A long weekend

A very eventful weekend this one has turned out to be. Starting with clearing up the flat and ending with a completely tired and worn out dinner at the restaurant down the road, the weekend was anything but dull. I may not be correct in saying that I enjoyed everything that happened over the last two days but I certainly will not be off the mark if I say that I am exhausted this Monday morning after two days of 'engagements'.

I had to get up early on Saturday morning to go to the Cancer research Institute regarding Abhijeet's mother. The doctor there was very helpful and the long wait in the queue proved its worth when I actually got to speak with the doctor. He sounded very practical and did not give out any false hopes. At the same time, he did mention about cases where chemotherapy has actually helped increase the longevity of the patient. I hope it does so in this case.

When I came back from the CRI, I had this very severe headache and I had almost given up on my plans to go for the freshers' party in the evening. In fact, I was down in the dumps with my face buried in the pillow, trying to escape this Sinus-infected unbearable pain when Yogi came in. I guess that he was annoyed to see me this way and when I wouldn't even get up to talk to him, he must have got pissed off. I couldn't have done anything else at that point of time as I could hardly hear his words, the pain was so acute. During my long pain-induced siesta, the TV got sold off finally and Puneet had to do some packing and moving along with the guy who had come for the TV all the way from some remote location in Chennai.

Luckily for me, the pain vanished in the afternoon and we were able to have a good lunch before getting the LPG connection cancelled and returning the Set Top Box to the cable operator. By the time we reached home, the movers and packers (I think that it is the other way round, that is, packers and movers, isn't it?) people were already there. Another half an hour of frenzied packing saw them off with a payment of Rs.3500 (huge amount for moving three cartons to Bhilai) and a promise of safe transit of goods (hopefully, they will keep it).

It was time already for the freshers' meet, which I was looking forward to for a long time. As per the ambiguous (or manager-like, as Prithesh said) dress code, I decided to make it simple with my typical white shirt and blue jeans combination. I reached the place about fifteen minutes late and as I was parking my bike, I saw this lady turn up with her scooty. As is my habit, I gave her a look down and thought that she seemed quite nice looking with an elegant dress (another of the casual, bordering on formal stuff). I even thought for a moment that she might be one of the people in today's party but then I gave one 'naaah' to my self and went up the floors to reach Saagari, the place for the meet.

Since I have already been to this hotel quite a number of times for project parties, I knew the way around and the kind of food, drinks, etc to expect. The thing that I was not prepared for, however, was the warm welcome that I received. The seniors were all there, waiting (as it turned out later, desperately) for the freshers to arrive. I was asked to put up a sticker announcing my name and batch so that the others could identify me by name. I had hardly settled down and started talking to some of the alumni gathered there when I saw the same lady I had met in the parking lot coming in. Pavithra, as I found her name to be, will be joining IIMK in our batch (I can listen to a few catcalls already :-)). She has had a work experience of 7 years (three in HDFC where she is working right now and 4 years prior to that in ANZ Grindlays) and as one of the alumni also pointed out, I really admired her perseverance when she told us all in the intro that it was her 5th attempt at CAT that has got her to IIMK.

The gathering was pretty small (some eighteen people in total) and though the ice did not really break in the entire session (the alumni and some seniors had a lot to catch up with, themselves), it was nevertheless quite informative and warm. The formal introductions were just that, formal. Despite few valiant attempts by Ravi from the alumni and Karan from the senior batch to lighten the mood, the drinks didn't really get spilled over on to the floor (as in a manner of speaking). As I mentioned to Pavithra, I was hoping for some sort of a ragging session when it came to the freshers' introduction but unfortunately, even that did not happen and it was all pretty decent and peaceful despite some different questions (again from Ravi from the alumni and Karan from the senior batch).

The session was immediately followed by the food and some general talk with the alumni about their experiences and some Gyaan by the seniors on academic rigor at IIMK. The party broke with Archana (from the senior batch) singing two songs before she left. The songs were exceedingly good, judging from the reaction of the crowd. Even though I could not understand the language, the melody did appeal to me, too. Soon after, Pavithra and Niranjan, the only others from my batch, had to leave. The alumni made a move, too and by 11:30, I was left with nine seniors, few of them drunk, few trying to get drunk and all of them enjoying the party.

Sunday was spent lazing around before I got a call from Raghunath Sir at TIME coaching to come for their seminar. Had it been some office staff who had called, I would have surely refused. Since it was Raghunath Sir, Puneet and I had to go to T Nagar and I even had to go up to stage to answer a few questions specifically addressed to the work-ex people. The front row people were those who were selected by some IIM or the other and they all had really taken CAT seriously. In fact, sitting in the middle rows, trying to avoid the eyes of Raghunath Sir (so that he would not call us up on stage), I was discussing this with Puneet and we concurred on the fact that we were one lazy bunch of guys who should have done much more (???) than what we did for CAT preparations. I met Lax of the 2003 IIMK batch there and he really sounded sorry for having missed the party at Chola. Abhay was also present and we went to Cafe Coffee Day for some time out before I dragged Puneet to T Nagar to get an Idli Cooker for my Mausi.

T Nagar's market is as popular as it is crowded. As usual, by the time we returned from that place, I was totally exhausted and had completely frayed my nerves, driving through the teeming (!!!) multitudes. My bike sounded tired and worn out, too when I tried giving it some accelerator treatment after coming out of the human swamp of T Nagar.

The story of journalism and long named awards

"Common Minimum Program of the United Progressive Alliance Government is out. It is predominantly left handed."
"Australia won the second one day international cricket match against Zimbabwe by a huge margin. Zimbabweans hardly have any team"
"After a crash and the mania of the manic Monday, Indian stock markets have stabilized"
"Narendra Modi is face to face with the RSS, facing dissent in his own bastion"

Sounds like the Rediff homepage, doesn't it? Or even the Times Of India headlines if you include some more masala information about the latest movies on the circuit. The strange part, nonetheless, is that the lines above are neither of these and do not belong to any other place that you would think they normally should, if they are behaving like the just born and not like the one who has had the first hand experience of the world for more than a day and has already started appreciating the charms of the nurse/ward boy. These are the brain children (is there any such word?) of some of the bloggers that I have come across during my voyage through the net. During this most fortunate part of my journey called life, I have had the rare fortune of reading the same news over and over again that I had already read in the morning, and not just read but also discussed (with the hapless neighbor) and analyzed them before removing the rein off my roving mouse and pointing it to the imaginary world of Blogs, Inc.

I know that I must be wrong somewhere because however hard that I try, I do not get the logic of repeating the stuff that you read in the morning, verbatim on your private (or public, as in the case of blogs) journal. The point is that if you have a view, a stand on the issue and you are putting it across (in the hope that it will fetch you one of those long named awards (a la Raman Maggi Sauce somebody), then I perfectly understand that and actually empathize with you over the issue. I have had similar desires myself (the beard of RavindraNath looks cool, doesn't it?) and will hardly like to prevent anyone from indulging in such novel (read nobel) exercise.

But why, oh why dear Lord, do people shred away even the last shroud of decency and become hell bent on beating Mamta Kulkarni in the race? Plagiarize, please do. The respectable bloggers, however, should take the other Mamta as the example instead. The firebrand from Kolkata (the brand of whose fire has lost some equity after the recent elections) is actually a good case in point. She digs dirt and digs deep but when she actually comes out of the hole, I am sure that she adds her own bucketful of sand to the dirt. I know that the analogy is a bit difficult to comprehend but it has been designed considering the people who are going to win the Raman Maggie Sauce award some day. So, even if you don't understand my post today, blame it on the capitalists who have started such joint ventures between Raman of the Diamond Comics fame (who is the creation of Pran, who has links with the underworld, because his namesake is from the film industry) and Maggi sauce (Maggi hot and sweet, its different)

The point (undecided on whether it wants to tend towards the bloggers' circle or ride along my line) is that I personally feel that if a person maintains a journal for the sake of journalism (what else can a journal be used for, the Raman Maggie Sauce non-awardees may ask), he or she can go ahead with rephrasing and repeating headlines and even copying them verbatim shamelessly (and in the process, pipping Mamta, of the Kulkarni and not the fire brand, to the post).

If at all I become the Prime Minister of India some day (reminds me of the 'If I become the Prime Minsiter' essay that I wrote in 4th grade to impress the beautiful English teacher), I will make it mandatory for all bloggers to declare their journalistic tendencies on a scale of 10. All those with a score above 7 will be stopped (with immediate effect, that is within the next 5 to 10 years) from posting any new headlines (old headlines might be allowed as a part of compromise with the left) verbatim from any newspaper, web site or secret and confidential sources. People...oops...bloggers with a score between 3 and 7 will have the freedom to reproduce, without the risk of violating any IPRs, any and every thing that they want from any and every place. All those who scored less than or equal to 3 because they are still wondering how I could be dirty enough to make passes at my teacher in 4th grade, will be executed...hanged till death.

Maa, I look so good, na?

