny way out. For us every department has a manager, a couple of asst. managers and a host of superintendents.
Lets start at the beginning of the supply chain.

Inputs. In our factory, the department which looks after incoming materials is called, well, materials. Therefore we have people who are called and introduced as

Asst. Manager, Materials

Manager, Materials.

Superintendent, materials

There are such good jargons available, procurement, sourcing even pricing. However, we choose to call them the ‘material team’ (why am I remembering Madonna and material girl? )

Production. Now this is a place where there are lots of people. So you cant just have one name for it all. So we have innovated. We therefore have

Manager, Reel fed

Manager, Sheet fed

Manager, Pre press
And of course, a whole set of asst. managers and superintendents to follow. Imagine some layman reading our production managers card. I wonder what he would think reel fed as.

Marketing. This is one dept. where the designations come out OK. So not worth going into it.

Engineering . Traditionally engineering is separate from management. Not in our factory though. Here everybody in the engineering dept. is a manager. So we have

Manager, Engineering

Asst. Manager, Engineering

Asst. Manager, Maintenance (yours truly :P )

Superintendent, Engineering

Well that’s not over yet. Among other designations we also have- Manager, cylinder making ; Manager, six sigma; Manager, scheduling. Etc.

Some of the best designations come during moments of crisis. There is a defect in our material which has been bothering us for a decade now. Its called misregister. It occurs whenever print does not register correctly on the board. One of my friends happened to unfortunately work on the project. He is since then called Asst. Manager, Misregister.

Sleepless in Shanghai

2007-04-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

What should have ideally been an idyllic one week of business presentations and official dinners turned out in the end to be one of the greatest rides in my life. In more ways than one.

Sweet moses!! (day 1)
Shanghai is made for tourists. Its inviting, culturally diverse and envelops you and puts you instantly at ease. Yup, there are few people speaking english, but hey, who cares as long as you have your addresses written in Chinese and the cab driver can read? Here you will find the tallest of buildings, the deepest of alleys and the coziest of hotels. It is very inviting. And why not? that is what the chinese intended it to be. The roads are huge, the flyovers giant, the buildings tall and the streets clean.

Upon my word! (day2)
China has a very rich culture. whether it is their traditional long flowing robes or the take-you-back-into-history architecture. And they know how to make money out of this. Their museums and ancient gardens are almost always flocked purely by tourists.

Oops!! (day3)
Slowly the dissimilarities (glaring as they are) come to the fore. Where are the chinese noodles which are so talked of the world over?Why is food only consisting of sea animals and extinct worms? Does the wind have to be so glaring? Do the streets have to be so clean? Why are the shops filled with make believe Rolex watches for 20 yuan (100 bucks) in which you just cannot tell the real from the fake? Can no one speak English? why are the roads so filled with people for miles and miles to come?

Get me home! (day5)

Well! everything I came here to do , i did. But that is only half of the story. The interesting part is that I also ended up doing some stuff which I did not come here to do. This includes tasting 'shark fin soup', buying beef chocolates and shopping more than necessary. Not to mention a stupid shower incident where it took me ages and some scalded parts before I could figure out the knobs and also a very 'official' dinner where almost everyone except me was dressed in a business suit!!

Been there, done that, nothing official about it! (day 5)

Maglev, short for magnetic levitation is a train that travels from one part of Shanghai city to the airport at 430 km/hr. Around 30 kms are covered in 7 minutes flat. The aerodynamically designed train is a treat to watch and sit on.

Thus ended- Shanghai dairies.

Lead, Lady

2007-04-08T09:10:00.000-07:00

Van Heusen, the famous men's apparel brand has newly rolled out womens wear. Their print ad is really impressive.It shows a well dressed woman in formals sitting down on a chair. She covers roughly about 1/3 of the A4 sized page. Another 1/3rd is covered by text and the rest is a dull pastel green. Am reproducing the text here as it appealed a lot to me.

"When I was young, they told me to sit straight, to sit still, to sit in a corner, to sit with my legs together, to sit with my legs crossed, to sit demurely , to sit with my shoulders squared, to sit with my chest out, to sit with my head down, to sit quietly, to sit so as not to attract attention, to sit with the girls, to sit in a row, to sit on the back seat, to sit and not stand, to sit because others were sitting, to sit and just listen.

Now, nobody sits till i do."

LEAD, LADY

My wing

2007-03-21T07:59:00.000-07:00

Silly, sruti, punnu and divya (4th sem) - outside my room.

A casual conversation with somebody at work brought out a whole range of emotions that I never thought existed. I suddenly realize that for 4 years, I had lived with a support system that was steadfast, unwavering and unrequited. Anytime I needed help, all I had to do was to open the door and surely there would be someone in the corridor that I could talk and unload myself to. She did not have to be my best of friend or branch mate. She shared my wing. Period.
Unlike some of the wings in other hostels or other campuses, ours was, at the face of it, never a very united one. We went to the mess in twos and threes, which for a wing of 10 meant around 3-4 groups. We ganged up in someones room and cribbed/gossiped about another wingie. We had some serious mug pots who disappeared around a month before the exams into their rooms never to come out till the end. None of us really knew much about the personal lives or sometimes even CGPA s of some people in our wings. But yet, we were in a strange way united. We did the same set of things normal girls do- including senti movies, boys, crying, night outs, dressing up (or down :P), sex chat- you name it.
We have felt jealous of each others achievements but our celebrations have been vociferous.
We have hidden acad related stuff from each other but the one night before the exams have seen some of the best instances of solidarity
We might never know who the wingie's boyfriend is though sharing of tips/accessories before a date is almost a rule.
Photographs/movies/songs/porn etc are always shared no matter whether the other wingies needed it or not.
We also had an unwritten code about our afternoon siestas- no noise in the wing between 1-4.

Each of us were also unique in our our own way. With qualities which could easily switch between strength and weakness as the situation demands. Our wing had-
The sleepy one (silly)- Even God would give up trying to wake her. It usually requires 2-3 wingies banging on her door for eternity before she decides to open her eyes a wink. Now at purdue with another wingie.
The scary one (Div)- Her sheer size scared the hell out of many people (guys included). Her PR ensured a constant gang up of girls in her room, much to some body else's chagrin. :P Now at G.Tech continuing her student sojourn.

Silly, deepti and purva (7th sem)- the garden was clogged by heavy rains. And they decided to get "happy"

The sweet one (punnu)- Best known for for 20 times a day bathroom ritual, she can scare you with her continuous acad crunching night outs. Was the favorite among the guys too. Has her hands full with a PhD now.
The small one (neha)- From a small town girl to a high flying oil rigger, from a 100 % attendance record to a nocturnal with no idea of classes or syllabus, from a simple shahrukh fan to heavy porn, she is known for her extremities. Right now in some corner of the world and a bank balance that can render you speechless
The big one ( deepti)- She was our ultimate funda god. In almost anything. And her room always had interesting stuff both in soft and hard form. We had a code that the moment she starts speaking tennis, we should run for our lives. In schlums right now.
The unpredictable one (kiwi)- There are somethings that she would personalize like her computer or her favorite salwar, there are some others that she would demonize like her BTP prof or some of her branch mates. One of the two people in the wing to take the phd decision pretty early.

