DO YOU BELIEVE???

                                                                  - Ketan Mohile

              He strongly believed that how a day began was hint enough for how it was going to end. And as far as bad beginnings went this one had all the makings of a bad day. At times like these when all he could see outside the window was the broken window pane that somebody who lived there had refused to fix for the last four weeks, he had to search hard for an answer… what he was doing there. He had been really keyed up when he heard that his firm was going to send him to London to work in the prestigious Marks and Mormon Constructions but the whole experience was turning out to be a catastrophe. It took him a good part of two weeks to get to know all the people and the work there was far from satisfactory. All they gave him were bits and pieces  ... a façade here, a library there, some stairs to design. He wanted to do one house all by himself so that they would know how his mind could break free of all that drab Victorian architecture.

But today it could all change he thought to himself. He had been given a garden house to design for some rich prick who made his money playing the stock market. It had finally been completed late last night when he toiled over the designs and now when he looked at them again he was suddenly having second thoughts. He didn’t know why but he was under the impression that all the rich pricks were a little nuts and so he had made the garden house more of a fantasy creation rather than an extension to the house and now he was sure that the tight lipped Norman Marks was going to hate it and kick him back to India on the first flight available. When he had left his Bombay office there was some hush hush talk bout the London firm looking for Indian talent but now he had absolutely no hopes of being hired in London.

                          The same day began with much doubt for her, in fact she had hardly slept through the night and the small guest room where she had been put up was really looking like a prison. She tried to convince herself that she was exaggerating it as she always did but then again her thoughts kept on going to whatever happened last evening. It made her really sad to play the same thing over and over again in her head. She knew what she wanted … a nice long walk in the morning cool to help her reflect and deliberate with what was perhaps the most important decision she was ever going to take. With a heavy heart she got up and made her way to the bathroom to rush through the morning rituals and put on the first thing that she found in her hastily unpacked bag which was a nice red kurta, she pulled over a sweater and made her way out.

Mrs. Singh would have been sleeping in her own shell away from all the harsh realities. She thought to herself if Mrs. Singh was certainly not what she wanted to become five years down the line. The London chill hit her as soon as she opened the door but most of her schooling had been done in Dheradun which got really cold sometimes. She thought of this day when it had snowed and it was really pretty everywhere and how she had imagined one day to have a house in the snow where a great fire would be burning and the house would exude warmth. Aimlessly she started making her way down the alley which turned on to the M23 which would then take her straight to the heart of London a good half an hour’s walk away. She didn’t see anybody else walking except for some teenagers on roller skates as they tried to show off some tricks on the sidewalk.

                  He was already getting really late and Mr. Norman hated it when people walked in late and it would be make a really bad impression if he walked in late on the very day he was supposed to make his presentation but there was nothing he could do now. The damm alarm wasn’t as loud and irritating as it needed to be which had made him oversleep and now as he was almost about to get out of the house he remembered that he needed a jacket today as well as there would be a formal meeting. He went in and picked up one of the three jackets he had got along and ran out of the house. He still had a long way to go. A ten minute walk to the bus stop and then get down at the tube station and catch the tube to Milton Keynes and then walk another five minutes. The train ride was the longest part and more than that he dreaded waiting at the station for his train to show up, an earlier experience had left him stranded at the station for a good twenty minutes and he certainly didn’t want that to happen today. It seemed funny to him that back home in Mumbai he didn’t give a damm as to how long he would have to wait for a train as practically everyday there was some problem or the other with the trains and the local trains had become an easy excuse for the occasional late entries into the office. Right now he would have given anything to get back to the crowded train in Mumbai crushed between people, but at least they were people you knew or at least recognized.            

                    She couldn’t control her thoughts as they started drifting over to last night’s incident. She didn’t expect something like this from the person she was going to marry next month. Kunal was always a little on the hyper side and did tend to get angry over really trivial matters. She did remember one or two incidents back home where it did bother her how she was going to manage his anger once they got married but back then she was too busy getting swept off her feet. The evening had begun quite nicely and they found themselves in a nice restaurant where they had already booked a table. A small quartet was playing some strings and some couples were dancing quietly in the center. They sat there for some time listening to the music and making small talk when Kunal asked her to dance with him there. She was not a nice dancer and in fact could hardly move her feet and so she politely refused. But Kunal just wouldn’t listen and kept on insisting making himself heard above the noises in the restaurant. She was adamant though as she really hated making a fool of herself in front of others but then all of a sudden Kunal told her rather angrily that she always played the spoilt sport and even now had ruined his mood. She told him to calm down and lower his voice and not make a scene to which he got up from the table and banged his hands on the table and shouted that he was indeed making a scene and it was all because she was never ready to do anything and left angrily leaving her there. Tears welled up in her eyes as she remembered how she sat there in the restaurant looking like a fool with all those people staring at her. Later that night she had called him up and he did answer the phone but on the phone also he had told her gruffly that he wouldn’t be talking to her the next day just to make her feel how it felt to be left alone. She had banged the phone down feeling sorry that she had come all the way to London to watch all this happening. But now as she thought about it with a cool head she knew that it was the right decision to come to London to spend some days with Kunal who was going to come down to Mumbai directly for the wedding. Her father had suggested that she go there and spend some time to know what kind of a person he really was, he had even made arrangements for her to stay at his old college friend’s house. At that time she had felt it to be an unnecessary exercise but now she was thanking her dad.

