Thou Art Beautiful

Had an opportunity to take part in a sensory experience this evening, at a combined "performance" of an artist (painter) and a South Indian classical dancer. A very thought provoking session as we settled down to think of arts and appreciation in general.

On the way back, the Mrs started a spirited chat about how Indian classical dance forms are quite complex in that both movement and expressions mattered. (Gross generalisation alert) There aren't many other dance forms we know of that can narrate stories with as much detail and embellishment as them. That led us to discuss further on about the dance forms, and then came an "aha" moment for me - when I realised that to be a true connoisseur of, say, Bharathnatyam, you had to be able to appreciate:

- Dance movements and grace

- Expressions - face and body

- Language - to appreciate lyrical quality

- Classical music - to appreciate the arrangement of the swaras

- (Hindu) mythology - to appreciate the stories being narrated

- And a sense of "fashion" - to appreciate the clothes and ornaments

If that isn't a rich (albeit esoteric) treat for the senses, what else is!! I don't think I will ever find such a recital boring in the future. In fact, if anything, it's an overwhelming sensory offering that might make one sweat at the task of having to receive, assimilate, and appreciate all this awesomeness in parallel.

The more I thought about it, the more it hit me that this is yet another memory of India's exuberant past  - when people were fed, clothed and housed enough to be able to think beyond the essentials, and afford the luxury of nurturing such composite and complex art forms. And when one looks at the quality of our commercial artistic expressions these days, one wonders where we went astray in these past 1000 years, to end up playing to the gallery at this scale. When artists have started dancing to the tunes of audiences, as against taking the lead in sensitising them to more mature and advanced expressions. Beep songs make a lot more noise than December season performances - literally and otherwise.

As an allied train of thought, I began wondering what "beauty" really is. Why do any of our senses find something beautiful?

My dad often describes symmetry as a synonym of beauty. As a photographer who swears by the rule of the thirds, I couldn't take that.

My "Creativity in Arts and Sciences" prof at IIMB (Mr B Sekar) found beauty in contrast, among other things. As a big fan of high key photography, I couldn't buy that in its entirety either.

And as it stands now, my definition of "beauty" of any kind (visual, aural, oral etc) is: equilibrium / balance - which envelopes symmetry, contrast and any other definition I have come across.

What's your view on this?

Notes from an overgrown island - Part II

Part 1 here.

Ok this time I am not going to ramble. Hoping to note my observations in some quick points:

• Until I landed in this country, English spoken with the 'r's mauled beyond recognition was all "Foreign accent" to me. But now I think I have started distinguishing English accent from American. For starters, watch the "Byeeeeee" comedy scene in Baasha. That's the kind of bye everyone sings here. Every single time. Had NSYNC been an English boy-band, 'Bye Bye Bye' may have been set to Maya Malava Goula or Kaambodhi, for all you know. (To think of it, it's not just with 'Bye'. These people sing all courtesy phrases the same way - good morning / good evening / bye bye / etc)
• In most places here, everything closes at 5 PM in the evening (except the pubs/bars/supermarkets). The whole place becomes very quiet after 6. Which indicates the amount of research that has gone into the making of this.
• If you own a car, you would always worry about finding 1) a car park, and 2) a parking spot in the car park. It is an overwhelming worry that overwhelms you. Every time we plan a visit to some place, much of my intensive online research (which involves checking Google's first page results) revolves around locating convenient (and free) car parks. And finding a parking spot at office every morning is quite a worry for me. Whatever time I reach office, everyone seems to have gotten there before me. It's almost like they all have sync-ed their alarms to mine minus a few minutes. I remember reading an anecdote somewhere: about early-arrivers parking far from the building so that latecomers could find a nearer space and get to office quicker. That's effing bullshit. துண்டு போட்டு எடம் புடிக்காத கொறை. (The missus often suggests leaving the stepney behind to hold the space for the next day)
• Graffiti seems commonplace along the rail routes here. But I haven't found any posters of SRMU Kannayyan yet. (Or maybe I haven't seen well enough yet)
• The other day I looked out from home to find someone cleaning the bushes outside patiently over a few hours. I had almost offered him பழைய சோறு and சொம்புல தண்ணி when I realized it was my landlord. Do-It-Yourself is such a popular concept here. Primarily because labour is very expensive. We once had to get a locksmith over. He charged 45 pounds for a 10-min job, ending up making me question my career choices. Imagine - 45 pounds! For a 10-min job! In Indian Rupees that's, well, 45 x 70 (sorry, am lazy). So it's not surprising to find people here doing everything by themselves - washing, ironing, cleaning, gardening, growing fat etc.
• Indian food is very common here. And 'parcel' shops are called Takeaways. Most takeaways here are Authentic Indian Takeaways run by Bangladeshis and Pakistanis. So you get more types of Indian food that you get in India. I hadn't heard of Rogan Josh back at home - but it's possible that it may be popular outside of the South. But am bleddy sure there is no such thing as Madras Curry even in Madras. And the natives here perform anthar-baltis for the Chicken Balti - it's too popular here.
• On a serious note - one stunning feature of this country is the independence with which disabled and the elderly lead their lives. A colleague at office is blind - and he is able to do everything by himself! He uses his mobile phone, comes by bus and whatnot! His guide dog is the only being whom we takes support from. Another colleague is wheelchair-ridden, but comes by a special car which she can wheel into and start driving! And the elderly here have to be seen to be believed - the way they live on their own, carry out all their travelling / weekly shopping / etc without any support whatsoever. Once when I offered to help carry bags for a very frail old lady, she smiled in response over her pain, and took time and effort to say: "I am fine, thanks all the same", when it was utterly clear that she was not fine at all. Phew.
• And while on the topic of disabled-friendliness - even movie halls are so! Special shows are run with subtitles for the deaf; and there are "Audio Described" performances for the blind - a voice overlay would narrate the visual scenes of the movie as things happen. Check this sample from 00:18. (Now let your imagination run wild and let me know in the comments section, how you would audio-describe this video! You may want to start with a note on grizzly bears, maybe?)

