IIMB - Independence Day Video

Sometime a couple of months ago, Rakesh came up with the concept of creating a patriotic video for IIMB. Mile Sur Mera Tumhara was the last rage, and he felt it was maybe time to try out a new one. So we set out working on ARR's Jana Gana Mana.

The videos were shot in a single day - surprisingly almost everything went off well that day. We had fixed time slots for the shooting for everyone - from the director of the insti, to the housekeeping staff. We simply couldn't afford to get delayed anywhere given the packed schedule. And we also had to tug along the heavy camera, monitor, tripod, blowers et al and run all around the campus. Was a verrrrry hectic day! Luckily had a good cameraman - Mr Rafiq who understood exactly what I wanted. And even more luckily have a very devoted wife who wanted to be the 'squirrel' and ended up being a lot more!

Anyway, here is the final product of my first 'professional' attempt :)

They made us think!

After a fairly active blogging stint when I was in Mumbai, now am back at Bangy-base. Term 4 has proven to be extremely hectic. Enjoying my first couple of hours of free time in weeks now. Thought I should quickly pen down something here.

In the last couple of weeks, 2 great men visited IIMB campus and delivered engrossing lectures. The first one was Mr Nandan Nilekani. He had come just 2 days after he hit the headlines for the unique ID concept. Right timing for IIMB :) He spoke at length about 18 points (from his book). Stuff like 6 challenges, 4 ideas and so on. He then answered a few questions from the first year students (it was their orientation program). A pretty interesting event. But Mr Nandan Nilekani did not want press publicity for that event. Am guessing that was because that was his first public appearance after the news and he maybe wasn't ready enough to face the press. At the end of the lecture, had the privilege of lunching with the man along with the rest of the Student Affairs Council members.

Yesterday, another great achiever made his way to the stone walls of IIMB. You may not have heard of him. But when a person's CV goes upto 127 kB of a clear text file, he ought to be great alright.

Am talking abt Mr B V Doshi - the greatest Architect in India in recent years. A movie documentary made on him was played to us, and he himself was present to field questions at the end of it. The audi was jam packed as the video took us through the life of this person, who at 82, looks decades younger. Born in 1927, this person was awarded the Padmashri in 1976. The documentary was less about architecture, and more about life itself. Amazing person!

Some points that impressed me (paraphrased):

"Indian-ness is about frugality and making multi-purpose things. Look at the dhoti and towel - the standard Indian attire. You can use the towel to shield you from the Sun, to put down somewhere and sit on it, to cover your torso during cold, and so on. Your dhoti can double up as a rope in a small tank to draw water, as a bedsheet and so on. That is Indian-ness. Ingeniously using things very efficiently. That's what I reflect in my designs."

And actually he does that! All the buildings he has designed have been built using inexpensive material that is commonly available in the area. He also uses recycled materials and waste products to bring his designs to life. The video showed how he has designed the sofa/diwan in his living room - It serves as a seating area naturally. If you remove the cushion, there is storage space beneath the wooden planks that are the seat of the diwan. And the wooden planks are all modular - you can remove each one of them and use them as either a plank to sit on the floor on, or turn it top-side down and use it as a tray to get food and snacks!!!

"What is missing today is socially relevant architecture. People are busy in their own lives that when we build something today, we no longer plan for open spaces where people come and meet, sing, dance and celebrate life. We simply don't have the time for all that. Sad state of affairs."

That's true, and is something most people do think about. But one point that struck me real hard was this:

"We do not understand the word 'Heritage'. Heritage to us, is always monuments and relics from the past. Buildings built 1000s of years ago. We never realize that we actually have the responsibility of creating today's heritage that would be celebrated 100 years down the line. We never think of that! And it's not expensive. I always use inexpensive materials in building my designs. Creating heritage is not expensive. We just should have the intent."

How true!! This was the most interesting point that came up during the interaction, in my opinion. A few years down the line, when I build my house I will sure remember this.

One last point. You know what makes this lecture very significant? Mr Doshi is the person who designed our IIMB campus :) He is the man behind these stone walls. In the video he talks of how he designed the looooong and talllllll corridors with neat columns on either side, based on Madurai Meenakshi Amman Temple :) His aim, he said, was to make people feel free and non-constrained even when inside the building.

That, he definitely has achieved.

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.

Placed!

More details later!

The 4th idiot

Today morning I was returning from the mess to my room when I saw a group of folks standing near my room looking at the looooong corridor longingly, with SLR cameras in hand. That struck a chord with me cos that's a frame I love too. It's a very long corridor with neat rows of beams on top and pillars on the side - a photographer's dream setup.