            He practically ran down the steps onto the sidewalk and blended into the morning rush looking just like another one of those yuppies. He looked around and smiled to himself when he saw that everybody almost looked the same walking in the same stride towards the single minded goal of reaching the office on time and do whatever they were paid so much to do. No body had the time to look around and watch the leaves falling or the pigeons flying or anything on this gray morning that London seemed to throw up with amazing regularity. But then again in the next moment he was one among them worrying if his boss was going to like his design. He mentally started making the presentation in his mind while he waited for the bus next to someone immersed into the latest obsession of the English tabloids. He desperately hoped that the rich prick who owned the house would be there so he could speak to him straightaway rather than explaining to his boss why he did what he did. He nervously started glancing at his watch after about five minutes on the bus stop and still there was no sign of the bus. He thought about taking a taxi to the office but it would cost him almost twenty five pounds which was way too much even if meant angering his boss instead.  

           The problem with Kunal was not that he really lost it in the restaurant but what he did afterwards. It was like he was almost punishing her for whatever she did and it didn’t even constitute a punishable offence and even if she did he was supposed to work a way out and not punish her like a school kid or something. She tried to think what she would have done had she been in his place instead. She knew she would never have done something like what he did. She would have made her discontent obvious but getting up and leaving someone alone was certainly something she didn’t agree with. Her aimless walk had bought her to the outskirts of the commercial district and she could see a park nearby and thought about going in and just sitting there looking at the kids playing, but she decided against it and kept on walking because she just wanted to see people around … even strangers would do but she just didn’t want to feel so alone at that point of time.

            He got down at the University Tube Station a good half and hour later than he expected. He was already dreading the worst that his boss was going to kick him out of the office even before the presentation was made and as far as hopes about making a good presentation were concerned, it was almost down the drain before it started. Rich people certainly didn’t like not so rich people wasting their time. There was some accident at this junction near his house; some guy riding a cycle was knocked over. He must have been one of those new age freaks who thought riding a bicycle to work was saving plants and people but now look at what happened to him. His thoughts shocked him, was a month enough to undo all the lessons you had learnt from the beginning he thought. But now all he could think was why the escalator was taking so long to take him down to the platform. He finally reached downstairs and became another face waiting for the train. It was time when he was supposed to reach office and right now even if the train did come on time he would be forty five minutes late.

               She saw an underground station and suddenly she knew where she wanted to go. There was this lake she had seen once when she was on a bus. She had loved it when she had looked at it the first time itself. It even had this island in the middle with trees on it and all around the lake were benches that were mostly empty because it was bang in the business district and people there didn’t have time to eat food let alone sit on lakesides. She looked at this tourist map and figured out what train to catch. She luckily had some spare change in her pocket and got herself a day ticket on the tube and headed underground. Her destination was on the outskirts of London and that meant she had to take a train that went to Highbury which was a ten minute train journey. She found herself on the platform sitting on a bench which was empty as everybody was going the other way for their offices. There were hardly some other people with her and most of them were reading books or just listening to music. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to catch the next train to boredom and confinement and most of them looked content listening to their favorite radio station.

                Then she knew in a flash what she really wanted. It wasn’t living with someone where you would have to rush all the time to catch up or else risk being left behind forever without second thoughts. She pictured herself sitting at home looking after the kids and making some pottery which she absolutely loved to but didn’t find the time to.  She smiled to herself as she tried to remember if she really knew what love was. She had always thought these questions were for stupid philosophers who had never been in love and tried to figure out what it was from an objective point of view. But love was so subjective she thought, her love would never be the same as somebody else’s love. She knew it wouldn’t be all that difficult to tell Kunal about the news and somehow it made her heart feel lighter when she knew she had taken the decision. Her parents wouldn’t even ask her why she took such a decision, she just loved her parents she thought as she heard some train announcements made in the background

                He was almost on the verge of a breakdown when he heard the announcer say that the train had just left the earlier station and would take another two minutes. He knew he was almost an hour late and the minute he entered he would have to hear a big lecture on Indian inefficiency and how had just wasted an hour of a reputed client’s time.  His entire stay in London flashed before his eyes and he knew it had all been a waste of time and energy. All he wanted to do right now was to catch the next flight home and sleep in his bed while his mom made him coffee. He could feel his eyes getting all misty and he smiled at himself that thought of his mom still got tears to his eyes and he knew he would reach office and tell them that he was done for good and head back home. But still it pained him to know that he had failed and he just kept staring into oblivion and that was when he saw her.