So well, that's that!! Bye byeeeeeee...

Kurichi, Karuppan and Pullai

(Read http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/krishna-to-ndtv-on-pillai-controversy-transcript-38841 first)

In an exclusive interview to VTTV, India's External Affairs Minister Mr SM Karuppan (name changed to protect identity) spoke about the recent Kurichi-Pullai episode to our chief correspondent Ms. P. Butt.

Excerpts from the interview:

VTTV: Good evening Mr Karuppan. The last few days must have been really tough on you?

SMK: Good evening Ms PainInTha Butt. And what tough? All channels showing me only. Yaeeee! Finally I overtook my பேத்தி Ramya in the popular-most-in-the-family polls.

Hitchcock Rocks!

Have been watching Hitchcock movies in the last couple of days and have fallen in love with the man's style!

Psycho was the first one I watched. Though I kinda guessed the plot half way through, there were some elements in the movie that kept me doubtful until the end. Can guess what kind of a rage this movie must have been in 1960 when it was released. Similar movies are still being made today, 50 years after the master made his version! Hitchcock was surely ahead of the times.

The second one was Rope. A very short movie - just an hour and a quarter. But very stylishly made. Loved the strong characterisations, and the amazing histrionics of everyone involved. Each character was amazingly convincing - especially the important 3 of Brendon, Philip and Rupert.

* Spoiler Alert *
The plot of the movie thickens bang after the titles, when we find Brendon and Philip strangling a friend of theirs - as they converse after that, you chillingly realize that they committed the murder simply to prove that they were capable of doing it! Simply to establish that they could commit the perfect murder and get away with it. As you slowly get out of that, you get to know that they are throwing a party in the same room as the venue of the crime - to be attended by the nearest and dearest of the dead man. What makes it further gripping is that the food is served right on the chest inside which the dead man was dumped! A gripping tale right till the end!

I just loved the dialogues in the movie, especially Brendon's cheeky references to the murder in the presence of others, with a naughty, sly smile. A slew of double entendres!

One aspect of the movie that sets it apart is that the scenes are all loooooong. In the sense, that the camera is kept rolling for a loooooong time. And they have tried to make it seem like the entire movie was made in one shot, but you are able to identify where the cuts are made - something that let me down. Surely, Hitchcock must have known better!

But overall, I am stunned by the man! Hear from a friend that Shining is a great movie of his. Should catch up with it sometime.

--------------- Errata -------------------

Just got an alert that The Shining is a Kubrick movie. Sorry for the faux pas!