Divya, deepti and kiwi (6th sem)- All three of them would kill for food. Quite literally. Especially non-veg. There have been entire saturdays spent on discussing restaurants.

The weird one (shubs)- present so close to the bathroom, she would ensure a constant supply of songs for anybody going to have a bath. Nobody knows when she is awake though and none of us have been able to figure out her long absences from the room though. We did not dare ask.

The naughty one (sruti)- The ultimate source of gossip for all in the wing. If she stops outside your door, it means you will get to hear atleast something cheesy about somebody we all knew. Good at pulling legs and in casual conversation, pretty much non-existent in the wing from the third year onwards.

The mugoo one (goda)- Probably the luckiest amongst us for she is still in IITM, completing her dual degree, her fan list extends into hundreds. She has some strange totally mauled stuffed animal in her room that she simply cannot sleep without.

kiwi, punnu, anu and me (final sem)- Probably the best of holis. All placements done and apps settled. The color stayed on for 2 weeks and the memories perhaps forever

Apart from the wingies, we also had some 'psedo wingies' who literally spent all their time in our wing. Apart from the regular flock of juniors who always visited Divya's room, we also had our own batchmates- anu, ramya, purva, rangu and siri popping in and out. The fact that at any point in time, atleast 3-4 wingies were always awake probably helped. Also some of our batchmates who stayed on the fourth floor never liked to walk all the way upstairs and therefore settled down among us. The sheer strength of the muggoos during exam time also played a crucial role.

The civil girls having a dress up party(7th sem)- Ramya and purva are all smiles. Silly has as usual forgotten something. Mallika is hidden in the background. Neha of course thinks it is all very silly. I have no idea how I popped in. That too with a book :P

The wing in our mess. We dont always eat together. But ensure that when we do, it is captured. :D

The best thing about us is that if any of us were asked to go back to the second year and do it all over again, I think we would have done exactly the same thing. The same rooms, the same timings, the same gossip, the same movies, the same mess and the same people. Of course the best things in life do not last. What is left are perhaps the thoughts. Lest I forget this one, this post will capture it for a long time to come.

The power of 'cc'

2007-03-14T11:43:00.000-07:00

As a student, I have often wondered what the hell does the 'cc' icon in the mail stand for. I mean you need to send an email...send it across to everyone who you think would be interested in reading it. Why should the cc or the bcc matter at all in your mailing list. Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to corporate culture. Here the 'cc' is much more than just one of those icons which you never use. it is the main one. Lets take a few examples.
Back then when I was new to this 'working world' (gosh, has it really been that long), I needed some work done by the marketing dept. Each time, I got a lot of excuses....some genuine, some fake...at any rate, the work was not getting done. My boss was breathing fire down my neck so ultimately, I told him that marketing was not helping. He decided to take it up with the national sales manager and asked me to tag along. As the conversation started the sales manager asks me "when did you ask for this, I have no recollection". I was dumbstruck. I had personally asked this man almost 3-4 times and here he was acting like something was wrong with me.
Lesson learnt---always keep your proof in writing. when you want something...mail it across. Even if the man is sitting in the next cubicle.

Dutifully, the next day, I mailed it to him. Even then , there was no adequate response. It was then that my boss taught me the power of 'cc'. He told me, "whenever you want something done...write a mail to the concerned person and then 'cc' the mail to his boss as well as your own boss. That is the trick. A 'cc' mail is a power tool. It is written proof that you have asked for work and a subtle way of telling him that his boss knows too. If it still does not get done, forward the same to the next level of hierarchy and so the process continues.
Since that day, I have wielded the power of 'cc'. The first thing I find out if I need to get something done from someone is who is his/her boss. So that I can 'cc'

However 'cc' has its own disadvantages. It can of course be used against you as much. Anything that comes to you now also gets cc'd to your own boss. But I realized as you go higher and higher up the corporate ladder, most of you mail box are only cc's. So I figure, the CEOs of most of the organizations would be sitting in front of their laptops reading mails from all levels of hierarchy about what some person did not do yet or what some other person wants someone else to do....
Scary..dont you think. When we all thought we will grow out of childish complaints and back biting...this is all they teach you to do..... officially and elegantly.

Uneasy sits the conversation!!

2007-02-21T06:18:00.000-08:00

Mortals only dream of it. Imagine the scene- Its been a long hard day of clueless meetings, useless mails and irritating phone calls. As I come back home and take a shower, there is a pleasant door bell and the chauffeur is waiting to pick you up. I sit in a nice A/c car (albeit ambassador) and a cool one hour drive to one of Chennai city's best restaurants- park shereton. There is a reservation already in my name for the buffet. Its a cool 7 course dinner
1. starters
2. soup
3. Main course 1 (pasta, tofu, indian bread with the choicest of vegetables)
4. Main course 2 (pizza !, noodles, cheese)
5. Desserts 1 (chocolate mud pie, sweets )
6. Desserts 2 ( fruit salad with ice cream)
7. Espresso
After the meal, I am asked to sign on the bill after which I am escorted outside by a cute guy who asks me if I enjoyed the meal. Then I get to go back home in the car and sleep peacefully. Two more things- I dont have to pay and I get to do this twice every week.
I implore anyone who reads the above to find one flaw in my apparently perfect lifestyle. Right?