               She seemed to be so much at peace. I wish I could be like her, he thought. He saw this girl sitting on the opposite platform wearing a kurta. Her beautiful hair and graceful features left no doubt in his mind that she was Indian and he just kept on staring at her while she just looked down at her feet all the while smiling not on her face but he envied her because he knew that her heart was smiling. His gaze was suddenly matched when she looked up to find him staring at her and when their eyes met, they just looked at each other speaking unspoken words. Their meeting was rudely interrupted by the train breezing through. He was jolted back to reality by the rattling of the train and when it stopped all those desperate people waiting to get to work just rushed past him pushing him almost inside the train and he knew that this train was the last hope of getting at least an hour and a half later than time but he knew what he would do. He knew it even before the train had stopped. The train closed its doors trapping all its people into their daily lives and it left without him. He was the only one standing on the platform as people started making their way out of the station. He tried to jostle his way to the front of the platform to get a view of her and when he had done pushing through there she was still sitting there and looking at him with that same contented look on her angelic face.

              People ask me questions like if I believe in love at first sight. At time like those I tell them this story, and how do I know it was love at first sight? The last time I told this story was at the tenth wedding anniversary of these two lucky people.

With eager fingers, I sat down to fill in an entry, but only when I started typing away at the keyboard, I tried to think about what it was that took me so long to get back to this position which I absolutely loved till about three months ago. Writing an online journal seemed to be an easy task in the beginning, agreed when you know that there are other people reading it and then you have to make it interesting (and at the very basic level, at least readable) it does make the task a little more difficult, but nothing can be an excuse for staying away for a whole three months or even more I guess.

I will admit here that I made two attempts in the whole of the three month sabbatical but somehow I knew that I wasn't even trying with all my heart. And what is it now that makes me try to complete a longish entry here?? I frankly don’t know. Today the results for the GD/PI shortlist for MDI were announced and I did run down once or twice to check out the fate of some applicants who had applied to MDI and posted their numbers on pagalguy (http://www.pagalguy.com) and suddenly I remember the story as it stood one year before this day (well not to the date, but at least to the event) and that was where it all began, me getting a call for the MDI interview, me finally making it and then me starting to write this blog and so what better way to start over again than today. I also made some new year resolutions amongst which top most was "I shall not succumb to the temptations of eating junk food" and somewhere down the line came "I shall try to maintain my long forgotten blog" and well I am happy to say that I have been successful in keeping up both the resolutions (the ones in between, I shall not delve into those).

I really wanted to talk about another issue here, and for those of you who will actually stumble across this new entry, a real disappointment awaits you guys  because I am in this really global mood today (something to do with the RMB classes today). What I want to talk about is the philosophy behind the blog. Right in the beginning, I had made it clear that this is a place where I want to exercise my passion for writing and anyone willing to hitch a ride is doing so at his own risk. I must thank my dear friend Prateek Agarwal for maintaining keen interest in my blog and trying to provide gentle nudges along the way to make me start writing all over again, but to him I must say that writing comes from within. The journal written for the sake of providing a daily or a weekly entry is another issue, but when deeper passions (as many of my friends who share equally deeper passions will support me) are involved, the matter takes on a different approach. Also many people have asked for better formatting and maybe integrating some images into the blog entries. The idea about the images I really like, and i'll see what I can do about it.

So now that we have established the bottom line of "I shall write when I want to write" let us get to the part where I stop making egoistic statements and actually write something worth reading.

I am just back from Mumbai (yeah the best city in the whole wide world) from my term break, and it was a great experience. Back in gurgaon the temperature is about 12 degrees lower, the fog is choking me and I can see no sunlight. Right from my childhood, I have been blessed with homes which have in turn been blessed with ample sunlight and so I really love the sun and it makes me sad that he doesn't acknowledge me for days on end here in Gurgaon. One more thing that I miss from Mumbai is the sensuous breeze (as my friend Arvind says). I must say that there is something in the city which will make you stop in the street, look at the sky and smile as you let the atmosphere and the breeze soak you (and before you get knocked out by a speeding car or some guy in a hurry to catch his 9.34 Church gate fast). Well as many of my fellow students at MDI will vouch, once I start about Mumbai, it is usually difficult to make me stop.

One thing that I loved about Delhi winters is the fact that they are so refreshing. It is freaking cold outside, your hands are shivering, you have not taken a bath since the past three days, you are covered in three layers of clothing, the hot coffee is not hot after two minutes, the heaters in the room make you feel claustrophobic, the sun never shines, the fog smells weird, getting up at 7.30 in the morning is a real pain, but once you do all of this, rather once you get out into the open and take a breath of the cool winter air, the feeling is the most refreshing feeling I have ever had. Some aspects of Delhi are really great. I have just finished reading Delhi – A novel (Artful entertainment as some of my friends would say) and it just make you aware of the culture and history that Delhi can boast of. Not many cities in the world have had so much to witness in such short a time. Khushwant Singh is a great writer (I know many people who are turned off by his style of writing and his language and generous helpings of sex in between) but Delhi is a masterpiece. A friend of mine Dr Kotwal rightly said about the book “Alternate chapters are pure pornography … but alternate chapters are pure gems” When I mentioned this description to a friend in college he said “Yeah great, I’ll just read the alternate chapters … the porn ones”

I have taken to read contemporary Indian authors, I just finished reading “The hungry tide” by Amitav Ghose and I must warn all of you who have never heard of this book, not to take the trouble of finding out more about this book. I read almost 450 pages, cover to cover and am still trying to find out what the real story was a book which can surely be given a miss. Next in line is V. S. Naipaul’s “India – A thousand Mutinies now” that is if I find the time.