GMAT @ Tech

This is an impulse post. Just heard from Techian junior Srikkant that he has scored 760 on the GMAT. This is something I wanted to tell him, but posting here as they are derived from some convictions I have in life.

----
Awesome da! Congrats and best wishes! The most important thing now for you is to make proper choices.
And live with them.
I often am asked by people if I settled for less despite my GMAT score. I personally don't think so, though I am not sure how many will be able to see the sense my decision makes to me. When I took my GMAT, it was just a backup option for the future in case CAT 2007 didn't work out well. By God's grace, both worked well for me, and I stuck to my priorities I had decided on before the results came out. I am extremely happy with IIMB and am sure I made the best possible decision when I had the choices in my front. So also when I chose Tech over Anna Univ after my class 12. People still curve their eyebrows when they hear of that decision of mine. But again, absolutely no regrets from my side. Totally happy with that choice too. But had I not been so sure of my happiness with these decisions, others could have drilled into and weakened my conviction about these past choices of mine. It did require me to be considerably apathetic to others' opinions and stick to my guns, and that did require some effort.
So, in short, make your choice with good reason, and NEVER EVER regret about it later.
Cheers!
----

Well that ends the letter of sorts.

I personally got very excited hearing of this news from him because GMAT had never been so popular an option at good ol' Tech. Placements had always been choice no. 1. GRE and GMAT were not too common until around the time I graduated. GRE was becoming hot at that time and saw loads of Techians seeking US visas. GMAT is still awaiting that sort of patronage from Tech. When I chose to write the exam, there were no seniors to guide me. Found it a bit difficult to accumulate exam gyan from different sources and organize them into a package of sorts (and hence happened my GMAT posts on my other blog). But again, around that time, a few of my mates at Tech took the GMAT too (JP thalai, Rathu thalai, Phalgun, Deepthi etc).
I hope successes like these will lead Tech folks in greater numbers towards the GMAT.

(p.s.: For the uninitiated, 'Tech' is the general word used to refer to PSG Tech in and around Coimbatore.)

1-up at IIMB: A review - II

Moving on from people.

One major change IIMB brought in my life is in the area of time management and responsiveness. Earlier, I would never be able to think up something and execute it right away. I used to need quite a lot of time to ‘get mentally prepared’. But this changed at IIMB. One would hardly get time to ‘get comfy’ with stuff. Things always move at Top Gear. So I was forced to think on my feet, always. And by now, have got used to it. It’s no more painful for me to get into something right away. I do not feel unsure and inadequate as I used to earlier. One major learning I had at IIMB.

And in a related topic, I also learned to enjoy during and between work. In my life before IIMB, ‘fun time’ and ‘work time’ was very clearly defined and planned. I would never be able to enjoy my lunch if there was an EoD deliverable left unfinished. Even if I were on schedule, I would still feel insecure and would not really be able to have fun. But now, things have changed. At IIMB, the only fun you get is wedged between bouts of hard work. And I have got used to that way of life now. I can easily switch between work and fun at the sound of an email. I guess this is in preparation for the corporate life I have ahead of me. Am I thankful to IIMB for this! Else, my work-life balance would have gone for a toss.

One aspect of IIMB that every student would have to come to terms with is – you are not much. You may have so many achievements behind your name, but then so does everyone here. So what’s new with you? This is a heartless realization one has to come to terms with here, especially a brief period after joining, cos that is when all the adulation from the home frontiers would be at a peak. And if you peak today in a quiz, nothing guarantees that you won’t be the last guy on the mark list in the surprise quiz of tomorrow. Greatness is not perennial here – neither in space nor in time.

IIM life always comes with bizarre sleeping hours and durations. But it’s not mandatory, mind you. There are so many people I know who cannot stay up beyond 11 PM, and get their 8 hours every day. It is very possible on most days. Things are not as bad as they are purported. But there’s a catch to it :) YOU have to decide how you want things to be. Most people choose to stay up for long (12.30 AM – 2.00 AM is when the campus begins to slowly tuck in for the night). But that is cos they choose to spend a part of the day chatting / watching movies / playing computer games / etc. So if at all one is worried about the late hours one needs to put in, well, it’s not as bad as it seems from outside. There WILL be a few sleepless nights every month. But then that’s hardly anything to lose sleep over :P

So is everything hunky dory about IIMB? Is it the perfect abode on earth?