When I was in school, they told me that I resemble Ajay Jadeja. I remember gloating on it because Jadeja was very popular among girls and if I did resemble him, I should be popular too...or so I thought. Unless the girls harbored secret feelings for me, I never got even the slightest hint of my popularity. At that time, I did not understand the reason for this distinction between Jadeja and me, I mean, both of us having the same (almost similar) face and all that. I knew the reason when I went to college and they compared me to Bhim Rao Ambedkar. In fact, for one whole month, they changed my nickname from Sheru to Bheema, as if that was going to make any difference.

To say the truth, I did get a little bogged down when they compared me to the father of the constitution (such great responsibility and all). Adding to this, the Varanasi water and climate cost me quite a lot of hair and my already prominent forehead became all the more shiny and glorious. That was when I left college to join Infosys and they welcomed me to the corporate world by saying that I resemble Mukesh Ambani (why not Anil, pray?). And thus I lived for one and a half years after joining Infosys, in the shadows of the great industrialist until one fine day. This fine day, we were having a project party and one girl (imagine, a girl!!!) from our project said that another friend of hers (also a girl :-)) had told her (why???) that I resemble Calvin. This one, dear friends, is the latest and is also one of the reasons for naming this site Mode C. For the information of all those zealous souls who are going to take this opportunity to study my picture and post comments about how it resembles someone, I have now decided not to take any more resemblances seriously. Unless there is a solid proof (pixel to pixel mapping, for instance), I am going to be Calvin (I really like his style, you know).

Going back to some facts, last night's experience was one that I would not forget easily. It was only yesterday when I was laughing about the incident at Prithesh's house in Gurgaon and joking with him about the seniors being blown over and here I was, being almost blown over myself the last night. I had decided to have dinner at office and was staying back for some time. I also needed to scan some photographs and talk to Abhijeet. The long and short of it is that I was in office at about 8:30 in the evening, talking to Abhijeet on the phone in the adjacent cubicle, when I saw Bijon talking to someone on my phone. He was indicating to me that the call was for me. I asked him to say that I was not there and he did that. I peacefully finished talking to Abhijeet in another 15 minutes and was about to leave office when Bijon dropped the bomb. He said that there was some Severity One issue with my project. I thought that he was joking and started laughing. The laugh, however, turned into a whimper (I could hardly hear myself) when he told me that the person on line was some Powell (some Powell??? that guy is the project manager at Microsoft, primary client contact for my project).

With the client calling offshore, it had to be a serious issue and when I checked my mail, I knew just how serious it was. It appeared that he had sent a mail yesterday morning at 5 regarding some severity one issue that he wanted fixed and which was actually stopping the site from launch. The mail was not copied to my Infosys Id and somehow, I missed it on my Microsoft Id. Nobody else was in today, Sankar and Sathish being on leave and Gomathi having just arrived in India. It also appeared that when he did not find any replies to his mail when he came in to office on his morning (after the working hours at offshore), he got really pissed off and sent a strongly worded mail and copied it to almost everyone at Infosys who is even remotely related to the Microsoft account (and that included a lot of senior people). I even got calls from the account manager in US on the issue. It took me 3 hours of conference calls with locations in Chennai and US to finally solve the issue and soothe the ruffled feathers. I am expecting a follow-up today and a big blood bath with some sacrificial goats (hope I am not one of them :( )

The latest mail on the fresher alumni meet says that *quote Dress Code is casual bordering on formal *unquote. Now what the hell am I supposed to make of that??

Wrong side of the bed

I am in a very bad mood today and things that have been happening since the morning are not helping at all. I couldn't even possibly have got up on the wrong side of the bed because the other side is too close to the wall for me to get down unless I (or someone else) moved the bed during the night. To start with, something seemed wrong with the bike while I was driving in the morning...somehow, it was just not running smooth...even after having checked the petrol and air pressure yesterday. For breakfast, I got the last parathas in the container. They were cold and uncooked in parts, but due to some strange reason, I did not (could not?) ask for replacement.

Office has been bad since the morning, too. There is a big group of children come over for some summer camp. I do like children and love talking to them but half of them understand only Tamil. Also, whenever I approached some kid, prompt came the instructor to ward them off from me (as if I was some monster thing straight from Harry Potter's Azkaban). On second thoughts, it would be great to look like one of the Dementors. At least I will know for sure that the reason some of these kids are running away from me is that I simply scare them witless (and not just my monstrous looks that might have been scaring them off). These kids have been making a racket and from sounding cute this morning when I came in (even after the biking experience), it started to gradually get on my nerves and now, I can hardly shut their voices off from banging into my head.

Bijon got his stock options converted today. He sent the exercise request three whole days after I did. I know that it sounds childish but what the hell, I have not even received an acknowledgement of my request. I was about to send a hot mail to the HR on this but was finally able to calm myself and sent them a mail rich on satire. The prompt reply said that they have not even received my request, and they are telling me now, 12 days after I sent the damn thing. I rushed up to the dispatch section, fully prepared for a fight and scored a duck there, too when they showed me their records with the IOC numbers and the WOB numbers and I don't know what else. I noted down all the numbers and sent them all to HR again...waiting for their response and hopefully, a big fight now.

It is strange how things go wrong all at the same time. Yahoo messenger is behaving oddly (not that it ever behaved correctly) and I am getting disconnected 5 times a minute. The net connection is pathetic and I don't have anything to do. I can not work (because there is no work and because more importantly, I don't want to work). I can not surf or chat (because of the God-forsaken connection). I can not leave office (they have started monitoring the In and Out timings, or rather the difference between the In and Out timings)

Hopefully, I will be updating the blog with some of the saner stuff tomorrow if things don't go from bad to worse too soon...

The last salute before goodbye

I finally got my official release date: June 4. Suresh, the Delivery Manager who had to officially accept my resignation, was out of town for the past two weeks. He came back on Monday and I went to see him last evening. He was very professional, as expected and did not waste too many words in the discussion (I had not expected any delay, either). He talked about the feedback that he has received about me from my colleagues and my manager. He sounded quite sincere when he said that people have told him and he himself feels (he does know me by name and face) that I have had a good track record of technical and communication expertise, and I do take initiatives...this was when his voice broke and gave me the hint that he is just saying what he would have told all others who would have resigned from his department earlier. He was just repeating stuff for the sake of it, but I think even that is good, decent and as professional as one could expect.

One of the interesting things about yesterday's conversation was that Suresh asked me to get back to him anytime for a referral letter if at all I decide to come back to Infosys after passing out from IIMK. I took the offer at its face value and said thanks to him and came back. Ravi, my project mate who is going to IIMA, actually suggested that we should ask him for a referral or a recommendation letter straight away, even before leaving Infosys, but somehow I don't agree. I think that there is still a lot of time before I decide on what I want to do after passing out of IIMK. Also, Suresh is in a position at Infosys (he might be another couple of steps, long ones though, from the Board of Directors) where he won't obviously be leaving the company in a hurry. I can keep in touch with him and ask for the favor/referral if and when required.

Another thing that was in the pipeline got some clarity today. I (like all others of my batch who have joined the e-group for IIMK) received a mail from Prashant, my senior at IIMK about the alumni-freshers meet. The Chennai meet is scheduled on the 29th at The Chola Sheraton. Now, I am confused after hearing about the venue. On reason is that it is the sea-food restaurant at Chola Sheraton (the restaurant is called Saagari) that is mentioned as the venue, and I don't know if, being a vegetarian, I am ready for the Kerala cuisine yet. The other reason is the ambience and reputation of the place which is quite formal. If I remember right from my past experience at Chola Sheraton, this place is quite a decent hotel (a three or five star one) and I hardly saw anyone in casual attire during my last few visits to the place. The question, therefore, is the question of more than a penny worth. Is this meet going to be a formal affair, one of the first that we might be expected to attend as a part of being groomed (???) as an MBA? I know that the alumni are all going to be there but in the case of IIMK, they are all quite young and hardly out of B-school. Do we still need to be in our light colored full-sleeved shirt, dark trousers mode (more on a psychological than literal level) when we go to this meet next Saturday?

In the meanwhile, there is still no news of the stock options for which I have already sent the exercise request and completed the fund transfer. I am actually getting worried over the thing because it involves quite a big amount of money and I don't want to goof up here. I tried calling up the concerned department in Bangalore but can not find the person at her desk, not even after 10 attempts since the morning. I have sent a mail to the HR people about my concern and have been waiting patiently for their reply ever since...nothing, so far.

The denimic (dynamic) future

Milind Deora…Sachin Pilot…Rahul Gandhi…Omar Abdullah…Jyotiraditya Scindia…these are just some of the young faces that the Indian Parliament is going to play host to, when it goes into session after the recent General Elections. They might as well come to the Central Hall in jeans and tees, contrasting with and yet not mocking the khaki of yore. In fact, they complement it, bring a fresh whiff of air, a riot of color to the dull proceedings of parliament (well, not always dull)...at least that is what Mani Ratnam wants us to believe, and let me tell you, Mr. Ratnam, I, for one, do believe you.

Yuva is a sincere effort at telling a sincere story in a sincere format. The director has decided that he wants to show something to his audience in a certain way and contrary to the norm in the Indian movie industry, has succeeded in not making a mess of it. In fact, he has done a creditable job by actually making what he started out to make. If this effort of his does not appeal to a section of the audience, it is not the director who is at fault and it can only be said that the perception of all people, regarding something so widely discussed and analyzed as a Mani Ratnam movie, can never be the same.