Well! lets do it all one more time. This time, let mejust expand the scene and get some more people into the picture.
We run a manufacturing firm and for that we need machines. the machines are so sophisticated that they are mostly bought from abroad. In our case, it is from Switzerland and Italy. For installing the machines of course , the engineers come from the respective countries. As is the custom in most of the european countries, the engineers dont really speak English and we of course speak nothing other than english. As they stay on almost a month during installation, sometimes 5-6 of them for a given machine, they soon get bored of the food as a result of which the team handling the project is supposed to take them out for dinner as often as possible. Here starts the problem!
As we share a client- customer relationship, the engineers are usually not happy with the kind of materials we provide to them and we are not happy with the kind of money they charge us for the services. As they go about installing the machines, they leave no stone unturned in scolding us for the slightest possible sway in timelines and we at screwing them at the slightest possible delay in promised shipment. As a result, uneasy sits the conversation between the 2 groups.
However, as some of our senior managers have set the tradition by taking them out for dinner and we are of course supposed to follow suit, no questions asked, I somehow end up the scapegoat in the dinner stuff. Does not matter if we have had fights during the day over a few hundred euros or if we have promised a heat exchanger which is over 2 weeks delayed from our side.
There's more. We have a language problem. Some of them speak french and the others Italian. They do speak english (if i can call it that) but in a funny accent and grammar that a 10 year old will be ashamed of. Some examples-
the italian says - " Yr Boss spak witme and promise for comprossor. I no got it. "
in other words he wanted the compressor that was promised to him. Phew.
the french one - " I knoo is not your fault....but you shoood huh. Nothing come on time heer."
what he means is that we are all useless.
Imagine 8 hours of trying to decipher such remarks and horror of horrors have another 3 hours of the same - over dinner.
As I sit in the posh hotel with the handsome waiters and the impeccably adorned tables with 2 Italian and 2 French guys who, by the way, are totally oblivious to my presence and are chatting away to glory in their respective tongues about how our people including yours truly totally suck at project management, I am left wondering about when this agony will end.
By the time, I figure out what they are trying to tell me from the bits and pieces of english and take some more scoldings about how all their other clients are perfect and can do no wrong, my appetite is completely lost, I am sleepy and my jaws are aching from forced, artificial laughter.
While they all go on to have the above mentioned 7 course meal, I have a hastily managed naan with a palak paneer and some sweet thrown in.
The ordeal gets over at around 12 in the night as thats how long it takes to come back home after dropping them off. In another 7 hours, I would be facing them again to start another long , hard day.
As I get out of the restaurant, I can almost feel the chocolate mud pie looking at me in disdain and the pasta looking sympathetic. God! look at all the food I could have had if only the conversation was not riddled with so many awkward pauses and there was clearer flow of information between the 2 groups.
As someone rightly said " you cant have the cake and eat it too."
I might as well be the only person in the entire world who prays everyday that it should not be another day of a 5 star dinner.

Numb

2007-01-16T09:36:00.000-08:00

Its one of those times when life decides to play games with you. Mind you, I welcome life's challenges, but there are times when it cruelly laughs at your naivety and treats you to physical situations that astonishingly depict your own life.
As I sit on the train bound from Hyderabad to Chennai, I cannot help but wonder how little doubts strewn here and there can accumulate and assume gigantic proportions that no amount of courage can mitigate. The very attributes that I was so proud of about myself now begin to look like the upstart intentions of a poor country girl. How could I have been so foolish. Could I not have thought of a Plan B just in case? Is it not too lofty to entrust all goals and aspirations to one event only? Am I weaving a web so dense that it will be difficult to come out of ? Did I actually ask for this? What was I thinking?
Well into the night, the stations come and go announcing their arrival through a string of lights that die down almost as soon as they come by. Its like life telling me "look, I dont give you too many opportunities. Take the ones that come by before they fade out just like the station lights." A life which a year back seemed so rosy, I could almost smell it. A life which a year back held no clues to the things that were to follow suit. When time seemed to lie in waiting for me to laze around and smell the lilies. Now time has become my greatest enemy. It seems to be crashing down on me before I even know or am prepared for it.
People tell me that it is always better to face the realities of the world much earlier than you are prepared for it. It helps you grow stronger, more rational about the eventualities ahead. But I thought I was done with my struggling. I burnt the midnight oil when others were fast asleep, I had toiled on when others had given up, It was a demon that was working inside me, all for a future that I had envisaged as heaven. Somewhere something has gone dangerously wrong.

Luckily however, there is a way out. But it will not come without a fight.
Another epic battle invites me. As I prepare myself to face it, I just hope that the killer instinct and the victory-at-all-cost-no-matter-what-it-takes attitude has not died down. It has been a while since i tested it, it could be rusty but the spark should still be alive somewhere. This time, I promise, the fight will be harder, fiercer and more intense. Every little setback will align my thoughts and actions more clearly and every little victory will be seen as a further motivator. As if reading my thoughts, a new station comes by and I am treated with blinding lights that this time do not fade away but instead stay on. All it needs is that one faithful promise to oneself. Of resolve, of struggle and of a better future ahead.

The year that was

2007-01-07T05:13:00.000-08:00

As I sit down to look at the year 2006 as it went by, I cant help but think that I am slowly turning into Bridget Jones. I mean, I am not fat though am pretty much everything else that Bridget Jones was famous for- am a misfit at work (read that here), get pretty awkward at social situations , don't have a boyfriend yet, and spent new years eve with a female colleague in a restaurant where everybody else had come with either a family or a boy/girl friend.
Anyway, I am drifting. So lets list down all that happened in 2006 and all that did not.

Got one of the highest paying jobs in IIT Madras- promptly started considering myself as god's gift to mankind. :)
CAT 2005 results manages to make me mortal again. Resolve to do an MBA only in Harvard or Wharton without realizing that it requires min of 4 years of sensible workex :(
Spent the whole of my last semester watching Seinfeld and movies. Before long realized that there is something called a B.Tech project and the entertainment stops there. :(
Somehow manage to complete a hastily managed a mid term viva in teeth modeling and get out without an extension. :)
Towards the end of the semester, realized that CGPA (cumulative grade point average, measured to a max of 10) was slowly slipping to the wrong side of 8 and so made some adjustments in lifestyle to ensure that it got back to decency.
Started my first job on a high with a great induction in one of the finest hotels in India. Self esteem at the highest possible level.
Divisional induction starts and reality hits me for the first time. Anyway was confident that I could find my way through this. After all, Wharton was calling :)
Slowly things start falling apart, realize that I am not meant to be a manager so early in my life.
Struggle with understanding people and politics in corporate life. Get unfortunately caught in between the egos of two big bosses and end up a 'little sore tomato'
Vow never to treat any of my subordinates this way and then realize that I dont have any subordinates yet
Finally find what I really want to do in life. Resolve to see myself at that point by 2011
A very good friend leaves for the US. A good school friend whom I had lost touch with finally came around after 2 years of trying to contact her.
After 3 years of longing for it- get a cool looking laptop for myself - for free . Whats more, my mode of transport improves from smelly sleeper class in trains to the more 'corporate' Jet airways :)
Bought myself a sony ericsson cell phone as a gift for surviving 6 months in a very stressful environment
Watched a lot of movies. Most of them in the first week of release.
Learnt to say no. Quite well infact.
Made some real good friends.
Got a Bachelors degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. My greatest achievement till date. Am still so proud of it
Started blogging and have been contributing with regular posts

Well, the year has not been bad entirely. Probably slackened a bit on the 'thinking about my future' bit. Will make up for it this year.

Postings? Ya right!!!

2006-12-27T07:29:00.000-08:00

December is the time for postings. Work profiles, responsibilities, defined roles, designations, blah blah..... Or so I thought. After fighting so hard for something like this for the past 4 months, I was obviously very excited at the prospect of officially becoming an employee. When the role was being explained to me, I thought it sounded OK. I mean, I was put in engineering as a part of the new projects line. My mind was racing
'Wow!! Asst. Projects manager, how cool that sounds.'
'Must involve phone calls, MS projects softwares, maybe even the coveted travel!'

