Kya kare kya na kare ye kaisi mushkil haaye...

"I want to see myself as a brand manager" was the answer I had thought for my IIMK interview, probably the most important interview of my life. Yeah like everyone else, I had come here with a dream. Term 1 registration day: Got ourselves a set of text books and there it is Philip Kotler, the bible for marketing. That voluminous granth I dont know weigh how much pounds, but for sure it did enough to make me use it as my dumbbell. 24 sessions for marketing course in a term and they all just flew by before I could get myself acquainted with marketing. It all sounded so obvious and yet I found it hell difficult to scribble anything on the exam answer sheet except for my name & roll no. Somehow Pappu passed the course and decided it was time to let his dream shattered. I had decided to opt for anything but marketing vertical. One down!

Oh BTW McCullum just thrashed Hopes for 2o runs in an over.. I'm lovin it :D

Term II: Financial management course was fun as SSS gushed out his gyan + wit balls. I walked out after writing FM Mid term paper with a big smile on my face for two reasons. One it was the last exam to give us some respite from the last week's grilling. Two I thought I did well. Sounds nice huh?? Here comes the sad part of the story: The answer scripts said something else.For a moment I thought Prof must have made a blunder in totalling my score. Unfortunately for me Fin profs are good in numbers. By the end of term II, I striked out Finance from my probable verticals. Two Down!! Oh wait a minute does this mean that I have only one option left which is operations as my antennas simply fail to get hold of any of the broadcasts by Systems & HR profs. Believe me these profs do possess some sort of virtual tranquilizer gun else how would you explain numberof heads falling asleep in their classes just like cycles do in a cycle stand.

One more update: Its gonna be a cliffhanger. 20 needed of two overs..well well well Voges pulls off a blinder to show McCullum way back to pavillion. 20 needed of 11.

Meanwhile we had beta testing of bidding points for the second year electives which had left me totally bamboozled into which courses to bid for. Thanks to my sankat mochan mentor, I was able to bid for some of the electives from Finance & Operations. Oh BTW did i tell you that you get home-made chocolates from Munnar free with her advice :D

Term III delivered the killer punch. 8 sessions by Prof XYZ (name intentionally withheld) were enough to convince me that Operations is not my cup of tea. No wonder my vacillating mind made me bid for Finance & marketing courses in second beta testing. 

Tomorrow is the day we have to finally bid for our electives.Well I guess its time to use the services of my mentors again. And this  time I am gonna tell them in a very euphemistic way that I am open to all the verticals which apparently which means that I am totally screwed up and dont know what to opt for. Which courses I bid for tomorrow, totally depends on my mood and whatever my mentors conjure up in my mind. Ya khuda ab sab tere hawale...

Holy crap! Kiwis lost by 1 run :( Well bowled Bracken..

The facade of REALity shows...

I had exhausted all my collection of Prison Break & HIMYM in first 4 days of my term-break. Dammit 160GB drive. Not a big fan of television, I thought beggars have little to choose; I succumbed to the idiot-box & started surfing channels. Not to my surprise, I could not find anything interesting. Somehow I tuned into MTV and happened to watch "Roadies 6.0". To my dismay, it turned out to be even more rubbish than I thought.

No offence to Roadies fan, but I simply can not appreciate even iota of the crap that goes during the auditions or the game-show for that matter. First of all, what the hell makes junta believe that their coolness quotient is directly proportional to how cheap,mean & callous they can prove themselves in the auditions.Aint there any difference between self-obsessed, snobbish and a fella with ATTITUDE.To me its only a bunch of bandars dancing to tunes of a madaari and entertaining the rest of junta.Oh BTW what are the Madaari's (Raghu) credentials? Even if some of them make into the game, it only gets dirty and treacherous as it goes on. In which part of this world would you call a guy who can slap a girl just because someone says him to do so a tough, courageous and a raring fellow (correct me if so called "Roadie" is not meant to be like this)? Yes the guy who did exactly the same, won Roadies 5.0

Another popular reality show "The Big Boss" is only a motley lot of losers competing for a crore of rupees at the end of the ordeal. What does it take to win the show? Not even a modicum of knowledge, skill, intelligence or talent. Contestants are chosen on their notoriety quotient. Ofcourse the canny producers believe that higher the contestants score on notoriety meter, the more eyeballs they attract. Rahul Mahajan, Raja Choudhary, Monica Bedi: Are these the people whom we wanna know better, whom we try to imitate?