Like Saathiya, Yuva starts with an incident, goes back to show the build-up towards the incident, and then again moves forward to bring the story to its logical conclusion. The difference from Saathiya is that unlike Saathiya, there are three different characters central to the incident and to the events that follow and the build-up part of the story has to be branched out in three parts to do full justice to all the three characters.

Lallan (Abhishek Bachchan) has come to Kolkata from a small place called Chandauli in the state of Uttar Pradesh (this place is near Varanasi, and I have been there a number of times during my college days). He follows the lead of his elder brother who is a goon in the service of a corrupt politician (Om Puri) and becomes an odd-job man who works on contract. Lallan has a wife in Shashi (Rani Mukherjee) who always comes back to him, despite beatings, threats, and Lallan's continued dangerous and illegal living style. Lallan is told to beat up and threaten the students who have dared to contest Panchayat elections against the party of Dada (Om Puri). He is finally asked to kill the leader of the student political awakening after the students come down to his brother's house and beat up the goons there.

The story then moves on to Michael Mukherjee (Ajay Devgan) who is a brilliant student (has even received a scholarship to work under a Nobel laureate in US) but who, like his father, wants to work for his country. He leads the students to villages where they persuade the people to defeat the candidates of Dada's party and elect their own people instead in the Panchayat elections. Michael is assisted in his endeavors by his childhood sweetheart (played by Esha Deol) who teaches French in college when she is not roaming about with Michael to the villages of Bengal. When Michael looks set to become too dangerous a foe by even beating up Gopal, Lallan's brother and Dada's chief goon, Dada orders Lallan to bump off Michael once and for all.

After the intermission, we are introduced to Arjun (Vivek Oberoi), who plays a character that most of us would be able to identify with. Arjun has no confusion in his mind. He is selfish, he is fun, and he is a playboy. He flirts with girls, enjoys discos and plans to leave to US for higher studies. He finally finds his match in Meera (Kareena Kapoor) who is equally carefree and charismatic. He starts to really love her but she finally decides to say good bye to him to get married to the groom of her parents' choice. All this, but not before one final try by Arjun to woo Meera back on the Howrah bridge where he witnesses Lallan shoot Michael.

This is where the three threads of the story meet and move ahead. In a well concluded end, Arjun gets convinced by Michael and enters politics (even gets back Meera in the bargain, who sees Arjun on TV, and comes back to him, all impressed with his heroics). Four students, including Michael and Arjun stand for the bye-elections. The police, in the meanwhile, is hot on Lallan's scent after the attempted murder of Michael. Lallan joins forces with Dada and kidnaps all other candidates except Michael and holds them to ransom. The students are finally able to escape Lallan but not before Lallan starts following Arjun on the second Hooghly bridge in a deadly chase. In the middle of the chase, Arjun manages to grab the mobile phone of a passer-by and calls Michael to the rendezvous for the climax of the movie.

And what a super climax it turns out to be, one of the best and most wonderfully executed scenes in the Hindi movie history. Though a little high on gore, the scene proves Ratnam's technical wizardry beyond any doubt. In no way inferior to any scene from any Hollywood flick, this scene sees the three central characters battle it out on the high traffic bridge. With vehicles zooming past as the fight scene unfolds, frame by frame, it sure is a treat to watch.

Acting wise, Abhishek Bachchan is superb. He had to come to terms with his brooding personality and his flair for roles like these, sooner or later. Mani Ratnam has surely portrayed the best of Abhishek to the audience and I would say, later than sooner. Rani Mukherjee is a class act, as expected from an actress of her caliblre. Ajay Devgan is as usual, good and despite being typecast as the brooding, silent and yet angry executioner, he carries his role well. However, it certainly would have helped if Ratnam had chosen to show Devgan as a fiery young professor than a young student, because if anything, Devgan sure looks above 30 years. Esha Deol, for a change, looks cute and naughty. In fact, I was surprised by the way she has performed and managed to look good too. Vivek and Kareena are good because they have not over played their parts and have stayed within their roles, giving a good performance. Om Puri is also good in his role of the corrupt politician (certainly not challenging enough for an actor of his caliber). I personally felt that Ratnam could have made much better use of this actor.

Over all, the film appeals not just to the classes but equally so to the masses. The final scene when the four elected candidates make way to the Legislature in denim jeans and shirts is really encouraging and promising. The timing of the movie's release could not have been better. The movie portrays the entry of youth into the political arena, youth who are well-educated, qualified, have opportunities to study abroad, earn money and yet those who can do much more than merely crib about the nation's bad state. With the face of Indian politics actually changing, and the young people (even if they are here because of their surnames) actually changing the color of the Parliament, Yuva is a welcome movie and a very realistic indicator of the times…

One two cha cha cha

What an awesome weekend this is turning out to be. From the Pizza Hut treat last night to Kormangla it was, after we finally convinced Ankur to stay with us for the night and not leave for his village (!!!) immediately. But this was not the end of celebrations, if that is what you prefer to call it. We came down to MG Road again, at 2 in the night and it was really awesome. The chaiwallahs there and the number of people stopping by for a cuppa of chai while they smoked or simply chilled out was too good. It reminded us so much of Lanka, of BHU, of Varanasi...

After a brilliant Saturday, it was the turn of a blissful Sunday. With Bangalore weather chipping in with the occasional shower and a consistently good climate the whole day, we had more fun than I could possible digest in a single day. Today was the turn of the Infosys training batch and I had decided that I will try to meet as many of them as possible and have the dinner treat with all of them together. I knew that there have been problems between Sweta and Richa, and many more apart from it, but I really wanted to have a get-together of all for one last time before I left for IIMK.

Luckily for me, things turned out the way I wanted them to, and even better. Starting with a round of parathas at the local joint with yesterday's crowd, I went on to Sushant's place to have a bath and get ready for the party today. Sushant, as usual, was not there. We got ready and went to Richa's place to pick up Sushant and go in the search of movie tickets for Yuva, the latest and much awaited flick by Mani Ratnam. Luckily we found two familiar faces (familiar to Sushant) in the one mile long queue. Unashamed, unchallenged, we got in the middle of the queue and somehow got 7 tickets for 5 people despite the strict instructions given at the counter that there will be only one ticket given per person. It certainly helped that a girl was asking for the tickets and she had the exact change ready. We really have learnt to strategize, what?

Richa and his cousin joined us after we had the tickets all secured. After a lot of discussion and one full to the brim Chinese restaurant, we had a good lunch at MarryBrown before finally getting all wet in the rain and moving on to the theatre for three hours of good and solid entertainment.

After a brilliant movie (I really liked it), we decided to go back to Richa's place and collect our snaps of the Ooty trip. I particularly wanted these as I am really looking more photogenic in these snaps than I have ever been in my life (apart from the time when I was this cute little kid some eons ago). I might scan these and put them on my web profile (to impress a lot of girls??? :-)). The weather was again turning out to be a darling and we sat in the balcony at Richa's place planning for the treat tonight. After some phone calls and some already booked restaurants and some obscenely costly ones (which Richa rejected right away, nice girl!), we finally settled on a restaurant called 'A pinch of Jazz'.

Bangalore is one cool place, I have always believed this of the city. Yesterday night's party convinced me yet again of the truth of the above matter. What a place this was, 'A pinch of Jazz' and what a night to go there. Sunday night was dance competition night and today's dance categories were Cha cha cha and Salsa. I don't really know much about these dance forms but there were people in the party who actually did. So many pretty faces dancing with so many smart hunks really made for a great, bright and colorful evening.

The food was okay but the ambience, awesome. Sweta was asked for a dance by some guy from the nearby table but she refused. Had I known how to dance, I would have asked out the organizer of the night ( and would have been refused too, most probably), who was looking oh-so-pretty in the red dress (red as a rose?) with a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other (I would have preferred her without these but...). The long and short of it was that when Animesh had to leave for the bus in the middle of the dance, his was one sorry face and when he finally got to know (after reaching the bus stand) that his bus actually left some 45 minutes later, his was one sorry SMS...

We had to catch a train at 11:30 but a round of ice cream was pending before we finally said our good-byes. I had always wanted to go to this place called Corner House, which according to some of my best sources, is a really cool place to have some really nice and sinful ice cream. There we were, all six of us, eating ice cream together, Chandna making his chin eat more than his mouth, Sweta scolding him, Sushant generally making a mess of things and Richa silently criticizing him, me and Puneet having a good laugh at all this. She alone was not there from our training days and luckily so. I might not have enjoyed as much. Otherwise, it was exactly like it used to be when we came back from our training days in Chennai Infosys, and used to sit down in some restaurant or the other for a long meal before finally leaving for the night and re-joining again at the bus stop next day…

Old memories

She called me up almost as soon as I reached Bangalore. Sweta had called up earlier and might have told her that I am in town. She might have known even otherwise. Why did she call...I really don't know. To congratulate me...that she had already done in her typical one-line-email way: "Congrats! Have a nice time there". To ask for a treat...she never did ask me for any treat though we talked for about 15 minutes and there was a lot of mention of how I am going to loose my entire bank balance in Bangalore. To just talk to me...now that is simply ridiculous. Whatever be the reason, her call was a jolt that I was not expecting and I would certainly have been better off without it. I was confused about her when we were both in Chennai, during our training days at Infosys and I guess that I still am confused about her.