First day I landed at the office, well, I was not allowed inside. After spending 15 embarrassing minutes at the gate and calling up all sorts of people none of whom knew I existed, I managed to go inside with a 'visitor' badge. Well!! no problem, things will get better as soon as I see the works manager. So it seemed :(

Waited half an hour before I got to go to his room. Thankgod, he knew I was coming. He explained briefly what the project involved and it was then that i got the first inkling that it was not what i thought it was going to be. This man was describing construction and civil works and I was assuming something like machine parts and stuff. Anyway iin the end he said, 'So, why dont you go and see the site. you might have to spend most of ur time there from tomorrow. I will ask Mr J to escort you.

So I am at the site. Well, there are no machines here...machines are going to come in some months. Currently they are just doing the walls and stuff. What the hell am I supposed to do here. And by the way, I am supposed to wear a helmet. Safety rules you see....but why is the helmet designed to funnily? My whole head does not fit at all and infact the whole thing protrudes out of my head in a silly angle. I soon realized that this helmet can just hold a head with a little hair, not someone with more of it, and definitely not someone with a big curly pony tied at the back. The damn helmet was only designed for men!!!! Notwithstanding the silly glances I got from the construction workers, I let my hair down (no pun intended) and put the helmet on....Now the rest of the hair which could not be held inside formed a nice little envelop which obstructed most of my face. Nice beginning !!

To top it all, the factory is located 30 kms from Chennai city and I am supposed to travel either by train or there is a Bolero which escorts some of the other managers but for which I should be willing to get up at 7 at leave at 8 in the night. Wow!! that makes is a 11 hour workday. Now I work as many hours as an investment banker, for a fraction of the money :(

Here is hoping that someday, many years later, I will read this piece and laugh at it as a learning experience and hopefully not relate to it then too.

If only I had work to do!!

2006-12-13T01:20:00.000-08:00

I would readily give up night time booze
And trade it in for apple juice
I can stop my cribbing sessions too
If only I had work to do!

My brain is being slowly eroded
My heart is already jaded
My body is tired of playing teakwondo
If only I had work to do!

Position the product in the consumers sight
Reduce his burden by keeping it light
Discuss strategies day and night
Implementation however is not your right
I would still not word these tales of woe
If only I had work to do!

Thought I could get to see the country
Thought my bank account will be overflowing in bounty
Thought hotels, restaurants and friends would be aplenty
Without these, I could have still sailed through
If only I had work to do!

Where art thou?

2006-11-29T22:57:00.000-08:00

We started out at friends in school. She was very different from the other girls. For one, her IQ seemed much higher. And second, she was a loner. While theoretically i knew her since the second grade, we started talking only in class8 and were good friends in 9th and 10th.
In school, atleast till grade 8, I was a pretty average student. Was quite a late bloomer as far as studies were concerned. But having slowly learnt the ropes, I was quite serious in grade10, what with the board exams and all that. Anyway, I am drifting.
This girl, let me call her A, thought me a lot of things- mostly about breaking school rules, not doing homework and the like. But her best attitude was confidence. And man! she had tonnes of it. I think some rubbed off on me too. She was supremely intelligent, was the darling of the teachers, got marks without mugging at all and what not. Most of her times her vocab used to beat us all hands down. That is when the first pangs of jealousy starting hitting me. I did not know back then but it was slowly eating me up. I had to pretend nothing was the problem in front of her but it always lingered at the back of my mind.
I remember all the things we used to do then. She was an important reason in making the last few years in school enjoyable. And frankly i learnt so much from her even academically. she encouraged me to read, discussed lessons with me, spoke about future and stuff, practically everything. I still remember her plans of becoming a teacher of History eventually.
Anyway, once school was done, I slowly lost touch, more deliberately than anything else. There was a time, when i used to tell my sis to tell her I was not at home even if I was.
She has done great for herself. I never doubted that. But by the tiime I realized that I had totally spoilt a good friendship, it was, i guess, too late.
Its been 5 years since I last spoke to her. Have been desperately trying to get in touch. But as they say ' the more badly you want it, the more difficult it gets'. My fear though is that if I do manage to track her down, she may not remember me :(

Marketing gyaan

2006-11-20T10:03:00.000-08:00

Have not officially done an MBA yet. but thanks to the place I work, we more or less learn the essence. Among my colleagues here are some guys who swear by the huge collosal subject of marketing. They all tell me that FMCG marketing is the greatest thing in the world. I agree it is difficult but ultimately doesnt it all boil down to logic and common sense.
I mean how difficult it is to learn to say 'margin structure' and 'demand forecasting' and 'distribution channel'. Believe me that is all that marketing is in the end. After all, after making the product, you have to sell it. And for selling it you have to distribute it all over the country. and to distribute it, you have to pay people who do it for you. That is in a nutshell- margins, forecast and distribution respectively. Common sense aint it? Too uncommon maybe. :)
And then there are great books written on the subject. One such thing is the 4P's of marketing. It goes as- product, price, place and positioning
Product and price are well understandable. place is which part of the country you put your product in. for example a grocery channel or a convenience channel
Positioning is where the consumer/customer (there is a difference in the two by the way ) positions the product in his/her mind. For example- think of colleges and it is always IITs-NITs-others or else think of soft drinks and its pepsi-cola-Thumsup-others. Limca and sprite would figure seperately as the non-cola drinks and so on. So brand positioning becomes important if you want to differentiate your product.
What exactly is so interesting or exciting about this, I have not been able to make out. If its really as good as people make it out to be, lets hope that I can gain an appreciation of this someday. For now, I think I will stick to operations and not take up silly marketing projects just to have an 'cross functional' training as I had mentioned to my boss for taking it up in the first place. I cant be blamed too. Thought I can go to delhi for a market survey as it is famous for the product under study. Little did I know that he would say 'Take chennai as representative market and we will assign somebody senior to do it for Delhi' :(

Of great appraisals and not so great results

2006-11-14T07:29:00.000-08:00

November is the time for appraisals. Its your performance review. dunno how seriously its taken in other companies, but its damn serious here. especially if its the first one. Seniors scare you by telling stuff like "you know, this file is going to decide your promotions and increments", " First impression is your best impression,dont screw it up", and even bizzare ones like "I believe they send it home as a progress card"

Whatever it is , its something that has to be done with. The first learning in corporate life is to make your learnings and achievements (if any) look larger than life. So hordes of management gyan and the english thesaures yields stuff like
" I have maintained an optimal balance between the macro and the micro" (read "I have neither concentrated completely on the detail nor do I know the anything strategically")

"I have availed of every opportunity to give myself a cross functional training in all the departments" (read "I have found out all about the good looking marketing manager, the finance head's latest car and the good restaurants around the operations area")

I am completely networked with all my other colleagues (read "I speak long hours on phone about latest crushes and earliest gossip")

"I am learning values which will stand me in good stead for the rest of my career (read "values? who?)