Obviously no. No place is perfect.

One depressing aspect of any IIM is that with competition being at sickening levels, and the stakes being perceived as terribly high, it is alarmingly easy for people to get their priorities skewed and become individualistic. It pains me (and many folks in here) when some brilliant intellectual starts behaving in a self-centered fashion. And that happens fairly often here. You can easily see through some folks who do everything with some hidden motives (which always target better placements). That is something I wish were different here. It is the bane at any IIM, but a bane alright. Not everyone is like this though. The majority gets its focus right very soon after joining. What I despise is a minority, mind you.

And this is the reason why I just *love* my section folks! The Dakoos are an awesome bunch of very helpful people who always think, work and act as a single entity. The entire class of 73 people feels like a gang that has similar tastes and preferences. There have been very few instances of individualism in Dakoo history, and am I proud as hell about that! Thank you, Dakoos! You are among my most favourite memories of first year life at IIMB!

This time of the year is when many lucky people with multiple IIM seats at hand scratch their heads wondering which IIM to go to. My 2 cents on this (much of it borrowed from Prahalad :) ): Where you end up after 2 yrs is not going to be very different between A, B and C. Placements are great at all these three institutions. So you might want to choose an insti that suits your attitude. In that sense, IIMB is for a consistent high-achiever who has huge dreams, but wants to reach there without compromising on something that actually matters in life – viz. life itself. Work as well as life here is intense.

On the whole, if I look back at my first year, one thing that makes me boundlessly proud is:

You go out.. Meet some people.. And tell them you are from IIMB.. and they take a second, closer look at you saying “Ohhhhhhhh”..

That’s when all the hardships seem worth it.

1-up at IIMB: A review

Had a good 10-day stay at home after my exams, and then came over to Mumbai. Had no access to internet in the past week, and hence this delay in hitting the blogosphere. Guess the next two months will offer me enough chances to blog (unless I get stuck to ‘Friends’ as I have been recently – I love this degree of joblessness!).

So I’ve lived through one year of IIMB life. Technically, it’s not a year yet, and will not be for two more months. But practically, I guess it is 1-up. Time for some retrospection, introspection and all that. With the junior batch making its choices now, I guess it’s only fair to put up a fairly detailed post on my thoughts on IIMB.

If I think of what I was feeling before I joined IIMB, two major emotions spring up right away:

1. Awe

2. Fear

Now I seem to have lost both :)

I guess it’s natural that one loses awe of something he/she is involved in. Familiarity doth breed un-awe, am not so sure about contempt.

As for fear, I realized very soon after landing here that it was uncalled for. My fear was about the kind of competition here, whether I would be able to survive, whether I would be able to participate in club activities, take up some leadership post, etc. In hindsight, I have been able to do stuff here. My fear earlier arose from a kind of ‘halo’ that I attributed to my would-be peers here. Now that halo’s gone :D

Not to say that my peers here are not noteworthy. Farthest from it. They’re awesome people to be with. Never before have I seen such a concentration of high-octane folks in the same place. Things happen here without much follow-up (more often than not) when compared to the outside world. And they happen with a great degree of quality. People deliver what they promise. I sure think they deserve all the numbers that make up their pay check. Ability-wise, I salute IIMB folks!

But I realized that what makes these people tick is not extreme levels of intellect. Many people here do have that. But what sets my peers apart from the rest is that they are EXTREMELY common-sensical. Everything else follows through. This is the single most important factor I could identify in people. There are other things like ability to work hard, lofty aspirations, great achievements in the past, and so on. But this is the basic unifying factor among the people I see here.

Once I realized this, I got more comfortable with the people here.

And ya.. Most IIMB students are all-rounders with multi-faceted capacities all round the place. Proof: Check the results of all inter-IIM sports meets of the past few years. IIMB has proven undefeat-able! Guess this follows from the selection procedure of the insti – the filtering criteria make sure only the academically consistent are filtered in, and the interview process picks the more well-rounded ones from them. On the whole, what we have here is a set of people who have achieved lots in multiple areas.

While on the topic of people, there are two other categories one would want to think about.