Did I really love her then and do even now? Did I love her then and have grown out of that now? Did I love her then and hate her now? Did I just want her as my best friend then and still do? Did I just want her as my best friend then and not more than an acquaintance now? I don't know and perhaps, I never will. One thing, however, is certain and that is the fact that my going to IIMK means that there is very little chance of my seeing her again and I really feel like saying 'good riddance'.

We (I and Puneet, my room-mate) had decided to keep the luggage at Sushant's place and then move on to meet our respective friends from there. Sushant was not at home when we reached there. Chandna was, and was in a very good mood, compared to the last time I was here. In fact, I had thought after the last time, that I would hardly be talking to Chandna the same old way but this time, it was certainly much better and he did seem like the Chandna of old. Radhika came up when we were almost about to leave.

I don't know what her problem is. She certainly feels as if I am intruding on her property somehow, whenever I come to these guys' house. The way she looks at me says very clearly that either she considers herself to be among the clouds or me in the dirt. Whatever it is, it is her problem and hopefully, not mine. Anyway, I am not at all comfortable with people from whom I get such negative vibes.

Keeping aside these one-off things that happened, the rest of Saturday was as good as it could have been. I really had so much fun and after a long time, too. Animesh had come down from Mangalore and Ankur had come down from his own village in Bangalore (Yeshwantpur, to be exact). We had a whale of a time, roaming around Forum, the new mall at Kormangala in Bangalore, passing comments on all pairs and singletons, getting rowdy, re-living the college days. We then moved on to MG Road, discussed our lives, futures, got all nostalgic about college, and almost ended up in the nearest pub (not actually, just figuratively). Finally, sense prevailed and we moved on to Pizza Hut for the much awaited treat.

The sacrificial goats this time were Animesh for his coming onsite trip and of course, the poor me. Somebody at the nearby table had a birthday and the Pizza Hut people really made a bash of it. They made the poor girl stand on the top of a chair and wave to the Saturday evening crowd while they sang the birthday song (we pitched in, too). For a moment, we thought we would celebrate the birthday of Animesh but I guess, they would have seen through it (they might even have given some discount, was my take)...

The mysterious affair at IIMK

Having read so many of the spy books and watched so many of the spy movies (of both the unbelievable Indian Crooke Bond types and the somewhat believable-due-to-gadgetry English James Bond types), I always tend to find reasons where there are (or may be :-)) none. While browsing the net yesterday (I hardly seem to do anything else nowadays), I came across the IIMK intranet site and started wondering about the reason for it not being mentioned by even a single senior, either in the e-group or on any other forum. Considering that the e-group of the '06 batch is already some 350 mails old, this will look fishy to almost any and every one.

I decided to go one step ahead and delve deep into this intranet site and try to figure out for myself, the reason for it being hidden (or not being shown, whichever way you look at it) from the eyes of us juniors. Believe me, even one hour after I started delving deep (I had exhausted the material on the site by this time, even read through the charter for different committees at IIMK), I could not find any reason (good, bad or ugly) for my not having come across this site earlier. There was Darpan, the student's space that really required much more than what it had. The news section was nothing but one-liners and there was nothing at all that could, so to say, attract the passerby.

Well, I certainly agree that it is difficult for an IIM student to hold his life together, forget maintaining a web site, but then again, there is the site of IIMC which is much better on some counts with students pitching in to make the place more lively and interesting. I don't know if I am putting my feet into the wrong thing (which I almost always do) but I believe that if I get a like minded group of some (even a few), I will definitely like to contribute something to the cause, but all that comes later...much later.

Things are, in deed, looking a shape better now. I had a bad dream last night about Maa and I called her up first thing in the morning. I had one more-than-half-hour-long conversation with her (hundred bucks woof....gone) and I felt absolutely cool and relaxed after it. I went ahead and called up Nani (my maternal grandma) too and spoke to her about so many things...she cares so much about me that at times, I almost get overwhelmed, especially when she starts asking about my health, even though she might have had a blood sugar reading exceeding 200 herself.

Priya (my sister) is also there with Nani in Patna presently. She has her entrance exams for the journalism course at Indian Institute of Mass Communication today. Maa is so worried about her career that she hardly sleeps nowadays. I hope that Priya is able to decide fast on what she wants to do. She is interested in Interior Designing but I feel that she is suppressing her ambition just because some of her friends told her that she won't be able to get a good start in this field. She is looking for so many other options, including journalism, finance (she has just completed her B.Com), advertising, and much more.

I have been trying to talk to her, to convince her to go with her heart and do something that she really wants to do. Having spent two years in the software industry, I know how it feels to be stuck with doing something that you don't really want to do. All things said and done, however, I feel that she will learn only after she has burnt her fingers herself. There is no other way, I guess, or is there? I wish I knew...

The Ludlum betrayal

I have hardly read any Ludlum novel without finally wondering why I went for it. It is not that I don't like the books or I am one of those looking-down-at-the-potboilers types. On the contrary, I do like the stuff that he writes but more often than not, his books disappoint once I am through to the end. They never really leave the reader with the joy of reading a PG Wodehouse, the fun of reading a Spider Man comic, the mind-numbing feeling of reading an Ayn Rand, or even the cheap thrill of reading a Sidney Sheldon. What I mean is that even if you take the Star Wars novel that I am currently reading after having done with the Ludlum caper, I am sure that I will have a much better experience after I have finsihed reading it, all the time thinking about Jedi masters and their light sabers figting against the dark side and all the rest of it.

The Tristan Betrayal by Robert Ludlum is a little different from his other works but the difference, unfortunately, is not positive. The book goes one step ahead with the second half of the book destroying the user's interest peel by peel after a painstaking process of forming those layers in the first half. The book starts with the modern Moscow (well, not really modern, some 13 years ago) when the communist powers in Soviet Union are doomed to an end and democracy has seen its first dawn with the eyes of Gorbachev. The book depicts the unrest, anxiety and confusion prevailing in the Moscow city briefly, and yet, with panache. The story unfolds to let the reader know that there is only one person known as 'The Conductor', who can actually prevent the situation from going bad and give that final push to the Russian democracy and prevent the fanatical communists from dragging Russia back to the darkness.

The only person who can convince 'The Conductor' to do so is Stephen Metcalfe, the honorary Ambassador from the United States. He is called to Russia by his old friend, a reputed and celebrated General in the Russian Army. The real reason for the effect that Ambassador Metcalfe has over 'The Conductor' is what forms the basis of the story. It is hidden from the reader till the very end and though it will be unfair to disclose something like this in any review of the book, I must say that the reason falls flat on its face when it is finally disclosed. Instead of a well crafted and thrilling finish that the story and no doubt, the author, was capable of, Ludlum decided the end to be a low key affair which, in my humble opinion, robbed the book of one too many loyal fans.

The story in The Tristan Betrayal goes into the flashback to show that Metcalfe was an American secret agent working in the Second World War on the orders of Corcoran, who reported to Roosevelt himself. Metcalfe is shown to have quite a reputation for being a shameless womanizer and it is this quality (???) of his, added to the fact that he, along with his brother, is the owner of the celebrated US business giant, Metcalfe Industries, that enables him to make a foothold in Nazi occupied France as Daniel, a 'Ladies Man' who goes about stealing Nazi secrets from the beds of the mistresses, wives and sisters of Nazi officers.

He is as successful as he can be, till his base in Paris is exposed to the enemies and they kill all his colleagues. The person responsible for this expose and the cruel killings of the American 'spy' base is the dreaded 'Violinist' (too much of music, The Conductor and then The Violinist) who is shown to be a nightmare over the entire story until he actually dies at the hands of Metcalfe, like a stupid villain of the Hindi movies.

Anyway, to cut the long story short, after the not-so-successful Paris stint, Metcalfe is given another assignment by his boss, Corky, to go to Moscow and re-kindle his old flame, Swetlana, who is the prime ballerina in the Bolshoi Theatre. The purpose, Corky says, of this assignment is to find out if the Nazi Officer who has Lana as his mistress, is actually someone who can be turned away from Hitler and used as an agent. However, when Metcalfe lands there and is able to re-affirm his affections with Lana, he finds out that the German officer can not really be converted and that this was not the real purpose of his mission.

His mission is to actually provide the Nazis and ultimately, to Hitler, false information about the Russian Army. This information has to be passed by Lana to the German officer as Lana is the daughter of a high ranking Russian General. To do all this, Metcalfe has to lie to Lana and since he is actually in love with Lana, he can not really go about all this lying business without a twinge (just a twinge, mind it…he is in the league of James Bond, of course, the ruthless womanizer) of guilt.

The information to be conveyed to the Nazis has been forged and falsified to give the wrong idea to Nazis that The Russian Red Army is actually weak and thus, to entice the Fuhrer to attack Russia and go to his doom and take the communists down with him, in the process (one arrow and two targets, what???) . The plan works but only after a sacrifice by Lana, who has to get herself arrested and executed by the Russians for selling military secrets to the Germans to convince Hitler and his Generals of the authenticity of the forged reports that were passed though her.