The apprisal process itself is a one week activity where you are given some 5 forms to fill and you are supposed to write stuff like strenghs, weaknesses among others. Its scheduled for sometime next week. lets see how it goes. keeping my fingers crossed right now. oh! I cant type if I cross my fingers :) So not keeping it crossed. Will pray to almighty instead. Wow! when was the last time I remembered Him? I am sure He is not going to help this time around. Let me call up mummy and cry. But wait a minute. She cant do anything now. I seem to have run out of options. maybe the best thing for me to do would be to bring out 2 dictionaries, 3 Thesaures' and 1 apprisal form and fill it to the best of my ability.

The spirit!!

2006-11-07T09:36:00.000-08:00

Its been a full 5 months since I joined ITC Ltd. So here are some flavours of the biggest cigarette making and marketing firm in India.

Well our day typically starts the minute we step out of our office. Which is around 9 in the night. "At 9 PM everyday, when the whole world sleeps, ITC employees awaken to life and freedom"

this is a shot I took after getting out of the office building. The moon is shining bright and we are ready to start our day.

We usually come back to the guest house. This is filled with great furniture, superb cooks, great rooms but it is essentially a jail. You cant go out because you have the biggest of managers and even your immediate bosses as your neighbours. We all dread going out and bumping into one of them. Its enough having to face them in the office. And within the guest house, it is the same group of guys whom you work with in the office. So what do we do? we indulge in our private boredom beating tasks. It could be the telephone for those with significant others in their lives or else internet as is the case with me or else THIS.

This is my friend Abhi, who sells 'mangaldeep' Agarbathi (An ITC brand , if you did not know) and of course COOKS. His chapathis came out in all weird shapes though. Was it my imagination or did they all resemble in some way, his boss' features. Now I understand why he beat the dough a little more times then necesary.

When we do decide that its time to go to sleep, which is around 2-3 in the morning, we might have some unexpected guests visiting us. Like some of our other unfortunate colleagues from the factory. While we get to stay in chennai city, they stay around 25 kms away in a packaging factory quarters (they make cigarette cartons). When they come over, we usually have a space crunch in the guesthouse, so we bring over some extra mattresses and lay them out on our floor for them to sleep. Even then the space issues are not totally solved. So the guys adjust

This is bikram (the visible one ) and Hari (the invisible one) They work in the factory. One looks after supplies and the other quality. The blanket is a luxury btw, they flip for it.

Our day ends when after 6 hours of sleep, we all get up and go into something called our "respective offices". Well what we do there inside will be another blog altogether. Will write it when i figure it out myself. But to give you a flavour, here is a letter whihc was addressed to one of my colleagues.

This is the parcel which came to my colleague, Gurtashika, who is called Tashi fondly by us mainly because we could not pronunce her name. Her initial letter used to come addressed as Mr. Gill, Now she is happy that atleast they are calling her by a lady's prefix. So what if she is yet to marry. :) More funny is the fact that everytime she has to make phone calls to converters, they say "Oh! Gilly madam, Good morning."

Flickr

2006-11-02T10:08:00.001-08:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Official parties

2006-10-29T06:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I hate them. Totally. But it is something which comes as being a part of this huge corporate nonsense. Anyway I was there on time 8 o clock and there were only some light and stage guys. I prepared myself for 3 hours of sporting an artificial smile and having meaningless conversation. I mean how bad can it be? it was just 3 hours of my hopefully long lifetime. Atleast it was predictable.
The first shock came when I was unassumingly standing in front of the bar and suddenly a manager (a big one) comes up to me and says "your husband is around here?" This was the first time someone had said that to me. I was all embarrased and angry at the same time. I blurted out "No. I am single" and quickly walked away from there.
No problem. One small set back. I can still pick up the crumbs. Or so I thought. I dont wear salwar suits often. Neither do I wear the heeled sandal. except of course on days like these. So I was having a tough time adjusting to all the extra cloth and uncomfortable leg gear. The guy who goes around with the started came and offered me something which was called "Paneer fry". I usually eat less on parties. More due to the fact that I have a cell to carry on one hand and a dupatta to adjust on the other than anything else. I made what I would call my first deliberate error. I took one of those. It was not bad in taste though just when I was placing it in my mouth, my dupatta decided to fall off me. Normally it is ok, as I can simply put it back. But now with paneer on one hand and my cell on the other, it was kind of difficult. Anyway I had no other option but to put it back in place with my paneer soiled hand and walk around with a stain at a very strategic place on the dupatta for the rest of the evening. I decided I had had enough of it. So I just sat down in a corner and decided not to resort to any other gimmicks till the party finishes.
So there goes another work party and another opportunity to teach myself to have fun in these circumstances. If I ever quit working anytime in my life, I think the reason will be Work parties more than anything else.

Adolf Hitler

2006-10-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

I dont know if it is even right to be admitting all that I am going to admit in this blog. But if its on the mind, it might as well be on the blog. I had never liked history in school, but I loved reading about the second world war. I never enjoyed war movies so much, but I recently watched downfall and it was great. I always have found genocides undigestable, but I have lapped up every article written about the holocaust. In short, I admire Adolf Hitler and I hate myself for doing that.
Here is a man who thought he could conquer the whole world (how close he came to doing it!). Here is a man who systematically convinced a whole nation to believe that killing of jews was a noble thing to do (How effectively he has done it!). Here is a man who had a million soldiers who had dedicated their lives to his servince (How loyal they have all been to him!). Here is a man whom I admire (how I hate myself for this!)
Hitler was obviously a bad man. He has wronged a whole set of people- the Jews, The Germans, The Russians, The Americans. He is probably rotting in hell right now. But that does not stop me from admiring his sheer Vision (for Germany), his influencing skills, his speeches, his commitment. The more I think about it, the more I am awed. How can this man convince a whole nation to do wrong and not feel sad about it. Did no one in the entire period of 30 years realize the insanity of it all. Was there not one German who could start a revolt, however small.

Hitler had mass hypnotized the German people. There can be no other explanation . Period.

The confusion of choice

2006-10-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

On one hand we have the world getting simpler thanks to all its tecnological advances. I still remember 1996 when as a high school student I used to walk to the post office to send letters to cousins and friends on dussera, now I send an email. I also remember truck calls which we used to make to chennai once every month which were eagerly looked forward to and was usually planned for 10 days in advance, now I just use my cell. On the other hand, we have different kinds of problems now. What to choose. We have a hundred different ways of doing the same thing. And most of the times deciding which one to choose consumes most of our time. Let me give you an example.

I recenly ventured to buy myself a new cell phone. As a student, I never thought beyond nokia for a cell as that was the best in any entry level cell phones.But as a working proffesional, I thought I will give myself a gift. So began my process. What did I want? Music or Camera?( I cant have both as that would go out of my budget). a cell which opens or a cell which slides? a cell which is slim and sexy or a cell which is rounded and smart? Longer battery life or higher memory? By the time I was done with my internet and showroom searches I was both exhausted and amused. With so much on offer, how do people really choose what they want. There is a important marketing term called product positioning. It means where exactly ur product is positioned in the consumer's mind. For example in mine, nokia is GOD!, sony is good for music cells and motorola for sylish and slim cells. But even within these , the range in mind boggling. I had set my mind on the sony walkman series but then i could not decide amongst them which one to choose. After a looot of deliberation , I finally bought Sony W300i. Its lovely though its interface is not as good as nokia's.

