Ek choti si story

Once upon a time, in a kingdom far far away, there lived two hundred and fifty odd MBA students. In another kingdom, several miles away from the first, lived another set of two hundred and fifty MBA students. When eight students of the second kingdom decided to go to the first kingdom as ambassadors of their faith, they had no idea of the fate that awaited them.

And a strange fate it was, especially for one of the visitors. This visitor from the Kozhikode kingdom was not alone. He had been carrying along with him, his friend, popularly known as 'Lappie'. Now, Lappie had an uncanny habit of going on solitary walks and not returning unless really sought after. Unknown to the concerned visitor Lappie had come with, Lappie decided to make a case for going out just as the visitor to the kingdom of Hyderabad was deciding to pack up the bags and go back to the home kingdom of Kozhikode.

As Lappie started on this eventful walk, clouds started to part, darkness engulfed everything there was to engulf, eerie sounds filled the ears, and pungent odours made the noses stiffen. It was a walk from which Lappie was not to return, at least not very soon. The visitor was to return all alone to the kingdom of Kozhikode, disappointed and distraught by the loss of his friend. The only good news was that Lappie, instead of being lost on the walk, was discovered by the sentries of the Hyderabad kingdom and handed over to one of the kingdom's residents.

Lappie, being of a weak disposition, could not travel alone, despite being so interested in roaming around. So it was that Lappie and the visitor from the kingdom of Kozhikode had to spend many-a-sleepless nights in the agony of separation. The agony was too big to be cast aside by mere fluke of fate...there were higher powers and another kingdom, the kingdom of Bangalore, to play their roles.

One of the residents of the kingdom of Kozhikode, while on a chance visit to the neighboring kingdom of Bangalore, was brought in knowledge of the fact that Lappie was to be escorted from the kingdom of Hyderabad to the kingdom of Bangalore by a lady in shining silk. The said lady in shininig silk, being the apple of the eye of one of the residents of Hyderabad kingdom, was entrusted the difficult job of escorting Lappie, as a reward for which, she was to spend three days and three nights in the kingdom of Singapore. However, the lady's silk was too smooth and she made a move to Singapore even before she handed Lappie over to the visitor from the kingdom of Kozhikode to the kingdom of Bangalore.

It now came upon the lady's parents, the Lord and Lady of BTM riyasat in Bangalore kingdom to perform the handing over ceremony for Lappie. Once that was done, the visitor from Kozhikode kingdom escorted Lappie all the way back to Kozhikode where the ultimate milan took place. Tears knew no buckets, lightning no trees as the two friends met again. It was after not too long a time that they were brought back together but it seemed ages to the estranged friends. However, the separation had ended and ended well....the kingdom of Kozhikode was bedecked like a Queen tonight with all and sundry bringing their hands together to welcome Lappie with the words: "they will live happily ever after".

Of winning hearts and heartlessness

Life does seem to have taken a strange turn this term. I have long forgotten the concept of trying to start some serious studies and change myself as per an 'IIM'. In fact, to be true and honest, I never had the misconception that I will find the need and moreover, even if I did find the need, the motivation to change myself, IIM or no IIM. And that is what happened. As I have been cribbing over the last few posts, I gave another door-waala-salaam to the studies and went on another trip to another inter B-school festival, this time at TAPMI, Manipal.

And a good thing I did, too. Coming along with me on this trip, Ravi 'BigMan' Girdhar, Rohit 'SCon' Gupta, Prashant 'Pakow' Kowshik, and Kanav 'CStar' Kaul made the trip even more interesting. Shounak 'Bappida' Ray was already at TAPMI to participate in the prestigious Young Business Leader contest.

Having already missed the first day of the fest (and in turn, most of the interesting events, as we discovered in due course), we had only four games to participate in and of course, there were those informals. TAPMI people had arranged a hotel (a lodge, actually, but decent, anyway) for us and as soon as we reached the hotel, there were guys from TAPMI to welcome us (as early as 6 in the morning). The kind of unassuming and ego-free attitude that the organisers of this fest had, was in fact, the talk of the place for the next two days.

After breakfast, the first game was Marketing for us (that is Ravi, Kanav and me) and Crisis Management for Rohit and Prashant. Though we did play the marketing game quite well in the later stages, we made a miscalculation in the beginning and that cost us dear, as we finished fifth out of 13 teams. Rohit and Prashant, on the other hand, went on to win the Crisis Game but more on that a little later.