MTV splitsvilla: beautiful ladies trying to impress 2 guys (yeah I am jealous :P). What purpose such kind of a reality show serve? And the list of such shows goes on...Again I am not a fan of Ekta Kapoor but beleive me I do not hesitate saying that these "Saas Bahu" soaps are atleast better watch than such stupid reality shows.

However I totally subscribe to the shows that help in finding out & nurturing the talent. Although even in such shows the contestants judging the audience's emotional expectations and cleverly playing to the gallery emerges on the top, but atleast it does take some talent & skills to reach that stage.

Reality shows got to serve some purpose, be it nurturing the talent or making people acquainted to a celebrity.I really hope producers of reality shows do think twice before airing such shows.

Kerala Brahman - Day 1

Continued from previous post...

3 bikes, 6 friends were on their way to explore the exotic Kerala. We were cruising at the break of simply beautiful dawn. Actually it had to be the one coz I had not witnessed the sunrise after coming to Kozhikode (thanks to late night slogging). Malik was driving, I was the pillion riding, making myself busy in capturing the landscapes in my IXUS. Bhargav vrooomed on his cruiser bike as if he aspired to be next Rossi but what he did forget that chetta-land is not a motoGP track. Cool breeze blowing through my hair had evaporated all the weariness from the past week.

We reached Meppadi at 8 am and stopped by at a food joint for the breakfast. We were simply swayed by the hospitality of the people there. It was time to savour the flavour of Kerala. Fortunately Bhargav was aware of some palatable mallu dishes & ordered for us. I will do a great injustice to Kerala tea, if this post goes without a special mention of it. Fresh from the bagans, no quantum of words will be proportionate to express the aroma & taste of the tea. Had any corner of our tummies caught unoccupied, we would have gulped 3rd cup of tea.

Next we headed to Chembra estate from where we were supposed to start the mission. FYI it is the second highest peak in Kerala!! Getting hold of authority letter didn't take too much of time & 'K'omrades were on their way. Accompanying us was our local guide Max. We had scarcely trekked before |A|'s (Amod's) health refused him to stretch anymore & he decided to return to base camp. One down! Our next target was to reach the heart shaped lake situated mid way(crookedly claimed by those who haven't made it to the top) between base & peak. Weather was playing tricks with us: scorching sun & just few minutes later cool breeze could be felt on the face. Two self proclaimed photogenic komrades (thats me :P & Vaibhav) komrades were making sure that we do not miss any of our pic against any backdrop. It was not too late when we were having our photo-session at the lake. This time Prashant's endurance had depreciated.Two down! But this wasn't a wet blanket, he also had decided to move back to base.

Our sojourn at lake had re-charged our batteries & we decided to make headway. Soon we had forged ahead peak by peak (7 to be precise) to make it to the top. Obama would not have got more sense of achievement on becoming the president elect than we did on conquering the top. We spent an hour celebrating our accomplishment before we started descending.

Kerala Brahman - Day 0

I can literally count the things that could have given me more sense of relief than this. I was walking out of exam hall after last midterm exam. For a guy like me who seeks inspiration from Garfield, the week had very little to offer: 3 hrs of daily sleep!! But thankfully the horrendous period was over and I had already scribbled a couple of entries in my to-do list. You need to have -ve IQ to be unable to guess that one of them was sleeping. Other one was to pay due respect to zamorin(local shared server at IIMK which offers us plethora of movies, serials).

I had started my weekend in style: watching 7 episodes of friends in a go. But there was something else in store for me. Malik had called me up asking me to pack my bags. We were leaving for Waynad early morning next day. But I was in no mood of getting early next day & going to bed early is a crime here. Actually we, nocturnal homo-sapiens take immense pride in slogging (or atleast pretend to slog) late at night. When I finally switched off lights & my mind at 0330, I was hoping that Malik & other guys too are asleep till 8 or 9 in the morning.

"I was sitting right across Piggy Chops while we were having dinner. She was looking stupendously gorgeous in the dim radiance of the candle light. It was followed by stroll along the beach. I was wondering if this evening could last for ever.... "

Tring tring....It was my mobile ringing. I bet I never hated my ringtone so much.

Damn it Malik... its 5 in the morning and we are not leaving right now...

The response: "Dude get ready in 15 minutes"

I wish I had put some sleeping pills in their dinner last night. Anyways my dream was over and Malik left me with no other option than to wake up. We ,"Adrenaline-junkies" were all set to leave at 0530 hrs.

Friends, gotta sign off..its 3 in the morning & I have a case study pending :(