Firstly, the Professors. THEY make the institution, let me tell you. You may go thru the faculty profiles, and you’ll find lots and lots of Profs who are currently defining the policies of the country at the highest levels! Also those who sit on the boards of the Fortune-x00 companies. I consider it a privilege to learn stuff from these people. Especially, I would like to thank Prof. Shyamal Roy for demystifying economics for us all. Considering his degree of involvement in the field (World bank advisor), it’s surprising that he dumbed the subject down to our level. Thanks to him, now I can read a business newspaper without cringing at the abbreviations and their meanings. And Padmini ma'am made half-CAs out of us science & tech grads.

There are quite a few more people like them, who adorn the faculty list at IIMB. Ya, there are a few “bad eggs” too. But they again are (mostly) very knowledgeable people who may just not be able to teach things in the best way. One would get at least one such Prof per term. But one also gets at least one stud-level Prof every term. Fair enough? :)

The other category of people one would be able to meet at IIMB are the industry leaders who come over for guest lectures. In the past year, I have had the opportunity of listening to people like Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, Air Deccan Capt Gopinath, Subroto Bagchi (MindTree), R Srinivasan (ITC), James Abraham (BCG), Narayan Ramachandran (Morgan Stanley), Gurcharan Das, Rajiv Chandrashekar, Shekhar Gupta, Vinay Tewari and so on. These are people who are defining the current Business World. Getting to meet them in an academic environ is very enlightening.

This post was only about the people here. Got lots more to say, but the post seems to be bloating up too much. So, rest in the next.

New Public Interest Ads

Of late quite a few public interest ads have caught my attention. The ones by PCRA are great. ("20% discount on petrol/LPG"). Very striking ads that make one realize the impact of energy prudence at the individual level.
The best of these ads is the one in which a kid is sitting with his Dad in a car, looking around at all the energy that is going waste as vehicle exhaust at a traffic signal. Suddenly his face lights up and he says "Ahhh!! A cycle repair shop!". His father quizzes him about his exclamation. The kid replies, "A cycle repair shop! That is what I will open once I grow up. Looking at what people are doing now, am sure we'll lose all petrol very soon. After that people will have to get back to cycles".
Lovely ad! Captures the stark realities of today's world in the garb of the enlightened innocence of a child.
What is surprising is that these ads have a good visual clarity/quality. A far cry from the blurry, pale frames that characterized public interest ads of the type that used to appear on Doordarshan :D

Ulaga Naayaganae!

As a rule, I generally avoid writing on stuff that everyone talks about. There are eleventy-eleven thousand blogs around the world, and all bloggers have views on everything contemporary. These days, owning a blog is equivalent to having views.

But am giving myself a concession this one time. This post is all about A R Rahman.

Earlier I used to think it was my own idiosyncrasy, but learnt sometime back that almost everyone feels this - A R Rahman is like someone you know so closely well. It's like he is a personal friend. And most people from my peer group feel this way. It's like everyone feels a sense of 'ownership' over him. It could be cos' of his Herculean modesty.

Or may also be cos he 'grew' with us.

I remember the day he won the National Award for Roja. Rather, the day the awards function was held and telecast on Doordarshan. I had spent just more than half-a-dozen years on earth then. But the diminutive kid who scored the music for Roja caught my fancy right then. Notwithstanding the high fever I was running then, I rushed to my cousin's house in Tirupattur to watch the show.

Just a couple of more years in Kollywood.. and he rose to stardom in Tamil Nadu.

And that was when Rangeela happened. I remember the trailers that were aired on DD Metro. They bore the words "A R Rahman's first original score in Hindi". And thus began Rahman's foray into the national scene. A few years hence 1997 happened. Vande Mataram happened. And Rahman became a son of India.

That was a problem of sorts for Tams. Cos he had to start sharing his time between Tamil and Hindi movies :( Anyway, that brought about a wave of awareness about Bollywood in the south. People in TN started singing Hindi songs to an unprecedented level (after Aradhana). And vice versa too - all my peers at IIMB from the north love Boys songs ("Woh girlfriend waali gaana..").

A few years went on like that, and Andrew Lloyd Webber (& Bombay Dreams) happened, signalling Rahman's entry into the global scene. Pride on one side, and jealousy on the other side, pulled me apart then. While happy that Rahman was making us all proud, I was upset that we would be hearing even lesser of him in Kollywood.

Anyway, I put up with that too. Kid can be given some freedom to move around on his own.

And now, Slumdog has happened. Sigh :(

Well yeah.. It's great that he (among others) is getting the world to look at us.