So without any hesitation I approached them and introduced myself and asked if they were from some photography club. That kinda shocked them all. They looked at each other and laughed out loud and said they were making a movie here.

"Oh! Sorry I mistook you all cos of these cameras. If you are looking for some nice place, there is this thing called the Central Pergola. Have you seen it? The huge window on a large stone wall?"

"Ya we've seen that. Can take silhouettes there"

"Ya that's why I suggested that place :) BTW we have a photography club here"

"Oh is it? Cool. So what do you folks do in the club?"

"We move around taking pics in the campus and outside"

"That's great. Can we have a look at the pics?"

"Ya sure.. I'll get in touch with the club folks and make a collection and meet you. How long will you be here for?"

"Two more days."

"Fine, I will get in touch with you by then. Bye!"

"Bye!"

And only after that did I realise who they were - Raju Hirani and his crew for the movie '3 idiots' starring Aamir khan, and Madhavan!! :) I kicked myself for not realizing that when I was talking to them (Raju's crew.. Not Aamir and Maddy.. They werent thr).. Now a Google image search confirms it was Raju Hirani.

Hope I really get to meet him again in the next couple of days!

Summer placements at IIMB: The last lap

Just done with my mid term exams for this term. Earlier I used to think Open Book exams were the coolest things on earth (after warm water in Bangalore). But now reality has struck me hard. These blasted things only make you feel worse. Imagine having an international edition text book in your hands and still not being able to answer most questions! Does quite a lot to one's sense of self respect. Anyway, people have lived through this and exited. So this will pass away too! :)

Now that mid terms are done, it's only going to get even more hectic. For at least a week more.

SUMMER PLACEMENTS!!!

It's probably the biggest ever happening in one's life at an IIM. Bigger than the Vistas and Unmaads, and maybe even the final placements! Cos this is invariably seen as a sorting exercise - segregating the I-bankers, the consultants, and the rest. Once the summers process is done, one's company becomes one's own identity. Even more so next year when juniors land, they would tend to judge a senior by the company he interned with.

So bloody unfair!

This is where peer pressure rears its ugly head here. It does in Acads too, in the first term. But typically people start chilling out once the first term is done. They do not take grades too much to heart (the vast majority. The others are the ones who belong to the Director's Merit list).

So the point is that almost everyone wants to become a consultant (no one talks about I-banking any more than the world of magic talks about Voldemort). One might truly be interested in marketing or operations or HR. But not willing to be seen as a determined loser, he would still pursue "better" (day zero) roles he is not interested in. Not many realise that the "betterness" of the role is actually subjective!

But going by my interactions with seniors here, I think the realization DOES come. After summers. After people go through myriad experiences at their internship locations and return, they seem to have an uncanny sense of stability of thought. Maturity. From what I hear, people are more reasonable during the final placement process. They listen to their hearts. At least most of them.

BTW, back to the summers process. Consulting interviews are actually loads of fun. They are typically case interviews, where you would be given a business problem, or would be asked to estimate some number. You then keep asking questions to the interviewer and solve the problem. Once one gets into it, its quite enjoyable.

Some samples:
A regular case question could be:
A beer maker from the US launched his product in India. But sales have not been good. Can you find the problem?
So one would first ask a few questions and understand the company, the market in India etc. Then one would get down to specifics and crack the case. The problem could be anything as "trivial" as "the colour of the beer does not match people's preferences" to the supply chain being inefficient to the product simply being very costly. It could be anything! How one goes down from the generic question to this specific issue is what is tested in the interview. Exciting stuff!

Guesstimates are even more exciting. At first sight they might appear totally random, but one can find some way of getting an answer.
A very simple sample:
How many bottles of wine are drunk every week in the US?
One way of solving this could be:
- US population - approx 300 mn
- Roughly 250 mn could be adults
- Roughly 200 mn could be those who drink
- Roughly 150 mn could be those who drink wine
- On an average, lets say each person drinks 2 glasses per week. This means 300 mn glasses of wine are drunk per week totally
- On an average, 5 glasses make a bottle. This means 60 mn bottles of wine are drunk every week in the US
DONE :) Reminds you of Alaipayuthey right?
The point about guesstimate interviews is that the numbers are inconsequential. What is important is the structured way in which you zero in on it.

Got a whole weeks of preps of this sort left :) Wish me luck!

Happy Diya'li

Wishing you all a very Happy Diwali! Hope the days have been great fun for you all.

We had a 'Diya Design' competition yesterday. Our Cultural Committee gave us 100 diyas and asked us to make any design of our choice. There are a couple of design geniuses in my class who came up a killer of a concept that got us the first prize :) These pics and the video mark the making of the design.