Its 3.00 in the night and I should be getting some sleep because I may have to present a case in class tomorrow and I haven’t even read it as yet. Hopefully this is the start of my new blogging life and this time I will try to make it more interesting and better still …more regular.

A whole of 16 days have passed since I made an entry here, last night someone told me that when you put in “Mandevian” in Google, my site comes out tops and that alerted me to the responsibility of regularly updating the site so as to speak of. And now that MDI has itself come out tops in the rankings a whole lot people would be googling for MDI, my site better represent the true picture (DO you guys even read this crap??). Anyway I really like to politically correct and for the same reasons, discussion about the rankings controversy will be avoided at all costs (I said Rankings controversy, is there a controversy in the first place??).
This is a lazy Sunday afternoon and I woke up at around 11.30 and saw “The Score” now I start to do some research on my LAB (Legal Aspects of Business) case which is that case about an American company filing for patents for Basmati rice and all that. It basically deals with IP (Intellectual property laws) and is pretty interesting by the way, but getting down to doing the research work is somewhat boring. Or rather getting yourselves to be motivated enough to start with the research work is boring. I am waiting for the lunch hour to start, which it will in another 20 minutes, after that I plan to have a nice lunch and then sleep till eternity. This is perhaps the last Sunday … for that matter the last day when I get to chill out a bit. Starting from next week we start making presentations in class for our final projects which will be graded and carry around 20% weightage in our final grades. After that my end terms start on the 22^nd of September and that means its back to slogging it out to study stuff that you were too sleepy to understand in the class in the first place. Also there is the added prospect of summer placements. From previous years we can predict that soon companies will start coming down for placements by the end of September, unlike the final placements, this is not a continuous process but rather a rolling process. So we would be having companies from the end of September to the month of December. And the worst part about it is that there is hardly any advance warning given. I have to attend my sister’s wedding in the month of November and I hope that I get to attend that.

So I don’t think from tomorrow I get to have much spare time on my hands. Actually the last two weeks or so, I did have a lot of free time on my hands but I was going through a major creative block. In fact I can say it was exactly the opposite. I was really being creatively motivated to write some thing (a short story perhaps) but I couldn’t get myself to sit down and actually write it. I didn’t really want to get down to making an entry into my journal as that would have broken my thought flow (I know I sound like some big writer or something but it sometimes happens that you sit down to start writing something but what you really wanted to write is lost forever). I saw this movie once called “Finding Forrestor” , it was about this writer who is disillusioned with the world and has given up writing after just one really successful book and how he comes across a black kid from a poor neighbourhood who wants to write himself. Sean Connery does the role to perfection and guides the kid both through his troubles gaining identity as a basketball playing writer and as an underprivileged black kid in one of the richest schools in town. Along the way, Connery gives him a certain advice which has stuck with me and luckily my computer also gladly obliges. Sean Connery says that when you write, the words have to come out through your fingers, you have to pound the keyboard and hear the keys going TAP TAP  TAP to know that you are creating something and to understand the magnitude of your creation. My keyboard is this peculiar model which has mechanical keys, not those soft touch keys you usually get and so they make a lot of noise if someone is in the mood of banging them. So every time I start to write and I hear the keys pounding I know that I have to write with all my heart (and this holds even when I am completing some stupid reports on body language or the steel industry or anything like that).

I almost forgot to mention that we have started getting our papers from our mid term exams. Unlike other B schools, we do not have the concept of being graded right now, but we are given marks now and one final grade at the end of the term. I did well in LAB did okayish in Marketing (Which I incidentally thought was my best paper) and did pathetically in Accounting (Which I knew was going to be my worst paper). I scored a measly 08/30 in accounts. It sounds really low but it is actually the class average. The average would have been even lower had it not been for some super CA studs who make it a point to score at least 25. When you mention this to them they remark back saying that when the time comes for the QMM (statistics) paper, the engineers would be way ahead. Little do they know that there is no relation between statistics and Engineering and QMM was my second worst exam. So I can assure them to rest in peace as MDI has a rich history of producing batch toppers who have to be CA’s.