But I would have been much happier had this happened for one of his actually good movies. I found the music of Slumdog pretty average-ish, considering that it was from Rahman. (The O Saya bit is definitely haunting. But howmuch ever I listen to Jai Ho, I always end up finding it inadequate.)

Anyway, this is no time to crib. Namma paya gelichurukaan.. takkar matteru baa!

(Again going tangential, don't you think Rahman and Sachin have some uncanny resemblance? Behaviour, Stature - physical and otherwise, et al?)

FC(uked)

I support reservations wholeheartedly.

However it is my sincere belief that we do not have enough quotas for everything as yet. So here is a humble request for bringing in additional quotas.

I am an FC guy. History proves beyond doubt that in the field of sports, people from my community have not performed well. Hmmmm.. Err... rather, people from my community have been discriminated against and have not been given enough opportunities to shine. So, I put forth the following requests to the Sports Ministry of the Government of India:

• In the athletic event of high jump, the bar should be lowered by anywhere from 6 to 12 inches for people from my caste
• In long jump, we should be allowed to run across the landing pit, instead of leaping over it
• We should be given iron balls half the stipulated weight in shotput. Or alternatively, we can be given rubber balls, along with a cannon for additional support
  
• In Javelin throw, our throws should be measured in inches, while those of people from other communities should be measured in miles. And the final result should be calculated from the numerals obtained thus
• We want motor support in running events
• We should be allowed to take diets consisting WHOLLY of performance enhancing drugs
  
• And we want 49.5% reservation in our Olympics squad

So how does that appear? Gross? Ridiculous? Ugly? That's what is happening with higher education in our country.

In principle, I am against ANY form of reservation. But if at all it needs to be there, it damn well not be on the basis of caste/community.

Financial status is a more sensible (to me) parameter.

And even more sensible is a rural-urban location based reservation. Cos the kind of educational opportunities that are available in our cities are far far more robust than those available in our villages. So if we want our truly backward masses to be thrust up, provide them good facilities for Godsake! And the "backward masses" referred to here are our rustic folk, irrespective of their caste and community.

Now don't tell me we don't have enough funds for all that. When we can set aside Rs 60,000 crore for temporary relief for our farmers, this can well be done.

Only food

Went for a team treat last night to a good 4 star hotel on Mount Road in Chennai near DMS bus stop.

Ok, chuck confidentiality. It was Courtyard Marriott.

I have been to star hotels before. But this was an out of the world experience. Simply cos the menu sucked!! If you are a veggie, please avoid Courtyard Marriott like the plague.

Out of the total 30 - 35 dishes, hardly 6 or 7 were veg. The rest were all living-turned-non-living things. (Technically plants are living things too. But we veggies will never ever buy that argument. We would be left food-less then!)

So in all, I did not relish the food. Forget relishing, I hardly ate anything. So this post is less about all that.

What provoked me was the menu card for drinks. I reproduce a pic of that below.


Maybe when I used the word 'reproduce', I was being extremely suggestive (wink wink)

This prodded me to think how in the world people can order these drinks?

Excuse me, can you give me an orgasm please?
Excuse me, I would love to have a screaming orgasm please.
Excuse me, can I have some Slazy sex on the Beach? (this was another item that was listed below. And "slazy" was how they spelt it too)

Phew, I am sure the waiters would have a whale of time in their private rooms discussing the day's orders.

A friend of mine wondered if this was just a parliamentary way of indicating that they offer rooms per hour, a la Jab We Met.

Anyway that was that. Now on to today morning. I was coming to office by train. And a few college students were seated next to me. From their talks, I found out that they were having an exam today. One guy was saying

"Tamil Nadu manage பண்ணிரலாம் டா.. Andhra, Chettinadu தான் problem"
(Tamil Nadu can be managed. Andhra and Chettinadu would be a problem)

For a moment, I thought they were some B.Arch guys who were discussing different styles of architectures. Then when I peeped into their record note book, I realized that they were catering students, and were talking about different cuisines!