The only crib though is the quality of the camera. Its VGA and not of good quality either.

This is an image I took with my cell of a really sweet small girl when we had gone to a temple in TN. The image as can be seen is not very clear. I decided to put it though because the girl was really cute and she was very perceptive. Here's hoping that she will grow up to do good things in life.

Random

2006-09-29T23:11:00.000-07:00

This is a game that I used to play in school with one of my friends. It goes something like this- U r supposed to take 10 mins and jot down whatever it is that first comes to your mind. however evil, however embarrasing. In school it used to throw up funny stuff even to the extent of revealing who we have secret crushes on or who we are jealous of. So here goes...I am going to spend 10 mins writing down whatever comes to mind. I will however not mention names as that would get me into trouble. :)

I think I suffer from Obsessive compulsive disorder, I just cannot stop cleaning my laptop keypad again and again and again. My god this lady generally keeps throwing her weight around just to show who the boss is, quite literally too- weighs 100kgs. I want to go back home. I am not in the mood of working today. I absolutely love my new cell phone. It is fabulous. I am so proud of it. Why is it that I dont wish workers in my office good morning. Do I think too much of myself. I am at a stage when I have no clue where or what i will be doing 1 week from now. Man that is scary. I am so crazy about Seinfeld, more about Elaine Bennes. I watch the serial just for watching her. why her? I dont know. This is even more scary. I have to learn to say no more firmly. My mind has suddenly gone blank. I cant seem to think of anything at this moment. I so badly want to do an MBA. just havent decided when. I got a new cell phone W300i. Sony ericsson. Its just too good. Oh is that the second time I am mentioning that? well now my brain has started thinking in circles. What if this continues for the rest of my life. What if this is all my thought process can do . I wonder what is the radius of this circle. I thought I was a funny person. but lately I crack jokes only when i am uncomfortable to ease a situation. seems like my trademark humour is eluding me nowadays. I love the idea of going back and sleeping. I have screwed up my biological clock. I have slept 4 times after 3 in the morning. The team sitting in front of me have nothing else to speak about except marriage and boyfriends. I have learnt microsoft excel very well now. I can do almost anything with it- macros, VBA , pivot all. If it sounds greek to you - its excel baby!! I love it when I get to teach others excel. Its a great feeling. I miss my friend very much. She is now away in the US. its funny that I never realized how much I would miss her when she was here. I want to go back to IITM. I dont like to work, I have realized. I would love to go back to college. I have to do an MBA atleast for this . Did I mention MBA again. God I am really moving in circles ya. Looks like this favourite game of mine has also ditched me. In the last 15 mins, Ihave hardly written one funny work or phrase. I should totally stop writing anymore. Stop it , stop it now , STOP IT !!!

Looks like i am not so good at this game anymore. I have just finished reading my rant above.

Gender Stereotyping

2006-09-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

I generally make it a point to write light, humourous stuff on my blog. But some issues have to come out in the open for me to feel better. Today when I was having breakfast, I met a woman who was around my age and worked in my company. She told me that she was leaving the job in another month. Reason? She was getting married. She has been in the job for about a year. Why does she have to quit, I asked. She said that her would be worked in Australia and so she will be going there after marriage.

Lets say a company recruits a woman fresh out of college. What is the guarantee that she will stay in the job for more than a couple of years. Wont she be obviously getting married and then leave the job to stay with her husband? Why should a company recruit a woman at all if she is anyway a wasted resource after some years. Is it not better to take a man, even of lesser capability as he would be a long term prospect?

This brings us back to the basic question. Why is a woman supposed to quit her job for the sake of her hubby? Or for that matter even change her job to her hubby's location? Why cant he make that change? The answer most usually is that he would be in a financially better position than her. Considering that most marriages in India are arranged, why do they essentially look to pair a more qualified guy to a lesser qualified girl? As children they go to the same schools, as adolescents, the same college and as is the case in India, they end up joining the same software kind of jobs. Yet she is expected to leave everything behind and tag along with him, at best look for a job in the place where he works. WHY?

I initially used to think it has to deal with the fact that the parents are conservative and they have grown up in such an environment. But look closer, the fact is different. Women are willing to do all the sacrifices. Its like a tacit understanding that the man she spends her life with is now the focus of her life. Her life as it existed before is dead. She leaves her home, her job, her friends. What does he leave? I have friends whose fathers have not even known them when they grew up as they were on tours most of the time. Why? His job is important. He has to feed the wife and the kids who by the way are totally dependant on him. My god!! what a demi god status this guy has. All he does is work, which he has been doing right from the time he got married. The poor woman who agreed to be his mate left everything behind, gave birth to his children, takes care of their health, education, fun maybe even works to support the family further and still he is considered boss at home, still he is the one who orders her around, still he is the one who the children are afraid of. And most importantly the woman accepts.... WHY?

Some people say its not nurture that woman turn out to be so 'accomodating' (bah! as if thats a virtue..). They say its nature. Something to do with her genes. That it has not come out of repeated programming but is something which exists in her right from her time in the womb. Well the argument is crappy at best, but even if we consider it for arguments sake- what does that make women like me who have never had such preposterous thoughts? Are we not women. Are our genes faulty?

As I am only asking questions and not giving any solutions at the moment, let me list down in decreasing order what pisses me the most about this issue. Atleast my irritation will subside

1. A man ordering his wife around
2. A woman leaving her job due to marriage
3. A mom in law ordering her daughter in law around.
4. Desire for the male child
5. Money stored for a boy's education and a girl's marriage
6. Ads indulging in gender stereotyping( woman in kitchen, man reading paper)
7. Ekta kapoor and all her stupid serials
8.The glass ceiling.

novels

2006-08-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

This is the second part of my interest series- the first being the post I wrote a couple of days ago on sitcoms. This one focusses on novels. Obviously my favourite ones. I have always enjoying light funny books though well written serious ones also appeal to me. My favourite author is difficult to comment on as there are many but I do have a bunch of readable authors. Here is a list of my most memorable books not in any order

The fountainhead (Ayn Rand)- I do not espouse her philosophy. I think in todays world of team work and communication, it would not hold anyway. But that still does not stop me from admiring her work. I was so captivated by this book that I spent one month just introspecting after reading this. Her words are so powerful, its like the book is being enacted right in front of your eyes. Its a compelling book. A must read for all who like fiction in the form of drama along with the essential ingredients like revenge, passion guilt etc. While her next work, Atlas Shrugged got tediously boring, this one conveys its point and makes a great work of fiction.

Da Vinci code (Dan Brown)- He may not have the traditional finesse in the English language or even the art of subtle descriptions but he makes sure that you finish the book in one sitting. It opened up so many hours of googling on the holy grail and mary magdalene. I still do not know whether or not to believe all the lineage stuff he has put forward, but it looks very convincing to a non- christian. It was a totally new concept and a great page turner.