A quick lunch and promise of making the next day's lunch at Domino's later, we were ready to get going for the qualifying round of the strategy game. Since there was only one team allowed from a college, I got a chance to team up with the winners (the results, however, had not been declared yet :-)). The prelims were a cakewalk as we cracked the lateral thinking quiz, topping the list of participants with a score of 26 out of 30 and with the last qualifying team scoring 12. This was one rare time when I was actually thankful for what Father (Dr.) K. Cyriac taught us in Organisational Behavior classes :-)

The beach was scheduled to be presented to us now and a beautiful beach it was. A relatively clean place with a decent crowd, it had its own appeal. The fous, however, was a little away from the waters as the fest started with its second day edition of Brouhaha, the informals. It was at this time that we met Dr. Araana, the visiting faulty who teaches us Corporate Law next term. Surrounded by TAPMI students, he actually tried to put us down by asking us why we had not won anything so far. It was humiliating and we could not even say that we had just come in today morning and the results are yet to be announced for the events we participated in.

Later, we came to know that he had told his TAPMI students that IIMK will not win anything and if they do, he will throw a party for his students on losing the bet. The retribution was taken when in the next half an hour, we not only won all the informals that took place but the results for the Crisis Game were announced and our guys won the first prize there, too. It was fun to see Dr. Araana's facce at that moment.

The next and much-talked about event was the Quiz on the Beach...and what an event it turned out to be. Ranging from the compulsory attendance for TAPMI-ans to buses and buses of beautiful girls, to the discipline of TAPMI-ans in staying within the barricade and actually waiting for their turn at dinner, to the excellent arrangements including a buzer that really worked, the quiz was flawless organization at its best. To top it all was the very standard of the quiz. Even Mastermind or University Challenge do not come anywhere near the quiz that we witnessed that day. Conducted by an enthusisastic quiz master popularly called Pickbrain (he also does the ET Quiz), the quiz was as tough as they come and the quizzers, even more. Out of the final six teams, four of them were corporate teams, with one of them being QuizLab, whose very job is quizzing.

After the long day, we slept like a log but not before we went to this hyped place called DownTown which is supposed to be one of the hip places in Manipal...what a rundown downtown it was, a small time bar with nothing to offer except dark corners and cheap drinks.

The next day was uneventful in terms of the other competitions as neither of our teams could win anything. However, that does not take away from the excellent games that the TAPMI-ans had lined up. They had worked really hard for the events and the concept for most of the games was unique, innovative and well-executed. The valedictory was scheduled for three and we made good on our promise of a Domino's and Cafe Coffee Day meal before that (the coupons we had won yesterday were another reason to go to CCD).

In the valedictory, Shounak showed what he was capable of, as we saw a cheer go up from his competitors when his name was announced. His was the only name that evoked suh popular appeal...he was even nicknamed Captain, all in a space of two and a half days...now that's what I call charisma and winning hearts.

There were lessons-a-plenty to be learnt for Backwaters from this fest and as the others kept reminding me, I should start doing something about it pretty soon (about backwaters, I mean). To top off the excellent fest, the TAPMI people had managed to get hold of Yukta Mookhey to judge their Mister and Miss Personality contest. We had to miss that as we had our train to catch at 5:30 in the evening to be on time for the two quizzes this morning.

Prof Saji Gopinath's quiz is over and I did pathetically. Nevertheless, instead of studying for the FM quiz that goes live at 5, I am writing this blog with the hope that the limited syllabus and the open book format will bail me out.

To paste a short story long

Here I am, without my laptop, without the keys to my room, with a back that aches from the day trip from Bangalore to Calicut, and with some wonderful memories of the past few days spent at ISB. Even though it was another fruitless venture in a way, (I did not win any prizes and considering that there were some very mouth-watering ones, it is indeed bad) all the same, I did enjoy most of the experience personally.

I had a chance to meet Richa and Sushant again within the space of a week. And this time, it was much better in spite of the lack of real big time spent together. For the first time, I got to hear about how far things have reached between Sushant and Richa. I always had my ideas but got it from the horse's mouth only this weekend. That makes it two couples of four that were a part of our training days. Puneet and Banhi, despite our best intentions :-), were not really interested, and as for me and her, the less said the better.

The journey from Bangalore to Hyderabad, though uneventful, had its own share of adventures on the Bangalore side. With another visit to Yeshvantpur (but first to the railway station), I got to gloat on the memories of IISc and Jawahar Guest House while passing through the area and seeing the auto meter inch up to three figures, slowly but steadily. Yeshwantpur railway sation, not much bigger than that of Buxar, had a small chaiwalla who met my gastro needs for the time, that is before we got on to the train and had bouts of bhelpuri as I struggled with my laptop to make something of the debate topic.