Let me just add in a piece of information which could amuse certain people who know me and know that this is something that I am incapable of doing. I am a part of the Natyamatics team (The dramatics club), but in the capacity as a scriptwriter. About a week ago, Natyamatics was asked to put on a cultural night for the batch and so three plays were planned between the three teams. My team decided to do an adaptation of a Mahashweta Devi play called Bhayan which deals with atrocities against women in rural India by branding them as witches. As it was adapted, I just had to chip in with some dialogues and not much.  But when an actor dropped out, I was pushed in to take his place. My role was basically Villager no 3, a measly role which had me saying all of four lines, but to get those four lines out, the director had to really sweat it out. The play happened nicely, and it was a fun experience. Rehearsals at 3.30pm and then eating hot parathas was something I wont forget. One night when we were practicing it actually started raining heavily and we gave up on the rehearsals and got wet playing in the rain and splashing water all over. The funniest part is that the lines from the drama have stuck with us and so now whenever we run into each other in college, we make it a point to use some line or the other from the play and try to call each other by the drama names. Udit Jain is Ramdas, Nishant is Malindar and Rono Palit is Gowardas … shit I just realized that my role is so pathetic that it did not even have a name.

Somebody has to do some research on the Joy of finishing exams (this time for real) and whether it is comparable to any high induced by naturally or artificially created substances. It’s been some hours since my exams finished … quite a lot actually but it still feels good to know that exams are done with. The best part was that the paper did not even demand the full two hourly treatment. I was done with the paper in an hour and some more. After that I had to go to the bank to submit my draft for the fees. I came back to the news that there was a dinner party organized by the Director of the institute to welcome the new batch and Natyamatics, which is the dramatics group I am part of, was in charge of organizing the cultural part for the night. So we got down to work, Saurabh (http://mdigurgaon.blogspot.com) and me were given the task of snapping up two compeers for the night and so we happened to convince Ridhima and Amit Garg for the job, Ridhima did not need any convincing but Amit sure did.

After that we had to help out Sowmya with arranging the skit, the same mime skit she had done during the induction program, and which was appreciated very well during that time also. I don’t exactly remember but sometime after I had done all this work, I fell asleep but that was after I gave Himani Casablanca (The movie). I was moving in the boys hostel when I happened to pass Pushkar’s room and saw Pushkar and Himani sitting together and watching a movie ….believe me, it was a sight to record, not because they were sitting together, but because they were actually watching a movie. For all those who know these two people, a movie is the last thing they would associate them with, so it was a welcome relief to know that someone like them was also enjoying the finishing of the exams. After I spoke with Himani, I came to know that she was also a die hard romantic waiting to watch Casablanca. I should very soon start listing this as my hobby – Making people watch Casablanca. I mean its one movie that everyone should watch, everytime I hear the lines “Play it again, Sam” and everytime the strains of “As time goes by” waft through my computer speakers, I get goosebumps. And of course no one can forget Rick standing at the bar with a cigarette dangling in his mouth and saying in his drunken best voice “Of all the gin joints in all the towns of the world, she walks into mine.” I mean there is something about the movie that makes me a romance fan for life and also an old movie fan for life.

The program started at around 7.30 where we were instructed to be dressed in smart Casuals, it went off well but seemed to drag on a bit towards the end with the musicals. The skit was a huge hit and the Director also was all praise for it. the highlight of the show for me was obviously in the end when Ramesh Prabhu (RP) we call him, a senior who is the co-ordinator for Mandolins (The music club) started to do his thing on the Drums, this guy has been playing drums for almost 17 years (hell four years more and that is my age) and when he did his thing, other people watched with their mouths gaping. His solo on the drums really shook us all and left us wanting for more. The dinner party broke up and there was another party organized by the student’s in the terrace. I decided to give this one a skip, coz I was already tired and also I had recently had a little too much of this partying business. Someone who really knows me will be surprised to know that I have attended three parties within a period of two months and managed to dance like hell in all of them. So I watched some crap movie (Ek Haasina Thi) with my roommate in the room and slept by 4.30. I had an 8.30 lecture in mind and unfortunately my roommate had a 10.00 lecture in mind.

The first thing I know in the morning is that the door is being banged upon loudly and its Jeetendar waking us up, I look at the watch and its 9.55. I happen to rush through a number of things that normally take 15 minutes at express speed, but that day took me three and a half minutes. The shock of missing me very first class at MDI also had an added numbing effect on me. I reached the class at 10.10 for the marketing lecture which I realized started at 10.15. We had a economics lecture but I heard that Mr. Ashra had some accident and broke his arm, so we were given that lecture off.

Friday is also the day when most of the people are running home. More on that later when I am in a really bad mood so that I can curse all of them. Sowmya was going to BITS (her alma mater) and so we saw her off. Ridhima also left for home by around 1.30 and Saurabh was leaving by evening. I happened to see Manasi, Shubhi, Surbhi, Binod, Saurabh Sinha and a whole lot more of other people leave for home with a happy look on their face. NRC (Nilanjan Roy Choudahry) is already home in Calcutta. I MISS HOME. 