The life of pi (yann Martel)- I generally go light on the philosophy books that I read. But apart from fountainhead, this is the only book which made very interesting reading philosophically. And all the more because it is connected to a very adventurous story narrated in a fast, unconventional and breathtaking way. A recommended book for all those who have busy schedules and have just a sunday for reading. Believe me, once you start, you just cannot put it down.

The Jurassic park (Micheal Crichton)- One beginning that I can never forget. The first 10 pages of the book come alive in front of your eyes. Its like its being enacted out. Trust me, in some scenes you can actually feel your heart beating faster.

The Godfather (Mario Puzo)- I think this book would figure on anybody's favourite. All you have to do is read it. I dont think I am even justified to comment on it. I therefore have just two sentences- The world can be divided into two parts, one part that has read the 'Godfather' and another that has not. Which side are you on?

There are other books which might not find a detailed mention but have still had considerable influence on me. Here is a listing (by no means exhaustive)

The master of the game, If tomorrow comes, The rage of the angels, doomsday conspiracy, Bloodline - Sydney Sheldon

The runaway jury, The partner, The Chamber, The Client, The Firm, The Pelican Brief - John Grisham

The money changers, The airport , Wheels- Arthur Hailey

Coma, The final diognosis- Robin Cook

The day of the jackal- Frederick Forsyth

All of P.G Wodehouse

All of Agatha Christie

Last but not least the innumerable number of Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys and Enid Blytons that I read while growing up.

PS: I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I love reading Harry potter.

sitcoms

2006-08-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

There is something about comedies. They transport you to a different world. The best thing about comedies especially sitcoms is that they solve all of their problems in 30 mins. My fav TV shows are all sitcoms- Friends, seinfeld, scrubs, That 70's show, Desperate housewives(roughly comes under comedy), Will and grace etc etc. I have a huge list of favourite characters.(this list is totally based on the characters and not on looks)

1. Elaine Bennes (Julia Louise Dreyfus)- The only lady among the seinfeld foursome. Amazing dialogue delivery along with a great clicking sound from her throat which she uses in awkward, sarcastic and mischevious scenes. My favourite part was in season 8, where she dances very strangely in an office party with a unique twisting of thumbs and a sudden shiver of the hips. Great scene. Makes me laugh even writing about it.

2. Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry)- U cannot but love him. His greatest strength lies in his punch lines. Short and crisp, they crack me up totally. My favourite scene his in season 4 ( i guess) 'the one with the hypnosis' tape, where he is hypnotized into believing that he is a woman and actually begins showing some mannerisms. Nobody else could have done it better

3. Eric Forman (Topher Grace)- There is a certain likeability which comes with being weak. Especially in a man. Portraying Eric as a vulnerable, skinny weakling whose girlfriend is more intelligent, better looking and also stronger than him makes him one of my favourite TV characters. His hairstyle in 'that 70's show' was the reason I actually started watching it.

4. Micheal Richards (Cosmo Kramer)- This man needs no lines. He can play a silent part having 100% screen presence in a 3 hour movie and the audiences will be laughing throughout. He usually has small parts in 'Seinfeld' but great ones. His unique body acting is something I have not seen anywhere else. His hair style, his short pants, his messy apartment, his cigars- each of them is a superhit. This guy is singularly responsible for many of my fun filled evenings.

5. Teri Hatcher (Susan Mayer) - I dont know what about her is so appealing to me. Especially as she is the kind of woman whom I completely dissociate with. She is impulsive, I am not. She is whiny, I am not. She is vacillating, I am not. Yet she is one genuinely funny character I have not seen in a long time. It might be her independence amidst a clutter of boyfriends or her possesiveness as a parent or even her faith in love.

I have tried to list a few of them here. But there are others who have either in parts or phases made my evening. A listing
Jerry Seinfeld
Ross Geller
Pheobe Buffet
Zach Braff (Scrubs- I forgot his screen name)
Donna Pinciatti (the spelling could be wrong)
Courtney Cox

contrasts!!

2006-08-04T08:33:00.000-07:00

consider this

Monday- I got up early. Was supposed to go to a new office, meet new people, and start new work. I try to be in the best of my spirits, make sure everything is fine-my laptop is charged, my clothes are pressed, I have a light breakfast etc. It all goes well- I am introduced to the new boss, he is friendly. Everything is hunky dory. I am given a few things to read and a couple of excel files to analyze. Great going Lavanya. I come back, chat with my other collegues and sleep early. God is in his heaven and all is fine with the world.

Tuesday- I got up slightly late. But i managed to reach office on time. The laptop which the previous day was an essential ingredient in my confidence and feel for the corporate world was now sitting quite heavily on the shoulder. I shift its position often. By the time I go to meet my boss, I am slightly hassled. My boss today introduces me to 2 other people who work under him and tell me that i will have to work with them from now on. Well!! that could not be bad. Or could it? I was introduced to the project. Given some more excel files and then was told that both of them were going out for the rest 2 days and so they will put me to someone else who will give me a brief on the work. I go home feeling lost. Did not really understand my place or role in the situation

Wednesday- I got up on time but the auto guy took a lot of time in the traffic. I go to this new person and then he gives me a 2 hour lecture on the intricacies of the market. (What the hell!! I thought marketing was all about advertising and he goes on and on about product, price, positioning, portfolio..blah , blah. Wait a min..are these the so called 4Ps of marketing?) I go home completely confused. I neither know what my work is nor do I know what everybody does in this place. It is one complete muddle

thurday- Bosses are still out. I am sent on a 'market visit'. It involves going with a sales rep who goes to every retail shop and asks whether he needs replenishment on any of the product which my company produces- cigarettes or notebooks or chocolates or biscuits or greeting card or phew!! As I started out, I thought 'well! it cant be bad...it will give me a good understandin of the market. The first shock came when he told me that we will be taking the local bus. I was bummed. When I thought my days of using road local transport was over. Well anyway we started out and because of my western formal wear and a laptop hanging from my shoulder, I was stared at by everyone in the bus. From kids to old men!! it was quite embarrassing. Wait there is more...I had to walk to 30 retail shops in one day. laptop in tow. heels making it difficult to walk. the sun deciding to choose this day to shine extra bright. When I came back that day...I had had enough. I resolved that I would never do market visits again.

Friday- How much worse can it go. When you think you have reached the bottom, the only way to go now is up right? Well...wrong. The first thing I hear when I come back is my boss saying "Who asked you to go to the market visit yestserday?" I blabber the name of the manager. He tells me "I dont want you to waste time in meaningless activities. Please get to the project fast. you are too slow. push yourself harder"When I got back that day, my mom took quite a hearing on my long, hectic, tedious , dull, difficult job. As if that was not enough..I am writing this so that anybody who even accidentally looks at this page knows exactly the difficult times I am passing through

2006-07-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

update

2006-07-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

its been long. but it gives me great pleasure to finally type from my very own laptop, or even more grandly...tablet PC. wow it feels so good writing that.