As I mentioned earlier, all this looks fine and is quite interesting, too and the reader is actually waiting for the suspense to unravel and tell him about the real secret that has been carried all these years from the time of The Second World War to The 1990 Russia and how this secret actually relates to both Ambassador Metcalfe and 'The Conductor'. However, the way Ludlum treats this secret actually belies the craftsmanship with which he has woven the rest of the story. Ultimately, the book is good and might interest the first timer or the average Ludlum reader but to hardcore Ludlum readers like me, who have hardly left any Ludlum book unread despite the now-tiresome formula that almost all his books follow, the book is a big let-down.

Where do I start???

I don't know if I can spell confusion without confusion, I am so high-strung right now. Sankar (my colleague) called up in the morning to tell me that there might be some duty charged on the laptop that Gomathi (the onsite coordinator for my project) is going to bring for me from the US. The problem is that no one is really sure as to what the reality is. No one knows for sure if there is any duty and even if there is, how much it is. I personally feel that there will be some duty but ultimately, even if I combine the duty with the US price of the laptop, it will still be cheaper than any laptop that I buy in India (even after the bulk rate discount applicable if I buy along with the other IIMK students of my batch)

I need to do so many things and close so many issues before I finally leave Chennai that it has actually started to give me headaches in the middle of the night. I get up, all in sweat (not just due to the humid Chennai climate), and start (or rather continue) thinking about so many things. I still don't know what I will be doing with Abhijeet's stuff that is lying in the flat. I still have to see the doctor regarding Abhijeet's mother. I still have to finalize my travel plans from Chennai (although I have the tickets booked, I haven't heard a word from HR on the release date).

My Delivery Manager (the person who is going to give me the release order) is still in the US and is expected in Chennai only the next week. I need to find out Interior Designing course options for my sister in Pune. I still have to pack my things and make an inventory of all the stuff that I need to dispose off before leaving the flat. I also need to find out a new tenant for the flat who can come over immediately after I leave (so that my house owner pays me back the advance as soon as possible). There are so many things to do and I really don't know where and how to start...

Of emails and lappie

A fine day it was turning out to be, right till the wee hours of the evening and I was just about to escape the tingling (why in the whole world, tingling???) sensations of yet another day at office when out of a corner of my desktop, popped up an EMAIL. What a demon this can be, especially on days when you least expect it (well, also on days when you expect it the most and it fails to make an appearance) and out it comes in all its glory to give you a taste of reality. And so it turned out to be in my case, when the email confirmed what I had been dreading.

The production launch of my final project at Infosys was scheduled for Monday morning US time and so, I had no option but to cool my heels in the office till late hours in the night. I was supposed to provide support to my onsite coordinator and solve any technical glitches, if they came, during the launch process (God only knows what excuse I would have come up with for my inability to solve any glitches, technical or otherwise). What I actually did do turned out to be diametrically opposite (well, not really diametrically...even by my high standards, I did manage to get some work done, too…)

Ever since IIMK decided that it was going to commit the sin, the ultimate mistake of inviting me in to the resort party at Kozhikode, I have been thinking of buying a laptop. Like everyone else, I was willing to be led in the herd by some helpful senior herdsmen (or women, for that matter) and buy the lappie (registered copyright name for my would-be laptop...don't any of you dare to copy it.....copiers will be reprimanded, warned, threatened, and then prosecuted/eliminated) once I reach IIMK.

However, perhaps as a reward for my staying late in office, one of my colleagues told me that there is no import duty on laptops and I can get a very good deal in US if I am willing to get my lappie from there. Lo and behold, I was on phone with Gomathi, my onsite coordinator, cajoling her with promises of a good treat and warnings of a late and below par Return On Investment (look at this, seniors, I am already into the terminology). I, Gomathi and Sankar, my colleague here who had the audacity to suggest something (buying lappie from US) to me in the first place, started ravaging the internet for any and all information regarding laptops. I found a Toshiba model with a suitable configuration (P4, 512 RAM, 60 HDD, 4 USB ports, DVD/CD RW Combo, Wi-Fi enabled) and asked Gomathi to get more info on that and buy it if she feels it is good enough to be the lappie of the future manager (hee hee).

Another plus of the night out was the chance to chat with so many of my friends in US who are toiling their heads off in the pursuit of degrees like MS and PhD (man, after four years of engineering, am I scared of these acronyms!!). I told them about the plans for the Bangalore get together that we are planning for our Ceramics batch of '02. So many of us, after two years of work experience, are now going on different tracks that it will be very difficult to meet up again in such huge numbers (about 10 people are expected to attend the Bangalore meet this weekend and considering the total strength of our batch being 29, 10 is as good as it will ever get). Animesh might be going onsite for about two years, I will be going to IIMK, Dasa will be going to SP Jain (he will not be present in the meet, however). I have my tickets all booked and am really hoping for a nice time in Bangalore before saying a final adieu to all my dear friends…

A drenched evening

Yet another day when I trusted Yogi for a good time out (Hey Yogi, I never said whether my trust did or did not pay off). I had just started with The Tristan Betrayal by Robert Ludlum (looks good, so far) when Yogi came in after watching the movie Peter Pan. He might have been in the same fairy tale mode when he suggested going to the beach and dinner at some restaurant on the beach side. True to reputation, we agreed (me and my poor room-mate who gets dragged along with me on all these trips)

We decided to make a stop for some chaat and sweets at a famous sweet shop enroute. In the middle of our snacks, it started to pour and believe me, the heavens were crying like anything yesterday (perhaps because I trusted Yogi, yet again...even after the Charas experience :-)) It hardly seemed prudent to go the beach in this weather but it was equally difficult to turn back. We decided to brave the rain and when it was less than a downpour (yet more than a drizzle), we started our journey. A distance of 5 kms did turn out into a journey, what with the rains from above, and the waterlogged streets below. Sandals submerged, jeans rolled up, we kept walking...not forgetting to drain off the water from out hair in pukka filmy style, whenever we saw a girl coming across (rare occurrence, that, considering the weather).

It took us some 2 hours to cover this great distance from my house to the beach and by the time we reached the place, the sand was all wet, of course and we had no option but to turn in to the restaurant for the dinner. Whatever be the prologue, true to habit, we did not compromise on the food...had a nice meal and then all the way back. The rain-gods were still mocking us, (the three muskeeteers, eh???) as we made way through the pools of water, me and my room mate cursing Yogi all the way for a drenched evening (even though it was not the poor guy's fault, at all).

The best part of the evening turned out to be not the rain, not the food...and certainly not the pools of water that spoilt our sandals. Actually, the best deal was the jokes that Yogi tried to crack to pass the time, as we waited for the rain to stop in the sweet shop. The jokes were okay, perhaps by a beginner's standard, but owing to the difficulty that any joke faces to make me and Puneet (my room-mate) laugh, Yogi was devastated. Jokes after jokes he churned out, and we remained impassive, asking him to raise his hand when the joke was over. Believe me Yogi, your jokes were funny, but perhaps, just not funny enough...

Getting addicted

Last time when Yogi, one of my might-be classmates at IIMK (he is still to decide between IIMs I and K), had his way, he treated his friends to a splendid dose of Govinda as he literally dragged them to a show of the movie Aunty No.1. This time, the ones dragged were the poor me, my room mate and one of my colleagues from Infy, and the movie was Charas. Right from the word Go, we were all (that is, except Yogi) a little apprehensive about the whole stuff of going to a theatre to watch a low key movie like Charas but ultimately, nonsense prevailed and the four of us started towards Melody, one of the few theatres in Chennai that show only Hindi movies.

The scene that greeted us was prophetic. There wasn't a single bike or car parked in the parking area of the theatre and even the ticket counters had not opened and all this when there were only some twenty odd minutes to the start of the movie. We went out to an eatery nearby with the hope that when we return after some time, there will be a sizeable crowd waiting to buy tickets for the show (it was an evening show on a Saturday, by the way...so no chances of a poor gathering because of the show timings). All or hopes crashed, however, when we found that when we returned some fifteen minutes later, we were still the first to buy the tickets. More to this, I thought I heard the ticket counter guy saying to his assistant after we bought the tickets..."ye waala show chalaana parega"(We will have to run this show)

Despite all the background above, the point is not that the total audience for the movie was hardly into two figures, or even that it finally dropped to single figure after the intermission. The point is that this movie, Charas, starring no stars, following no formula, produced by Yash Raj Films (yes, the same Yash Raj films of the fame of so many BIIG hits), was actually a different movie. I won't say that I loved the movie but it will be wrong to say that I simply abhorred it, either.

The movie begins and ends with Charas (Resin from the mature cannabis plant, for the uninitiated). A botany student from London decides to take a walk in the jungles located on the mountains of India and gets captured by a gang that is actually involved in the production of Charas and its illegal trafficking in the national and international market. This gang is led by Policeman (Irfaan), who has not been out of the jungle for a long long time. He co-ordinates his operations through a minister in Delhi, and a minister of the British Government in London, amongst others.