Their record note. Ah! That was a wonderful sight! Each experiment was a multiple-course menu of some cuisine. Two of the guys were "mugging" up ingredients like we used to learn apparatus required. Another was drawing lines in all pages and fretting that he should somehow convince Sir to sign in his record before the exam. Another was spreading worldly gyan:

"Machi எனக்கு no tension டா.. எந்த கேள்வி கேட்டாலும் மாவு பெசஞ்சு சப்பாத்தி செஞ்சுருவேன்.. கூட சிக்கன் கரி, சேமியா பாயசம்.. எனக்கு இவ்ளோ தான் தெரியும்.. இதுக்கு என்ன மார்க் வருமோ குடுங்க னு சொல்லிருவேன் டா"
(I have no tensions.. Whatever they ask me, I will mix some dough and make chapathis.. Then some chicken curry and Payasam.. Will declare that this is all I know, and ask them to give me marks for that)

Though it was funny then, soon I got a bit irked. Come on, cooking is something so exciting after all! And still these guys were not interested in doing it with spirit?

That was when I remembered that even I did stuff like this at college. I might say that the subjects I had to learn were of a different kind, and were not as exciting as this is. But the point is that I was the one who chose to pursue that course in my UG degree. And I should have been more sincere there.

CATcalls!

I just read this post through a link on Pagalguy. The author has lambasted the IIMs. I could not restrain myself from posting this reply to him. (This actually began as a comment on his blog :) Had to shift the text here in view of the length)

Heyy Kausar.. A very hot article :) But I dont agree with the largest part of it.. My responses to your complaints:

- CAT is flawed: Yes. I agree. In fact, I was directly impacted by this last year. Luckily, this year I went ready for errors in the Qn paper. And I did spot one. So saved some time and tension.

- Standardizing CAT: This would take the sting away from CAT. I believe CAT is a great exam simply because it tests your strategical reasoning powers as well. Standardizing CAT will simply kill it. And as for candidates getting confused, BOSS!! If one is expecting to get into a B-school overpowering 2 lakh other aspirants, he shdn't expect everything to be offered to him on a platter.

- Changing pattern every year: They do it just to make sure that people do not get in simply because they were TRAINED for it. A person's true value will manifest itself, when he is faced with something never-seen-before. The IIMs want only the best of the lot. I believe this is sure one way to do it.

- Intellectual Property rights: He he :) I donno if anyone else has noticed this. But going by how popular CAT is, am sure the IIMs wont take any chance. They would have taken some permission from the original authors. Maybe they did not print that on the Qn papers TO SAVE INK ;)

- Curbing coaching institutions by standardizing CAT: Even if the test becomes standard, coaching institutes will flourish as they do today. It's not abt the test dude.. It's about the B-schools.. Am sure all of us join coaching centers to hit the IIMs.. Not to crack CAT.. We target the IIMs, and the CAT is the route to them.. So we take the CAT.. If it was some other exam, we would still take that exam with due preps, and one means to that is to get professional guidance..

- IIMs should worry about the non-successful ones: Why would they do this? They did not ask 2 lakh people to apply.. They want only those 1500.. Do you think they consciously advertise and call for applicants? Nopes! We are the ones who apply in large numbers.. They simply pick the ones who are best suited for their insti, as per their judgment.. What else can they do?

- CAT should teach something that we can use in our daily life: CAT has taught me so many things: to get on with life without being bogged down by one problem; to pay attention to detail; to analyze and interpret data better; to read actively; to prioritize commitments.

- (234 ^ 234) / 6 :) If you had taken CAT in the right spirit, you would have realized that you don't actually need to tackle these questions.. You do get a whole lot of sitters in CAT too.. Questions at the same level as those in the GMAT (I have taken the GMAT too, so I know).. You can get thru the IIMs by cracking those questions alone.. CAT simply tests if you can identify which one to hit and which one to miss.. With your limited resources (time), how much of your unlimited wants (answering 75 questions) can you satisfy? this is what CAT tests..

- Errata from IIM websites: Sure do project the institutions in poor light.. I am with you in this..

- Minimum criteria for work-ex: As you yourself have stated, this is your personal opinion. But the IIMs know what they are looking for. My logic is this: If the class is full of ppl with experience, then fresh ideas would be missed sorely.. Cos when ppl gather experience, they are actually getting trained in systems.. They fall into a groove.. To think outside of that framework would require herculean efforts.. But that would come naturally to a fresher..

- CAT applicants should serve community for free: The IIMs are B-schools.. They are not NGOs.. Each and every entity has a purpose to focus on.. It would be great if just that purpose is served by that entity.. If we want CAT to impact the society positively, we may as well expect our cars to fly..