Sivakasi
A village in tamil nadu which specializes in making fireworks and matches. remember the crackers we used to have so much fun in lighting. standard fireworks, almost a world famous brand. comes from sivakasi. So these matches and fireworks must be made in some machines right? Well no. they are made entirely by humans. right from wood to the final match. So these must be men having labour unions and all that right? Well no again. They employ mainly women who work 12 hrs a day and get paid according to how much they can do per day. So these women must be paid well enough to support their family or children right? Well....no. They are paid as little as 30 bucks a day. for working 12 hours. I work 7 hours and get paid more than a 1000 per day. Welcome to sivakasi.
Its amazing how we continue assuming that god is in his heaven and all is well with the world when there is actually so much disparity in the country. Its a pity really. some of these women actually bring their kids aged between 1 and 5 to play around in the area where matches are made. They are scantily dressed and many a time even chew on the sticks lying around. It was a poignant sight. Despite all this they continue working without cribs or complaints, probably waiting for a miracle to happen and relieve them of this hardship. Here's hoping that the miracle actually happens.

Career choice

2006-05-10T21:58:00.000-07:00

Some people are born lucky. Some others struggle initially and are lucky afterward. Some others are destined to chase luck with no luck for the rest of their lives. And then ofcourse, there are some who are in IIT.
I have seen people in other colleges struggle to get jobs. A software job means a life to them. If there is one thing about IIT that is truly worth being proud of, then it is the ability to choose what you want to do. It can be study further to do an MS or a PhD, go for an MBA, take up a software job, take up a core engineering job or even take up a managerial job which places you in great profiles even without an MBA.
For us here life is tough again because we do not know what to choose. Until the third year there is the app/cat/job confusion and for most it is not resolved till the end, so they end up chasing more than one of the above at the same time. The most interesting of mess conversations during the times of the final year go something like this
"hey the guy got an 8 lakh job da...he is going to pack all his apps now"
"I dont want an engineering job, am sick of my branch. "
"That guy is a 9 pointer, he is anyway going abroad, why is he spoiling others chances?"
"I got through CAT, will pack my job now"

On first glance, it looks like we all can peacefully choose what we want to do and even get it. Well there are 500 B.Techs in IITM and there will be a few who will end up in places they dont want. But usually such things last only for a year of two before they jump back to their preferred occupation or course.
All said and done, what I was completely astounded to hear the other day was someone saying that one option is ethically, morally, intellectually better than the other. The russian revolution had a saying "For each according to capacity, to each according to work" which I think means that each man should work according to his capacity and what he is good at. So when we all make informed career decisions and decide that we are best suited to do a PhD or our interests match up to a core job or even that we shall make good managers so we go after an MBA, where does the question of one being better than the other come in? How can any person vociforously claim that doing a PhD is a better option than working. Atleast people who work get to stay in India while people apping turn their backs and probably never come back to the country again. When someone thinks he/she is better equipped to do research, then why say that the other options are drivel. Is there not space for everyone to do anything here. Why from a situation of first among equals, do we have some people more equal than the other. Why that pride? That arrogance? that sly laugh playing at the corner of the mouth?
More stupid is the claim that one chooses to do a PhD because it is much tougher career path than any other. And therefore their ego is bloated beyond imagination. If I am living in a wing where half are going for further studies in the form of an MS or a PhD, does that mean half the people in the wing think that they are for some insane reason doing much better justice to their lives than me? These are the people I spent 4 great years with. They have taught me a lot in terms of my subjects, life, friends etc. and I have reason to believe that I have also taught them whatever little stuff I could. The fact that they part from this place assuming they are superior to me in particular and the rest of the people in the institute who are going for an MBA/job in general, is very distressing indeed.

Meeting deadlines

2006-05-08T10:32:00.000-07:00

As life moves on in the fastest possible pace towards the end of undergraduation, I am stuck in front of my computer all day trying to meet the B.Tech thesis deadline of 9 May. As I decide to take a 15 min break and browse through google news, I come upon Kaavya Viswanathan. This girl has seen it all, India, US , UK, Fame, money, Harvard, Plagarism...wow!! One can write a story about her and it would be nothing short of sensational. I am sure it would sell like hot cakes.
Widely commented and criticized she anyway is , but one wonders after all this hype and controversy dies down, and die down it will , Where exactly does this leave kaavya? I mean she is after all 19. She has her whole life in front of her. Not that I am being sympathetic or defensive. But one should spare a thought to her. Yes she was foolish enough to copy, and yes she was downright silly to claim later that it was 'unintentional'. (come on kaavya, who did you think would buy that. you can internalize characteristics and situations, not words and sentences). Her confidence (if she had any before) must be severely dented, she faces probable expulsion from Harvard, but she is also someone who made it to Harvard, she is also somebody who was recognized for her literary talent quite early. She must have some stuff in her. I feel the plagarism happened due to her not being able to cope up with deadlines of Harvard, the publisher and even the shady packaging house which apparently helped her frame her story. Given more time, maybe she would not have done that. Anyway whatever is the real story, I am amazed at some of the media stuff written about her. A sample

"this is expected of all authors of color"
"she is from a country which anything but original"
"no publisher will be ready to back a young author anymore"

I know she deserves all the flak that she is getting. But is blaming her color and country of origin not taking it too far? As an Indian woman, it hurts me.

I think it is time I went back to my thesis. Otherwise just like Kaavya did it, I might resort to copying just to meet the deadline. I am sure each of us have done it sometime or the other. Picked a word or phrase from someone else or somewhere else and passed it off as our own, more to show off than anything else. Especially when it comes to project reports or laboratory records. We get marks out of it. Kaavya got half a million dollars, got framed and got shamed .

The final cut

2006-05-03T05:12:00.000-07:00

There is something so emotional about moving out of a place which you have come to view as a second home. especially one where you have spent 4 years of your life in. As of this week I will be officially completing a B.Tech in mechanical engineering in IIT Madras. (provided my thesis is accepted). Somehow the best memories of this place are the ones when small things have happened, not substantial or life changing . Lets see, as I write this and think, I can remember how I watched the 2003 world cup match between India and pakisthan when I had a quiz the next day, how my wingmates and I went to the beach in the first semester(this was the first time some of my friends from the north were seeing the beach in their life), how rain had brought all kinds of insects crawling into our rooms, how we protest marched for the anti reservation forum through the length of IITM but unfortunately were not even mentioned in an abscure corner of the local newspaper, how I fought with a very good friend and cried all day, how I decided it was time for a make over and suddenly changed my wardrobe into something tighter, shorter and completely did away with salwars all over a fortnight....phew! I can go on and on.
One thing has to be said though, I have to thank this place for all that it has given me- confidence, pride, belief and ofcourse a degree in Mechanical engineering

As I move on to the next step, a job with ITC, I look back with tears in my eyes as I realize that nothing can beat IITM for its freedom, reach and friends.