An officer Dev (Jimmy Shergill) who always gives his name as Dev...Dev Anand (James Bond, anybody?) and tries to swagger like the actor Dev Anand in a number of scenes and songs, is sent to India to search for the botany student who disappeared. Even if it is a little unbelievable that an officer of the Scotland yard is sent after one British national who is just a student and not even a big-shot, the story still goes ahead and we meet Ashraf (Uday Chopra), an undercover cop with the crime branch. He has been asked by his senior officers (who are hand-in-glove with the charas traffickers) to keep a watch over the British Officer Dev who might uncover the charas trade (that is not the reason they give him, however) in his quest for the botany student. In a purely western movie style, the two heroes start towards these mountains on Harley-Davidson type bikes (actually, the Yamaha Enticer) and break into songs wearing leather jackets and believe it or not, cowboy hats!!!

The story moves into the next gear as the heroes meet Naina (Hrishita Bhatt) enroute, give her a lift, space to stay for the night, and find her gone in the morning (luckily she did not take away any of their belongings). Next, they reach the village at the foothills of the jungle that they plan to visit and Dev starts investigating. He gets in touch with Piya (Namrata Shirodkar) who is actually an undercover journalist investigating the Charas trade. She cajoles him into believing her (in true phoren movie ishtyle, even gets into bed with him to get the news) and steals the information which our Dev Anand toils to obtain.

Things get more hot when a report is published in a magazine about the drug trade and when almost simultaneously, Policeman murders a member of the Italian Mafia (pretty naive guy, this, member of the Italian mafia, could not even defend himself...did not even try). The Mafia wants Afghanis to take over the Charas trade and kill Policeman and his team. The movie tries to do a lot at this stage and goes into flashback to show that Policeman was actually a police man some years back. He got disillusioned with the Government when some Afghanis (it's all connected, you know) kill two members of his team, and are still let go by the Government.

Our undercover cop, Ashraf, was also a part of Policeman's team but was never really accepted into the team because of his being a Muslim (I know, too much of the coincidental attachments!!!) and he wants to prove his point to the team leader (now Policeman, but Ashraf doesn't know that yet) some day.

The final half hour of the movie is like that of any other pot-boiler. The Afghanis come to the forest, three initially. They call on their other friends and kill the entire gang of Policeman. But our heroes Ashraf and Dev come to the rescue and kill the Afghanis, too (by the way, what happened to the Mafia???). The two heroines are also there at the final scene (Naina was also a part of Policeman's gang and don't ask me what Piya was doing there...) and finally, all is well. The botany student is also found out. He has turned into a scientist who is actually experimenting on Charas to develop better varieties of the drug.

So much said in the movie, but to what purpose? Was it an art movie, as the term goes? Was it a documentary on drug trafficking? Was it a commercial thriller? It was none and all of the above and that is the doom of Charas. Despite brilliant cinematography and passable acting by the actors, the movie bombs on its face because of a lack of purpose. The story teller tries to imbibe too many dimensions into the story and in the process, lets go of the main thread (not that it was there at any stage, though). The movie does remind you of Hare Rama Hare Krishna, with more foreign nationals in the frames than Indians, but compared to the older classic, this movie does not seem to belong, neither to the times nor to the theme.

The hippie culture that the movie tries to portray may be a reality in some parts of the country but is something that an average cine-goer like me can not identify with. This is a period when only the feel-good (Even after the election loss!!!) movies like Main Hoon Na are appreciated and movies like Charas that try to show the other, hidden side, are shelved before they even get off the shelf.

First resolution and advice: Think twice before going out for a movie that does not have star power.
Second resolution and advice: Treat Yogi's taste in movies with caution (just kidding...)

Introspections of an idle mind

The mind wanders...although it is not yet time to introspect on my past two years with Infosys, that's the direction my mind has been taking whenever it decides to go for a stroll. This stroll thing has been happening more and more frequently now, what with me getting away from office at a decent time (not the usual 9 or 10 PM slots any more, thankfully) and getting loads of time to let my mind go wherever it wants to.

When I started with Infy two years back, the thought that I had was to try to develop a contact base. I seemed to have an idea that the more people I am going to have in my group, the more interactions I have with my colleagues, the happier I will be. Traditionally, I have neither been an introvert, nor an out-and-out extrovert. To my loss, I decided to change myself for the beginning of my professional career. I became a loud mouthed extrovert who cracked jokes on others' expense and tried a little too hard to be the life of the party. The things were going fine and I did not feel the pinch, not until one fine day, when I found myself isolated and marooned on an island where my own jokes started to haunt me.

So many things happened to me that I lost count of reality. I thought I had found my best friend, I thought I lost him. I thought that I can be happy only if there are people around, I thought that I don't need anyone...hell, I even thought that I was in love...and all this just because I could not cope with the changes that I, myself, had intentionally brought about in me. In the end, it all came to naught and thankfully so.

Thanks to some heartbreaks and receiving some tough talking from others and later from myself, too, I could finally see the path. Whether the path is right or not, I still haven't found out. By the time I had decided how I am going to get back to my old self, I was actually denied the chance. All my friends, the entire gamut of people for whom I had changed myself had left me alone, some leaving my life intentionally (getting tired of me) and some simply had to go.

With IIMK looming large ahead and a new set of people with whom I am going to interact, I just wonder what is going to happen. Will the old me appeal to these people? Worse still, am I, in asking this question, again trying to change myself? Do I come across as someone else when I talk/chat to my new friends? Even if it is true, shouldn't I come across as such a person in spite of what I really am, considering that this is a B-school that I am going to join? So many questions and hardly any answers...

Closing of a chapter

One more chapter of my life closes today. I formally resigned from my job at Infosys just a few minutes back and believe it or not, I can not feel any difference. It is not just because I still have to drag myself in every morning for the next 20 odd days to office. It is not just because I will have to slog in office for some more days. And above all, it is certainly not because I am tired of people asking me about my interview experience at IIMK. It is just that I don't seem to get that enthusiasm going in me. It doesn't look like a big change to me...well, at least not yet. From reports by seniors and others who 'know', life at IIMK is going to be a real challenge as far as taking time out to sleep is concerned. Malini, one of my would-be class mates, says that she is trying to compensate by lazing around at her home this entire month and even the next. But at the same time, Prashant, one of the other guys who are leaving Infosys to join IIMK, wants to utilize this time in brushing up on accounting fundamentals...

As for me, I am certainly not going to study, despite what chimpx (why the x, though?) says about being ahead of the competition on Day Zero. I believe that there will be Days 1 to 365 to worry about that (it is another matter, however, that I may not worry about it even then) and a lot of other things. And the other thing, sleep, is also not within my grasp right now. Most probably, it never will be. For the next few days, at least till June 4 when I actually pack my bags and leave Chennai, it is going to be work for me. When I reach home, too, it will be pretty hectic with so many relatives and friends pouring in to see me for one last time (it really scares me to see the way they are treating this...my going to IIMK...as if it is my death knell or worse still, as if I am getting married).

Having volunteered for moderating the e-group of the 2006 IIMK batch, I really don't know what I am supposed to do. It is not that I know something that the seniors don't. At best, I might be at par with the average guy who is going to join IIMK this year, with a number of queries of his own. But I guess that Karan (the e-group owner and Student Council Coordinator at IIMK) must have had some purpose for that so I think that I will have to wait till he decides to let us lesser mortals know of our real purpose (aka Morpheus in The Matrix)...

Group Dynamics and others...

Am I really past my prime? Was it a bad decision to wait for two years before giving a serious shot to CAT? Could I have got a better deal had I not wasted my time in GRE preparations in college final year and concentrated more on CAT instead?

All these questions come to mind when I see people who are fresh out of college being apprehensive of studying with the people having work experience. In fact, even some of the seniors at IIMK feel that the people with work experience are actually their seniors and not juniors. I personally don't want to be a part of such group dynamics and the sooner the attitude changes, the better. Traditionally, in the Indian education system, it has been a norm rather than an exception for people to carry on their studies without any breaks and any kind of break in studies is actually looked down upon. The kind of culture that a US University has, for example, is very clearly not evident in Indian schools as far as the 'gaps' are concerned.

The question that is burning my grey matter right now is whether it will really matter if a person has 2-3+ years of work experience, when he/she tries to blend in the group. Are birds of the same feather going to flock together? I hope not...
I have just started interacting with a lot of my would-be batch mates at IIMK and it has been quite an experience so far. They are a bunch of interesting people, no doubt. The posts on the e-groups along with the chats on the messenger have already started building a relationship that I hope, is going to be long and lasting one. This batch at K (I am sure all others before us would have said the same) sure looks like an interesting batch as of this moment.

There is this guy, Nilanajan who keeps on posting all the junk stuff in the group, and then there's Neeta from Raipur, interested in stuff like Bungee Jumping and Paragliding. IF we have Malini from Hyderabad who is so very quiet, we also have Abhijit who has been working on Bio-Technology at TCS (rare, that?), and Ravi, who has been giving me the shoulder to cry on (as I have not received my call letter so far). So many Bengalis, too with Sandipan, Debojyoti making the names...you can also find Arpita in Ahmedabad, trying to get a study leave from IOCL and Surabhi in Bangalore, waiting to rock IIMK. Yogendra from Wipro, Chennai is confused between IIMs I and K (lucky chap...more than one calls and converts, too) and on the other side, Prashant Joshi (no relative of the great MMJ) is planning on a whirlwind tour of India before packing up his bags and coming to Kozhikode. Man, what a gang!!!