If you feel my views are not just, do let me know.. we can discuss further..

Ah.. Thought so!

(Read my first ever post on this blog that was written after the Cricket World Cup early this year)

Was reading the papers today morning. It was all about the euphoria surrounding our historic Twenty20 victory. Email forwards have started doing their rounds funnily claiming that "India has become a super power in Twenty20 (2020) - Kalam's dream accomplished!". In all probability, these mails would have been forwarded by the same guys who relished sending around the mails which showed our cricketers taking up alternative vocations after the World Cup debacle a few months back.

Looking at all this, I get extremely angry (which is quite something because usually I am as emotional as a computer is). Spineless madness!

And this is not the first time we are reacting like this. Time and again, we have changed colours with the swiftness that would hurt a chameleon's ego.

And we complain about politicians for their volte faces.

Just heard from a friend that the media has not been allowed inside MS Dhoni's house.

Lovely.

Surely would hurt the media. This means they have lost 4 hours of a "Breaking News" story. Would sure be a big pinch for them.

And adding to all this glam-sham is the BCCI's attempts to dwarf the ICL. Millions of dollars and crores of rupees are being offered to the players. Aren't we making too much out of Yuvraj's heroics of six-in-a-row? In those three minutes of his life, he reserved enough money to buy a brand new BMW. Or a flat at Mahindra World City. But was it truly worth all that? In this form of the game, this was but a natural consequence. If at all someone had to be felicitated specially, it should be the bowlers, I would say.

But the BCCI just wants to play to the gallery and be seen as the savior of cricket in India.

Hrrmmphh.

To think of it, India was the only country that opposed the Twenty20 format when it was put to vote by the ICC.

Anyway, one good thing that comes out from all this is: the players would feel good to have doffed their soiled image.

As cheap as it can get!

At a time when the entire media seems to be going hammer and tongs at the Indian cricket team, something that everyone has conveniently forgotten is that the players themselves are human beings with feelings in their hearts. Am sure none of the players performed badly out of their own choice. It so happened that things did not go well for them a few times. And that signaled the end of our world cup campaign (in fact this is a wake-up call for the ICC to review its tournament structure; 3 matches is too short a time to decide the “super 8s”. If two of the stronger teams in the world are rather prematurely out of the biggest tourney in cricket, then it simply means the process in wrong! Anyway, that’s a topic worthy of another debate)

My heart goes out to Dravid who very rightly said “No one feels as bad as the players themselves”. How very true! Let's think of our younger years... Whenever we fared badly in an exam, did we not go home in pristine gloom? How would we have felt if someone else had humiliated us (in public) for those failures?

Just imagine! They are people who were till very recently celebrated so much in the country! Now the public stoops down to the oh-so-cheap levels of “stoning” their houses! What kind of emotional instability is this! Just think, will everyone accept it if I go and stone my barber’s house because he did not cut my hair the way I wanted it? Eventually it boils down to that right? We are angry at the team for not performing well na? It's the same thing.

My blood boils at the thought of a photo that I saw today morning in a newspaper. A group of people in Patna had put up posters of Indian players on a wall. There was a big label above the posters which said "Greg Chappell and his army of eunuchs". And the posters showed images of our players modified to look like eunuchs. And the "angry crowd" was hitting the posters with slippers and shoes. It looked so very gross!! How silly, stupid, cheap and ugly can people get!

And what can I say about a newspaper which puts this picture on its front page?!

Sigh.

Or maybe *SIGH*.

Let's get this clear: we ALL are upset about the early exit of the Indian team from the world cup. Am not saying the team performed well. They did falter. But are we not reacting too much? All we can do now is to offer support and solace to the players who themselves will be returning with their heads bowed.

I can very well predict what will happen a couple of months from now; our cricket team will perform some really great deed and the ever-mercurial media (now bolstered with support from instantaneous journos on blogs) will start crying hosannas in praise of the team.

It has happened so many times before and it WILL happen in the future too.

Man, being a celeb is such a thankless job!

In conclusion I just want to remind all of us that nothing stays the same way forever. Things are bound to get better with time. But in the short span of time when something irks us, please let us not lose our senses and do something that we'll regret later. Let us help our players lick their wounds and get back to the field as soon as possible.

After all, success is not about not falling down; it's about how high you bounce back after falling down.