Chalking the outline on the floor

Banana leaves cut into shape

Building side walls to retain water inside the 'compound'

Diyas being arranged on the periphery

Diyas being arranged around Ganesha

The final design in all its splendour!

Our hostel block

And this is the video:

This is one reason why I believe IIMB is THE BEST B-SCHOOL in India. My peer network here is awesome. They are not people who just got lucky once in CAT. Nor are they people who simply busy their noses in books. The selection procedure of this school ensures that only people who are good in acads as well as in extra-curriculars, AND are consistent get thru. I have so many great artists and sportsmen around me that I often wonder how these people could shine in acads as well as in other stuff!

And no, am not saying this only out of loyalty to my place of B-ing. If you see any result of any interaction between the biggies - IIM A, B and C, you would realize what I mean. IIMC had come over here for a B-Vs-C sports meet a couple of months back.

And we won 15 - 2.

I rest my case.

My first major event at IIMB

I have always loved taking part in organizing events. In fact, sometime after class 12, I almost stopped participating in any event; I rather loved being on the other side.

At IIMB, I will be experiencing my first major event next week - Vista, our B-fest falls on Oct 10-12, 2008. I am part of the publicity team, so you would find me spending some time blogging with others at http://iimbvista2008.blogspot.com.

Which means lesser time available for vishfulthinking.com :( anyway, just a week more.. Already planned my next post.. Will be a contest :) More info soon..

Anyway, find the official details of Vista at www.iimb-vista.com.

I especially love the contest called Numero Uno. Its the flagship event here, and the concept drew me no end! It's a competition between masters of all trades!!! Will go on for three days, and test different types of skills - physical and mental. Haven't seen this kind of an event before, but the more I think of this, the more I want to introduce this at Tech :) definitely will draw crowds to watch..

Placements submissions and resume work going on in full swing too.. Got Pre-Placement Talks everyday.. Sometimes two in a day.. This is just the beginning, but acads, Vista, and placements suddenly seem like too much to chew :( battling on..

Kit-kat time

I know it sounds cliched when I say the first term has gone real fast. I also know it sounds even more cliched when I say I am 16.67% a manager now (It IS a sick excuse-for-a-joke, but I am sure all MBAs/managers would have laughed at that). Back home at Chennai for a week long stint of inactivity. I am going to surpass all my existing records of inertia.

My first term had courses on:
Managerial Communication,
Business Government and Society,
Managerial Economics,
Quantitative Methods,
Financial Accounting, and
Managing Organizations.
I guess my best learnings came from FinAc and ManEco. I truly feel like I have learnt something useful from those courses. At least I wont cringe in ignorance the next time I look at an annual report.

Now that term 1 is done, it seems acads will be easier now on, if one is to believe seniors. But I have an eerie feeling that it is all about getting used to being screwed day after day, and that it will never get easier.

Having said that, mid-Nov is when things will TRULY get easier.. By then our summer placement process would be done.. And the run-up to that is going to be quite an experience. We have already been warned that once the term starts next week, we will have a Pre-Placement Talk everyday. And there are loads of stories of how people prepared in the past. All that sounds like stuff that legends are made of. So I happily discount them as ox-excreta. At least most of them.

And placements are going to be even more interesting this time. With all major investment banks pulling shutters down one by one, jokes are getting really skewed on campus. Almost everyone has to quip on how State Bank of Mysore is where we guys are going to get placed. (If someone from SBM is reading this: No offence meant to SBM, I assure you.. I was only reporting what others have been discussing.. Personally I hold SBM in high regard because it has been a.. Well I'll complete it in my SoP and recruitment forms, thank you)

Lets see.

BTW as you might have noticed by now: www.vishfulthinking.com is up :) A whole lot of thanks to all those who responded to my call for votes.

A stroll back to childhood

A couple of days back a friend visited the library here and came back thrilled. He seemed visibly exhilarated. That kinda tempted me too.

In my childhood, I used to visit libraries quite often. Especially in my 5th - 8th standards. Hardy boys / Archies / Asterix / etc used to keep me awake every night. We used to live in Choolaimedu then. And my books were sourced from my school's library and from a public lending library (A C Samy lending library on Choolaimedu High Road. Anyone seen that?). I used to swell in happiness every time I walked into one of these two buildings. They definitely would fit the cliched description of "well-equipped". Kept me well fed/read week after week for nearly 4 years!