Monday Blues!!

The whole of Sunday spent in watching all three parts of Lord of the Rings, I was completely spent yesterday. It seemed as if there was nothing to do, nothing to think of except the beard of Gandalf, the eyes of Ghollum or the sword of Aragorn. And to top it off, I got a throat infection and believe me, nothing like a throat infection to dampen your mood if you are not in one of your brightest. There I was, to my utter surprise and even contempt, thinking happily of going back to office on Tuesday. Monday being a holiday on account of elections, I couldn't even find any net cafe in the vicinity that could serve depressed junkies like me. Another dose of movies on HBO was what saved the day for me in the final run.

Above everything else (even the throat infection), I had this thought of wanting to check out the people who have joined the yahoo group for the batch of '06 at IIMK. I wanted to read more on the blogs of the seniors to know what they think of this period and whether any of them are nostalgic about it, seeing the enthu of us people (I found one nostalgic lady in Divya Iyer). But for all this, I had to wait till Tuesday, when I joined office again and had the world wide web at my disposal. Sometimes, I am seriously led to wonder as to what the world will come to if there is no internet. I guess the people who came much much before us thought the same of books. Information has, in deed, been fascinating right from the origin of time and the sources of information valued above all else.

Main Hoon Entertainer...hoon na?

In a race between a manually driven Rickshaw and a Toyota Qualis, how is it humanly possible for the Rickshaw puller to win? Are matters of national security dependent on the whims of the daughter (in saying that she does not want any security for herself) of the Chief of Army Staff? In a hostage operation masterminded by a terrorist who has been able to develop a sizable army of his own, how can the hostages be rescued by killing/over-powering just three or four of the kidnappers?

If you are not bothered by the above questions and like me, think that these are issues for those with more sophistication up there in the grey cells, Main Hoon Na is just the movie for you. The movie is every bit an entertainer that it has been touted as. Right from the action scenes (with some good stunts and effects) to the comic relief (the campus scenes, especially the initial rivalry between the two heroes) and not to forget the excellent romantic chemistry between the lead players (by the way, Sushmita Sen essays the role of an amazingly distractive chemistry teacher) are simply too good.

Contrary to reports, however, Shah Rukh Khan is not much of a revelation. Having heard that he has come out of the Mohabbatein type mould for this movie, the movie viewer may expect something new and refreshing but unfortunately, that is not the case. Just by making the 'King' Khan jump and hit the villain a few kicks in the butt, does not really change the complexion of his character. He is still the same old Khan, suave and self-important, confident and yet a bundle of nerves: overall yet another decent representation of what he has grown into, as an actor, over the past few years.

As for the other actors, in my personal opinion, they are not wasted, as is the case in so many of other SRK movies. The frames do have something more than SRK at times, even though he does occupy center stage for most of the movie. Zayed Khan is good, and so is Amrita Rao, coming across as a girl full of pep. She does look good, especially in the scene where she has taken beauty tips from Sushmita.

And believe me guys, Sushmita Sen does look ravishing. In fact, I had to look at her with a new eye for this movie (not that my two eyes were not sufficient but you know what I mean, don't you?) Rest of the cast has small but good cameos in which they have all entertained, to some extent or the other. The role of Boman Iraani could have been a little more detailed to add to the fun. Hey, did I forget to mention Sunil Shetty? Oof, how I wish that this guy had a little more of a voice..it really amazes me no end how a voice like that can gel with the body that he has..but perhaps, people would have wondered years ago how a body like Amitabh's could gel with the voice like his.

Story wise, Main Hoon Na comes across as nothing different from the run-of-the-mill stuff. Archie's Riverdale School is brought alive in St.Paul's, Darjeeling, but that is not all. There is a parallel thread that talks about the Project Milaap, a friendly gesture of the Indian Government towards Pakistan which is being opposed by some terrorists, Raghavan (Suniel Shetty) being one of them. To stop the project, he plans to abduct Sanjana (Amrita Rao), the daughter of the Chief of Army Staff (Kabir Bedi). Major Ram (SRK) is sent back to college to complete his graduation (actually to protect The General's Daughter :-) ).

If you are ready to believe that the army can not force security upon one citizen just because she (read Sanjana) hates her daddy and can not stand the sight of Army people around her, you may as well believe the rest of the story. SRK enters college, woos everyone (including the new Chemistry teacher who looks like a million bucks..oops, there I go again), and also, is able to find and placate his estranged step mother and step brother. Manmohan Desai rekindled, what? Add to that the climax where the Major just leaves his post (yeah, just like that, without informing any senior officers) because he is kicked out of his home by his step mom and bro. This gives free way to the villain who now kidnaps not just the General's daughter but the entire college (surprising to see so few people in the college, though). But truth triumphs, finally and everybody lives happily ever after.

After viewing the movie in one of Chennai's multiplexes (renovated recently), my personal feeling was that it is a value for money kind of a thing. If you don't have too many expectations with the movie, it will be a treat but if you go in thinking too much, you will be in for a rude shock. But I guess that is true for any Hindi movie and I should know, considering that I come to like any flick any time any where and there are hardly a score of movies which I have seen and yet did not finally come to like :-).

And last but not the least, one of the best things about Main Hoon Na was its end credits. I have never seen such credits on the Hindi Cinema Screen. Well, a lot of movies end with songs but hardly have any attempted to give recognition to the technical staff, that go behind a good movie, in such a beautiful way. Accept it or not, when we watch a movie, the names and faces that linger even after the movie, are not those of the director or the choreographer (despite high profile names like Ram Gopal Verma and Farah Khan, herself). What we see on screen is what we recognize and really appreciate and the way Farah Khan has got everyone on her team on stage, in the lime light, is truly commendable and hopefully, a trend setter.

IIMK...here I Come

What a day, what a day, and even if I repeat myself yet again, what a day...because it has been exactly that...what a day. I got through IIM Kozhikode first list and am all set to join the hallowed portals of an IIM in about two months from now. It is a strange feeling, refusing to sink in even now, though it has already been hours after the result came on the net today morning. I guess the best part was the surprise package that the IIMS threw. 

Only the results of IIMs Bangalore and Lucknow were expected to be released today but surprisingly, all the IIMs came out with their results and it was a riot. With results pouring in every half an hour, I had a hard time waiting. And then I got a call from my room-mate, Puneet, telling me that K results have come. (He made it to L though he missed out on B and K) I was so apprehensive that I almost stopped myself from opening the site but with all my colleagues looking from their desks in the cubicle, I finally dared to enter my registration number on the results page. And lo and behold! there it was. Congratulations! and that was all I needed. I almost whooped up ..well not almost..did really whoop up with joy and in a matter of seconds, half of my wing knew that there was something good that had happened with somebody in the corner cubicle.

Ravi, one of the people in my project, got through IIMs A,B, L and K and missed only C (which he could not convert) and I (for which he did not have a call). Well, that's what I call quality, but no, I am not cribbing. I am happy and satisfied with what has been given to me and I am sure that I have it in me to make the most of this and not only have a blast at IIMK but also make my stay there very, very fruitful. High hopes, eh? What say, seniors???

Responsibility to what? To whom?

With great power comes great responsibility...that's what Peter Parker's Uncle Ben told him hours before he was shot by a robber. It did not take long for Peter to ask the obvious question: Responsibility to what? To whom? I guess he got the answer, too. He transformed into the messiah of the downtrodden and avenger of the common man, a character we all know as SpiderMan. I was just wondering, however, if it is all related to comics and the world of make-believe alone. Can we really try to ignore such things in our practical life and still be able to live with it? I learnt the hard way that we can not.

Infosys is certainly a strange place to work in. Perhaps it is not just Infosys (to be fair), but all other software (or even other) companies as well. Regardless, the amount of power wielding and the yielding to power that you see in Infosys is surely something that has opened my eyes and opened them wide. There is a hierarchy at the work place that is invisible and yet very potent. You can go into your boss's cabin any time of the day but you can not really say something first and think later.

Your boss can come and say something to you and even though you want to protest and say 'No' to him in an assertive way (as taught in so many of those mundane HR Lectures), you can not really do so. At the back of your mind, you know that his demand of your time is reasonably fair, considering that you are hardly doing anything for the project for which you are currently being billed. But after you have said the 'Yes' to him and come back to your desk, all defeated and pensive, you seem to realize that you have just agreed to work for free!

I guess that this is what they call life and its compromises. I know I sound a little too melodramatic but that's the way I am feeling right now. The fact that the new project, to which I do not belong and yet have to 'help', is a documentation project does not help either..

Lord of the Rings vis-a-vis Harry Potter

If some people told you that Harry Potter is in the same league as, or even close to, Lord of the Rings, they could not have been more wrong. The above two books belong to two completely different genres. While Harry Potter novels by JK Rowling are modern and cater to the taste of the kids with a 'taste', Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien speaks more about the origin of civilization itself and is more for people who are grown up and yet retain the child in them.