The disaster called the mid term exams will finally end tomorrow. Actually the unofficial end coz all we had left over today was the paper of Oral Communications and Presentation Skills. An irony it is that a paper testing us on oral skills has to be a written one, but then again starting from next week Mr. Kapoor has promised us that we have to do some presentations in front of the class which would be given a heavy weight when it comes to the final grade. We have to make a book review, but the catch is that it has to be done it two minutes flat … extending the time limit calls for negative marking. I am thinking of reviewing the Goal which happens to be the first and only management book I have read, something I definitely have to change, considering the fact that I am now a management student. But I used to think that these management books were full of global gyan … something akin to common sense (Our law professor always says that law is codified common sense), but after reading the Goal my perception has changed somewhat. I happened to read three pages of The 7 habits of effective people or something like that by that Covey guy … and have never lifted it up again. It is basically common sense … and if you really need someone else to enlighten you upon common sense, then its really a very uncommon thing (See there I start off with my clichés again … somehow I have this irresistible itch to use common sense and uncommon together … in the same way its been done for at least the past four hundred years).
The exam was a disaster in the true sense. All our seniors used to tell us that there was no direct relation between the number of hours you put in and the grades you would eventually get, well I haven’t got my grades as yet, but one thing I can definitely say is that no matter how much you study, in the end it all rests with the professor and his sense of torturing poor people like us. Statistics paper was a perfect example … not that I had studied much for it, but the best part (or rather the worst part) about the paper was that no body still knows what the right answers are, no doubt everyone is speculating and praying hard that their method of solving the problem was right, but then again it all depends on how Mr. Anwar Ali decodes our answers. HBO (not the movie channel … but this ultra boring subject ) was even worse, Mr. Kalra happened to let us know that the test was an  open book test a day before and then he lets us know that the test was open book only for one particular paper in the test, so that put us all in the panic mode and we had to go through boring definitions like Self Bias Problem and  Fundamental Self Attribution Problem and other crap like that.

One bright part about preparing for the HBO definitions was a small joke in the book (it was meant to be a joke … but there was a catch attached to it). The joke was about creativity … it went like this
We just think of a hen as a way of laying eggs … but if you think with some creativity you will realize that the hen is in fact an egg’s way of generating more eggs.

Really stupid joke ( you guys are not even supposed to laugh at it) but the catch was that in case you were studying stupid definitions for the better part of the night and happened to be in the HBO zone then this joke would have seemed to be really funny. I told this joke to Ridhima who happened to be studying statistics at that time and she was looking at me like I was going crazy, but later at night when she had had some hours of HBO she herself started laughing like mad at this joke and that time Kedar was looking at her as if she was going crazy. The truth was that we were all going crazy, but a fun experience it was, giving seven papers in a four days (well I still have to give the seventh) but one thing I learnt was that though it did seem like an impossible task, it wasn’t all that impossible. And then again if I start talking in terms of managerial gas, we learnt to prioritize things and manage time. Well I certainly am not doing a good job of it right now. It’s already 10.00 pm and I have to attend a meeting of this group I am a member of MARK (Marketing analysts and research catalysts) which is the marketing research team of MDI. After that I plan to study some hours of OCPS … study = read through the book. I have at least had the fortune of knowing all the chapters I have to go through. By the way … I forgot to mention that I screwed up my Economics paper … it was simple paper and I messed up two answers. The worst part is that now everyone will score well and I wont … somebody told me once before coming here that RG (Relative Grading) would give people nightmares. For those who came in late … relative grading is the concept used in almost all the business schools where you are graded based on the performance of the rest of the class. It gives new meaning to the word Competitive Advantage (ask people who sit on the last benches and have the luxury of … lets not use copying … it’s a bad word … who have the luxury of tallying their answers). Off I go, a meeting to attend and then some general timepass, I hear there is some program tomorrow ( a musical program) and practice is on in full swing, Sowmya will obviously be there and so that means some more reasons not to study OCPS

It was Sowmya’s birthday today and she it really started the night before when at midnight she was bought down or rather pulled down in front of the mess and made to cut the cake. The tradition is that the room-mate gets the cake. Shubhi Sood had to do the honour and so she went with Saurabh Garg (September the 22^nd fame … http://mdigurgaon.blogspot.com) to get the cake from sector 14 cake shop. Sowmya didn’t get much of a chance to realize what was happening after she cut the cake on the table in front of the mess. She was plastered with a mini cake which was made especially for the occasion. Then someone got a bucket of water and dunked sowmya with it. To our delight Sowmya’s senior student Mentor (Sonar Gilani) happened to be there and since we couldn’t really give Sowmya Birthday Bumps … he was made the reluctant victim. So now Sowmya is all plastered with cake and wet with cold water (Did I mention that the water was not normal … it was taken from the ground floor water cooler, so nobody would obviously let Sowmya off without her singing a song. So the poor girl had to stand there in the mess that she was and then sing a beautiful song.

We went off to sleep somewhere (nowadays I have lost track of the actual time we go off to sleep) but it must have been sometime around 3.30. The next morning we had class as usual. After that there was a blood donation camp organized by Samaritans which is the community service society of MDI. I had volunteered for the afternoon slot and that included sitting at the desk and registering people to donate blood and also helping them with refreshments after they had donated blood. That was a customary glass of glucose supplement and some glucose biscuits because eventually at every blood donation camp you are bound to find someone who will faint.