The very smell of oldddd books used to give me a high! And the sight of them things lying in a beautiful array that looked very symmetrical despite the dog-ears only added to the effect. My heartbeat would get faster as my fingers would run around looking for that particular book in the series, and I would let out a silent whoop every time I succeeded in finding the book I wanted. The sheer joy one gets when checking a book out and walking out impatiently sneaking peeks inside is priceless.

As I walked into the big library here at IIMB, all these thoughts rushed back to me. The rows and rows of yellowing books pulled me back by a decade to my childhood.

And the smell! Ah..

Sadly, the library was largely empty. In this wi-fi enabled campus, with life on the fast lane, who will want to do things the library way. Google has spelt doom for these timeless structures. But as I flipped through books and found that they had been around in the same place even before I was born, it gave me an inexplicable thrill.

I was there for just 5 mins. But the experience is still on.

I love libraries... I love my childhood...

A photo-walk around IIMB campus

IIMB Campus pictures

Life@IIMB: The not so random parts

Ok, so FINALLY I bring myself to key in these thoughts that I've been thinking of penning for a long long time now. It's just more than 2 months since I landed here, and in this period I have got a hang of the place. Some notes from my thought stream:

• The brand of IIMB is just too powerful. Very often we have some great people coming over here to talk to us from the dais. When I say great, it's not out of diplomacy; I truly MEAN great. The likes of Abdul Kalam, Capt Gopinath (Deccan Aviation) and Subroto Bagchi (MindTreeeeeeee :) ) were here in our first month, and many more keep coming over. Their sessions help in one thing: to keep our targets focussed high. Their presence keeps instilling in us a sense of the significance of the place we are in.. It keeps reminding us that being in such a place, if we end up doing something insignificant in life, something is really really wrong with us.
• The campus is a separate world in itself. Its culture and feel are very different from those of Bangalore.
  
• Except for the pub and party attitude :) I am reminded of a small incident.. A few years back when I went to Max Mueller Bhavan in Chennai for some competition, I found a govt school boy of about 10 - 12 years sitting next to me. When we were small-talking, suddenly he gasped. I looked at him quizzically, and he pointed to a lady (foreginer) seated across the room. She was smoking. That shocked the spine out of my small acquaintance, as was evident from his words "pombala dum adikkuraa!!" (meaning "a female is smoking!"). Had that guy been here, he'd have become very broadminded very soon.
  
• Self sufficiency rules IIMB campus. If one wishes so, one can stay within the campus itself for 2 full years without stepping out (except for stuff like bank loans).
• After coming here, I take longer to wash my face, and shorter time to comb my hair
  
• Ok that's another way of sayin I'm losing hair :( Maybe cos of the post 2 / 3 AM sleeping habits. In the two months I've been here, not once have I slept before midnight. It's not that acads are too tough. Am sure they're manageable. But there are a whole lot of other stuff that go on here, and one always finds that time is heavy in demand. I would sure be happier if days were longer than 24 hours.. I can learn/do something more in that time..
• Luckily most of my passions have remained unaffected here.. I've performed three dances till date :) And am a part of the photography club.. And, I've enrolled myself in the carnatic music classes - something I've always wanted to do!! These make sure I stay in touch with myself and my life.. Maybe the biggest casualty is my blog.. Whenever I find some free time, I rather wish to rest and relax than write something here.. cos i usually write ONLY when am in the mood.. In fact, this blog started as hints at the back of my Economics notebook..
• Which brings me to the point that classes here are like classes everywhere.. We sleep / draw caricatures / click pics of sleeping friends / etc.. In that sense, this place is as good as any other educational insti in the country :) and we just love it.. Cos classes are 1.5 hours long :( one simply cant focus on a subject for so long at one go..
  
• A point of respite is that there will be max 3 classes per day.. and afternoons are free.. One can catch precious sleep in that time.. which is what most of us do actually :)
• Hectic activity comes in cycles here.. If one week is back breaking, the next week would be relatively cool.. But one should risk getting used to the "cool" part, cos that's just a temporary respite.. Schedules will soon be back to demanding superhuman levels of capacity, tenacity and efficiency.. But no one feels bogged down by all this, cos there are 270 other shoulders to offer solace..
• Competition here is high.. very high.. damn too high.. fuckin high.. Ok guess I've hit the superlative.. Just imagine, in my first test here, I got 5 out of 7, and was class second (mark-wise).. but there were 4 guys who had scored more, and 15 who had scored as much as I had.. In one sense, I stood 20th in a class of 67, despite scoring the 2nd highest mark..
• One reason for the point above is that this place overflows with IITians.. They have landed here in flocks.. Before coming here, I used to think IIT+IIM was an awesome combo.. But now, I feel that's very very commonplace.. In fact, now methinks if you are a non-IIT+IIM candidate, it is a greater achievement :D
• Another point about students here is that most of them have been in many positions of responsibilities in the past.. That gives all such people a great sense of confidence.. And to some, it adds to arrogance of the undesirable kind.. Though a minority, these people end up as "footage mongers".. Anything happens at college, these people HAVE to grab some limelight.. And they do it so obviously, it gets very irritating.. but, have got used to it now.. and it's become fun to watch them in action :)
  