The exploits of Potter, Ron and Hermione take the readers through to the lands where things are still imaginable and, agree to me or not, somewhat believable. You may not have seen a wizard but you may still have heard stories about them. Your grand mother may have told you all about the witches that you ever need to know. The nursery rhyme book may have had a poem or two about the magic wands and the magic potions. 

The point is that though the treatment of the subject in Harry Potter novels is different, the subject itself is not new, not at least to any of the kids of this generation or to our parents' generation either (which is why Harry Potter is a hit not only amongst kids). In the Potter stories, if you have the Hogwarts School of Wizardry where the protagonist Potter goes to study with his friends Hermione and Ron, you also have the Charing Cross station of London. If you have Voldemort, the dark lord and villain of Potter novels, you also have Dudley, Potter's muggle (non-magical) cousin. The point again is that Harry Potter works are still within the grasp of even the intellectually less endowed ones.

Lord of the Rings, is different, even if subtly so. The characters are such that you may have never heard of. In fact, the story deals little with the history and nature of wizards, despite the story revolving around Gandalf, one of the five wizards that the book gives credence to. Similarly, the characters that are the most important to the story line, Frodo, Bilbo et al belong to a race (can I call them a race, I think not...they are more of an entity) called Hobbits. I bet you don't know a thing about hobbits if you haven't read the book or not seen any of the three movies. As I said, they are a different entity and very, very old...well not as old as elves perhaps :-). If you really want to know their history or background, you have to read the entire 50 page prologue before you actually start reading the 1100 page epic. Not only is this race new, they have a different calendar of their own. As if this was not enough to prove the extent of imagination that Tolkien has tried to create in the reader's mind, there are also the elves, dwarfs and orcs (another new entity you may be unaware of). 

Tolkein provides the readers a platform on which they can choose to go ahead and develop further on their idea of an elf or a dwarf, or even an orc or hobbit for that matter. The reader, however, must have the intelligence and the patience to go along with Tolkien's story at a pre-decided pace and not jump the gun. The characters and their natures are revealed as and when the reader encounters them. You get to know that elves are fond of singing songs, and when you go ahead, you are also told that they are the friends of trees. There is a concept of heaven which is so much different from what we think. Heaven, for the characters of Lord of the Rings, is not beyond the sky, It is beyond the sea, and yes, you can sail to the heavens in your ship...but only if you have the necessary permissions.

The four novels featuring Harry Potter have a distinctly homogenous line which the author seems to religiously follow. There is Harry, the orphan and hero, and there is Voldemort, the villain, who killed Harry's parents when Harry was just a kid. There are people at both the sides aplenty. The dark side is amply provided with villains who want the dark Lord, Voldemort to rise again and vanquish the enemies of darkness. At Harry' side however is Professor Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of the age and Voldemort's sworn enemy (also his teacher, when Voldemort was at school). 

Harry goes to study at Hogwarts School of Wizardry with his friends, Ron and Hermione (a muggle or non-magical person). All the days of Harry are full of some adventure or other at the school. This adventure may be a game of Quidditch (this one takes Harry Potter close to the Lord of the Rings for its utter innovation and freshness), a special game that wizards play which is quite similar to and yet different from rugby, if played in the air. The adventure may as well be trying to beat the evil designs of the Malfoys, father and son, who are always plotting against Harry and Dumbledore. 

However, all these breaks from the story notwithstanding, the author does keep track of the main theme, which is to show the fight between good and evil, something as simple as that and something that can be digested by old and young alike. When Voldemort tried to kill Harry even before the first novel, when he had actually killed Harry's parents, he had been reduced to nothingness (I hope I am using the correct word) while Harry escaped with just a scar. But the truth is that like evil, Voldemort never goes away. He keeps on coming back in all Potter novels in different forms and in the latest, Order of the Phoenix, he has returned to power yet again. But as expected, Harry and his team are able to beat Voldemort every time...just to encounter him yet again a little later.

Lord of the Rings, on the other hand does go in for a different approach. It is not that the book does not have a central theme. The struggle between good and evil is a theme here, too. But the story offers much more than the childish pranks and thrills of Quidditch. The story goes into the lives of elves and dwarfs and kings every now and then. As if the story line was not enough, the author has also provided a brief history of the different entities in the appendix. The story begins with Bilbo Baggins' adventures where he comes across and possesses a ring, among other treasures. 

This ring is special and makes the person who wears it invisible. But this is not all about the ring. The ring is a ring of power and forged by the Dark Lord Sauron himself (yes, there is a dark Lord here, too). There are 9 other rings that are already in control of the dark Lord. There are three rings of power that are held and protected against the dark Lord by the elves but this one ring, which was lost in a battle long long ago and has now come under the possession of Bilbo and Frodo, his heir, is the one ring that can be used to control all of the other rings and make Sauron invincible. 

The wizard, Gandalf, and his friends (including the King Aragorn, who is all slated to regain the throne of Gondor) are those who are on the white side. A team is formed and called the nine walkers that comprises of elves, men, dwarves and of course hobbits. The walkers' plan is to throw the ring in the fire at the mountain of doom where it was originally forged. Frodo, Bilbo's heir and the current possessor of the ring, is chosen as the ring bearer. The walkers, fighting against various odds, singing songs, meeting elves and orcs alike, dying, getting separated and re-united, are finally able to finish their quest and the darkness falls…truth prevails.

Good triumphs over the evil in both these creations, but in ways that are so different in treatment and yet fundamentally alike in concept. The third part of Lord of the Rings, which is also the most successful of the movies (Lord of the Rings: Return of the King), probably comes closest to the Harry Potter novels in its treatment. The kind of thrills that this book provides, though more glossy and rich in action, is quite close to the thrill factor in the Harry Potter Quidditch games and the cat and mouse wars between the Potter company and the Voldemort gang.

Given all above and much more that many have said and many more might still talk about, both the writers have done a remarkably good job and have really let the readers' imagination run wild. The reader is actually transported into the land of wizardry, into the battles of the hobbits and the Ringwraiths, into the sky on a broom along side Potter as he searches for the gold Snitch in the game of Quidditch, and into the dark towers of Mordor where Sauron resides, scheming and spreading the darkness. And no, this is not just another gas bag...I am reeling under the effect of Lord of the Rings myself, ever since I completed the book this Sunday (one whole week after I started it)...

Rain Rain go away

The sun baked and water starved streets of Chennai have been receiving more water than they could have ever hoped for in the month of May. It has been raining cats and dogs for the past three days in Chennai and if weather reports are anything to go by, this will continue for another few days. Personally, the rain caught me yet again in the full. So there I was reaching office, fully wet from head to toe one more time.

I have started on the Spiderman novel and believe me, it is interesting. The only minus is that I am reading this after I saw the movie. It does take the fun out of reading, somewhat. The reader is not really able to identify with the events as they are told in the book. In fact, his mind wanders once too many to the events that are yet to come in the book but those that he has already seen in the movie. And that was how I was thinking of the Green Goblin even though I was reading the introductory scene of Harry and Norman Osborne. Pretty disturbing, eh?

Today is my Grand Father's birthday. He turns 79 today. I really am fortunate to have him by my side. He is my idol and even at this age, he is better than most people half his age. He is fit, is an active lawyer, tends his gardens himself and really good when it comes to talking to people. Whether it is the small farmer in the village or the highly qualified doctor from the nearby town, he has both of them interested with his conversation. Not only can he talk to them in their respective dialects, he can also talk sense to them. He knows what interests the doctor and at the same time, he can freely talk to the farmer about his problems. I just wish that I will have this ability myself some day. After all, I do carry his genes...

Freedom in chains??

Sometimes I really wonder...Is freedom really free? The types of costs associated with freedom make it such a coveted possession that the very freedom of freedom comes under the shadow of doubt. Why I wonder thus, you may ask. When I was preparing for JEE, I had one nice thought in my mind which always used to drive me and that was to aim at a peaceful future where I will have the freedom to choose the way I want to shape my own life.

I used to earnestly believe that an IIT education (or an IT education, as in my case) will help me reach just that position. Infosys has indeed been a revelation, however. I had heard long tales of people putting in long hours at work in IT industry but I always used to pass it off as their lack of competence or their absolute dearth of choice. I had none, I believed, that was till I joined Infosys. I have spent so man night outs (as we call them) here that it is really difficult to talk of freedom and my job in the same breath. The reason why I am cribbing right now is that yesterday was another such night out, and no, it was not because I lacked competence. It was not because I did not have a choice. In fact, I had my Spiderman novel all lined up.

The Global Delivery Model, as envisaged by Infosys and other IT gurus does not work so well if you have an Onsite Offshore ratio of 1:5. The offshore team does need to provide support if there is a single person at Onsite working on a User Acceptance Testing Set Up. Similarly, the onsite person does need to stay awake at nights if there are some critical issues that need to be discussed over the phone and can not be really discussed over the email. This model, though very useful for the people who matter (the client and the company), does not really serve its purpose if you consider all stakeholders.

To cut the long story short, I went home yesterday, or rather today, at about 3 AM and all the way home, I was thinking the dark thoughts that I have put above. But I do tend to forget some things whenever I have these dark thoughts. One such thing in this case has been the time I came to office today..2 PM. Justice, what?