So there I was helping people out and watching some people faint. Actually they came up to donate blood was a big achievement in itself. With all due respect to some ladies of the class … they showed great courage in turning up for the donation but had to be turned back for lack of proper weight requirements. But kudos to them also to show so much enthusiasm. They had planned to collect about 120 bottles of blood by the end of the day but to everybody’s disappointment, they collected only about a 100 or so. I also wanted to donate blood but previous experiences told me otherwise because once before I had donated blood for a cousin and then when I got up after I had finished my vision just blanked out and then I had to have about two glasses of juice to get me back to normal strength. As it is, I was already tired I decided against donating blood that time.

I forgot to mention that all this time Sowmya was sitting there with this great smile on her face and helping people out. She was not allowed to donate blood so she decided to help out by sitting there the whole time, on her birthday. And the fact that it was birthday was exactly the thing that made her so happy. She had told me the earlier day itself that she was so happy that she would get to do something meaningful on her birthday. I only wish the world was full of people like her … I guess that is asking too much but I at least wish that it had a whole lot more people liker her.

So I went off after completing my duty and had a nice sleep. I woke up when I realized that I had to submit my mark sheets attested by some government official in the PGPM office or my name would be stuck off the register, so I had received a mail. I tried my luck around this government hospital but had to return back. I came back to find some four other people who had not gotten the mark sheets attested and so we all went to the office and cried before them that there was no way we could get them attested at such a short notice and so we got permission to get them attested by Mr. Prateek Agrawal … http://prateek2410.blogdrive.com

After the whole mark sheets deal, I was free and so I decided to donate blood once in for all which I did. The blood donation part I have no problem, but after that I knew that I shouldn’t be getting up soon. But that I did and so my vision blanked out again. So I lay down again and this time I lay down for good. Saurabh actually took my picture while I am lying down and it is a picture of one really scared guy. But I got all right after about half an hour, two bananas and one glass of glucose.

Sowmya wanted to take us out for dinner or some treat but then we all told her that she was already looking really dead and she had already had a nice birthday and so she should be going off to sleep rather than taking us out.

I am back after a short nap in my room and subsequent dinner. I made sure that I had many helpings of ice cream to make up for my lost health by course of blood donation. So an eventual birthday it was for Sowmya, the doctor who was conducting the camp also messaged her late that night saying that he really appreciated the efforts of sincere people like her who put meaning into a day of their life … be it their birthday or not.

One month down and I am still surviving. Actually it was hard to believe that the one month mark is here already and to remind us of just that, we had a party. The party is a thanks giving party organized by the junior batch (that is my batch) for the senior batch as their mid semester exams had ended the other day. As usual I am back in my room at 6.00 in the morning and it’s really pleasant outside and I wish I could just stay out. The party was not as nice as the earlier ones. In fact in the middle of the party when the DJ was playing some really sad songs I was messaging Roshini in Chennai and was telling her that I was already bored of the party and she replied back saying that knowing me as she did … she was surprised that I actually managed to enjoy the earlier two parties. But towards the end of the party it was really as if the DJ was trying to make everyone go to sleep, but he ended with Summer of 69 which has this amazing ability to make you really swing with your head going BANG BANG BANG.

The one month has really changed me, I mean a month ago I felt as if I was waiting for something in my life to happen and now that I am here it feels as if so much is happening that I don’t know what to take in and what not to take in. the experiences here have been amazing and each day I am learning new things (I had warned you guys right at the beginning that I can get really corny at times so here it comes). The one thing that I love the most about this place is that it teaches you to be independent. I know its easy to say things like that when things are going all right for you and you actually look at all the positives of staying alone but I also know that one day when I’ll be really low the one thing that I will want the most is to sleep in my own bed at home and feel secure. But I guess that I how life is and we should be thankful that we are at least somewhat in control of our life because it at least gives us the chance to make our own choices. No  doubt we will go wrong sometimes, but then again at least you can curse yourself for taking the wrong decisions and then try to act a little bit smarter the next time around.  

At the party I really wanted to get drunk this time around, actually my friends think I am so much of a control freak that I refuse to get drunk coz I think that then I will no longer be in control (this thesis is terribly untrue I must add). This time around after my customary two drinks I start feeling fresh and light and feel like dancing like hell but then I think that this time around I will get drunk so I am making my way towards the drinks stall to get me another vodka when Mohit Jain comes upto the public announcement and says that we are running out of drinks and the last bottle was on its way to being finished. By the time I reached the stall, the last drop of the last bottle had already been exhausted (much of it by Mohit Jain himself as was proved beyond doubt later). So I lost out on another chance to get drunk. So then I took to dancing and after the usual moving my feet a little in both directions and trying to sound really cool I gave up. Later I was telling Ridhima that if she insisted on dancing with me anymore she would actually start dancing like me (she is a real great dancer). Another unusual thing with me around here is that once the rock music starts (floyd, nirvana and GNR) I go really wild and lose all my inhibitions about moving me body in public and start doing crazy things without having actually gone high on anything in particular except the music and then I did not realize it at that time, but later about ten people at least were asking me if I was drunk or what. Later when I was getting bored of the music and me and Ridhima were sitting on the stairs looking at other people dance and we saw Arvind (Mr T) dancing his heart out. He is a really cool guy who is majorly chilled out in life and always with a smile on his face. So Ridhima tells me that I also looked exactly the same way as Arvind did when dancing and so I told her that real people did can get drunk on themselves. Later Piyush also joined us and when the party broke Piyush, Me , Ridhima and Bhavana decided to take a walk around campus. I ran into one of the exchange students David who is a brit and after some small talk, even he decided to join us. I got talking to David and over the courseof the discussion envied him more than anyone on this planet. He is here to do research on Operations and will be here till September. So I asked him what he wanted to do after he finished in Spetember. He told me that a job was waiting for him in London but he wanted about three weeks off for himself, so naturally I asked him what he was going to do for those three weeks and he told me that the first week at least he was going to spend in Nepal because he did not know anyone there and he just wanted some time off for himself. I could have given anything at that moment to be like him. I mean forget the time or the money aspect, I am half sure that even though we might get any of these two or for that matter even both, we would not be able to enjoy it like they do. Its an intrinsic part of their spirit, something we can learn from all foreigners.

