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.