• One thing that jumped out at me @ IIMB is the level of diversity here.. There are so many people who have never been on my radar in life which has been full of Engineers and nobody else.. And here I share class space with people who have been pilots, sailors / marine engineers, CAs, pure science aficionados and so on! My networks in life have never been this diverse..
• But if I look outside of diversity, my networks are quite useful! There are so many DAV and PSG guys here at IIMB!! Kinda reiterated the significance of being at good institutions..
  
• Almost all student related activities here are handled by students entirely, including the all-important placements.. This reminds me of my good ol' alma mater PSG Tech, where similar autonomy existed for students..
  
• A funny thing here is that one's sense of seniority gets muddled.. many people who were my juniors at school and UG are my seniors here :) And this is bound to continue as the average work-ex of the incoming batches is on the rise year-on-year..
• The buildings here remind me of Hogwarts.. Tall, stony structures.. with creepers to add to the impact.. And pergolas to offer a light-and-shade effect (jargon courtesy: my architecture friend).. The great imposing structures are a sight to watch! have clicked some pics.. Mostly my next post..

One thing I do miss is Chennai and MindTree.. That's equivalent to family and friends.. They were so much a part of my life for 2 years and suddenly now they aren't, in the everyday scheme of things.. That is one reason why I relish this hectic life.. Takes my mind off all these..

To end, a small anecdote.. A friend of mine had some personal problems and was cribbing to his brother about how he was unable to get some things done.. his bro (an IIMB alumnus) said with a smile: "Don't worry.. There are very few things an IIM guy cannot get in life".

I have grown to LOVE the arrogance in that statement.. And this is quite unlike my usually sober nature.. The reason is that, to this date, it gives me a lot of strength and confidence when am down and nearly out..

Random: Life @ IIMB

I was brushing my teeth at the washbasin, when a foreigner come out from one of the toilets there. (We have quite a few exchange students on campus). He was in quite a rush, and the moment he saw me, he blurted out a frantic "Hi". I managed a "Hello" in response, through my frothing mouth. And there was a queer bout of silence when he was washing his hands. Wishing to break it, I asked him:
"Are you from this block?"
"No I am not"
"Hmm.. Was wondering.. I haven't seen you around here"
Seemingly stunned by what I had just said, he thought for a second and then said,
"I come here only if it's very urgent"
and rushed off to class.
I felt so bloody embarrassed!! I had half a mind to call him back and clarify that I had actually referred to the block and not the restroom. But he had vanished by then.
An open request to all my readers: If you come across any blog by a non-Indian that narrates the harrowing experience of being asked about restroom preferences by an Indian, do mail me the link. Would like to know the other side of the story.

---

We have a section on our intranet portal for registering hostel complaints. A couple of days back, when I had a few minutes to kill, I went through the list of complaints that others had registered. Much of it was about broken locks and mosquitoes in the bathroom.
But there was this one complaint that kept surfacing time and again: "Getting hot water from all taps in the bathrooms and toilets. Very uncomfortable. Please set things right asap." It was the same guy who had registered the complaints many times over a few days. Apparently no action was taken for a while.
And this is what our guy put up next:

The taps were set right the next day :)

To "B" - is the answer.

Hey guys!

Been a long time since I posted anything here. Let me break my silence with something I love doing - a foto blog post.

Those of you who've seen IIMB campus would sure agree that it's a separate world of its own. Here are some glimpses from a walk I took yesterday evening.

(Maybe a sign for us guys to take things easy ;) )

Well, but obviously :) Have I ever posted pics without macros?

This was by accident. Didn't notice the creature when I framed the shot!!

If only the petals had been proper :(
Still, my favo among all flowers I've shot till date!

This was a God-send.
Have been waiting for months to click a butterfly on a flower.
And finally when I got the chance, didn't have enough time to get close enough.
Anyway, happy that I clicked this shot hurriedly before trying to position myself well. The butterfly had vanished by then :(

So this is the first part. Planning a second one soon, focussing largely on the buildings here. Amazing architecture.
Post: IIMB Pictures