David has also left for his room and now I must reluctantly go down for breakfast, as my eyes are shutting and if I sleep now, I will miss breakfast. So long till the next entry and once again a very happy one month anniversary for me at MDI.

We had a surprise quiz on marketing after our lectures yesterday and hopefully I perform better on this one. (there is a clarification about something I wrote in my last blog entry, 45 people who got zeros in the first quiz were not from my batch, they were from last year or so I hear … this time the number was lower .. somewhere around 20). The marketing quiz went off quite well and it didn’t require you to mug up anything from the books, you just had to know what Kotler says and then apply it to your real world examples.

I am getting quite drawn towards marketing, something I had never expected. I somehow always considered myself to be a finance guy because I thought I loved the concept of numbers and also loved to sit down with work that demanded attention to minute details. What I did not know was that financial accounting would involve really weird concepts of balance sheets and double entry systems and what not, thankfully Dr Sanyal is teaching and so he makes the subject interesting. It is too early to decide upon what subject I will take up, I need at least till the start of the summer placement procedures to make up my mind as to what I want to do.

We had our class representative elections today and it turned out to be a really political affair. The candidates were supposed to prepare agendas and deliver speeches. I thought that Dilpreet would win but he did not and so Mohit Jain is the new CR. There was one point of time when I actually contemplated standing for the CR election myself, but gave up the thought when I came to my senses. I have applied to Imperium (the cultural festival) and I have applied for the Marketing magazine (JAMM) and I will apply for the Delpique panel discussions. Hopefully I should get selected at more than one group.

I am struggling with excel, we were asked to make the FA balance sheet on excel which involved just addition and subtraction and that was manageable, but the probability and the distribution problems involve some analytical functions and macros which are proving to be difficult. I hope to master that by the weekend because there is a huge Anwar Ali assignment in the box.

Today a really funny thing happened in the class for OCPS (the communication class) we were supposed to give a two minute extempore on any topic in front of a rolling camera. The topics had to be as diverse as possible and since no one had covered sports, I thought I would go on about the life of David Beckham. A matter of fact to be noted is that when I had appeared for the preliminaries of mastermind India, I had taken this as the exact subject for my area of specialization and so I was confident that I would kind of know the basic facts at least. Before the presentations started I got the news that we were going to have a QMM quiz in the next class. This is the same subject which got me a zero in the first quiz. This kinda freaked me out and so the normally cool and composed ketan while making a speech started having scary thoughts in his mind and the glare of the camera lights didn’t help. I started off pretty well and then lost it about 10 seconds into the speech. I was supposed to say that David Beckham was born of middle class parents and when the words came out they sounded “david beckham was born of middle aged parents” and the whole class was in splits. It was at least assuring to know that they were listening to me. I managed to say something about a world cup in 1996 but thankfully it was only for about two minutes and so I was spared from any further embarrassments. As it turned out, we had no quiz whatsoever.

Here there is a tradition that in case it’s your roomie’s birthday, he gets the bumps, but even you get the bumps. Unfortunately it was my roomie’s birthday, which earned him the bumps at midnight. Nitin Kumar had the good fortune of escaping with just one round of birthday bumps, but his roommate (poor me) had to make do with three. I got one set at midnight and then the next one in the acad block when I was drinking water during a break in the lecture and the third one on the terrace at night. I guess I haven’t made many friends around here. This I believe is the first time I am writing an entry at a decent hour of the day when I can actually hear sounds outside and its daylight. Or else all the other entries were made at some ungodly hour of the night. I have a late lecture today which starts at 12.00 and that means I could actually afford to wake up at  7.00 and not do much. I do have to go through the economic slides the prof sent us and also through the case in LAB (legal aspects of business) which is going to be a really difficult subject this semester. I need to go and get a shower because the rains just refuse to visit gurgaon. One more thing I realized is that now the entries is more of facts rather then my gyaan, I think it is because I get so much of that around here from seniors and know how boring it is to listen to all of it, I am sparing you guys from the same dose of boring gyaan.