The contingent of eight from IIMK landed in Hyderabad at the ungodly hour of five in the morning and hoping against hope for an escort from ISB, we were pleasantly surprised when we actually got to reach ISB in a jiffy, what with the Qualis and the Esteem from ISB giving us the royal treatment. Despite the twilight hours, the first impression of the campus was massive. As things got clearer and I came out from the bath in one of those ISB apartments (with four air-conditioned bedrooms, a living room furnished with sofa sets, television, fridge, hot plates, two three-star-hotel-standard bathrooms, and people coming to clean up the 'house' and change bed sheets everyday), I realised that ISB campus was actually a class apart. Although it is very difficult to compare the campus of ISB with that of our own IIMK, I could get a better parallel for the ISB Campus with that of Infy.

In fact, starting from the lawns to the rooms, to the food courts, to the cafes and stores, to even the rest rooms, the campus was exactly like what Infy or Wipro would typically look like. It was actually a nice feeling and for me, a nostalgic one too, as we moved on from one place to another in their huge attrium and the central building holding the entire academic block and a tastefully built auditorium (more close to a PVR-esque theater, actually).

As for the event I had gone to participate in, got a missile thrown on any hopes of a a good performance. I started badly with stutters and pauses and by the time I was half way through my talk, I knew that I had blown it. Since we did not get a chance to listen to the other speakers, I really do not know how bad we were (or conversely, how close we were to the grand prize :-)) With the tech quiz guys bombing out too, the situation for the IIMK contingent did not look all that rosy. So it was that I teamed up with Rajat and Gaurav with Suraj to enter the technology on-the-spot case contest. A good desision it turned out to be for me, with the Patni people (who were sponsoring the event) giving away tee shirts, pens and pads to all participants :-).

Two teams of Gaurav-Suraj and Baid-Sinha reached the finals of the Biz Quiz and as I joined them after the dismal performance in Antakshari prelims, I got some much needed solace with the entertaining questions and quiz format of VV Ramannan (of the Hindu Young World fame). The Antakshari prelims, where I had teamed up with Rajat and Anupam, had us aslmost done over (what with our not being able to recollect the chak dhum dhum song from Dil to Pagal Hai) till the fateful time in the middle of the biz quiz. Hearing my name all of a sudden from the quizmaster's PA system, and being compared to Mukesh and Rafi was a surprise. It appeared that the Antakshari organizers had actually selected us for the finals and since Rajat and Anupam were nowhere to be seen, I had to form a team with Pragati and despite the disadvantage that the organizers kept reminding us of, we decided to have some fun and go on stage. In the end, it actually turned out to be great with both of us belting out song after song and having a whale of a time. Despite her protests, Pragati actually turned out to be good and actually made sure that we finished fourth out of the five finalists :-).

After the disappointment of the biz quiz, where neither of our two teams could make it to the prizes, the fashion show and the party made up for a lot. ISB does have more than a fair share of girls and of these girls (58 out of a batch of about 250), most are actually good-looking and more than that, smart and bold. In fact, the attire at the party took me by a bigger surprise as compared to that at the fashion show. This was one party where people actually came dressed up for the ocassion. After an hour of wondering how and when I should get on to the dance floor full of unknown people (the others from the IIMK contingent having given me the ditch), I finally got in and what a time I had. With so much choice, there was not one song for which I could not get a decent partner...in one word, it was awesome.

Having danced till about 3 in the morning, another early morning was a pain that had to be endured, however, for the excellent breakfast that the ISB guys served. The food, in toto, was amazing and it was not just the variety that amazed me, but even the ambience of the place, combined with the food's shear taste and quality, that took the breath away. They do pay 90K for the food, though :-)

The second day was a little better with Gaurav and Suraj actually winning a prize for IIMK. The tough stand that they took against meaningless acquisitions by Patni and their actually spreading their competencies instead of consolidating on them earned them recognition from the judges and more than that, the second prize of 15 thousand rupees. Pragati's finance paper presentation was up last and by the time the high quality stuff (I know now that I need to work really hard if I am to be anywhere near the standards of those people) ended, it was already six and the chase was on for the train at 7:25 from Secundeabad.

With an hour separating us from the railway station, we made a Just In Time start at 6:30, hopin to make it somehow. The auto driver that took me and Gaurav along excused himself from the job by handing us over to better hands of a younger guy with a younger and meaner (!!!) machine. However, in the process of rolling over from one auto to another, my laptop refused to be rolled aside and was left in the Auto No. 1. By the time we realized the loss, we were halfay to the station. Hoping against hope that the auto sriver would have handed the laptop over to the second auto coming right behind us and carrying Rajat and Pragati, we decided to make it to the station first and think later.

Gaurav was actually pretty bogged down with the jinx that he said follows him on all trips. However, we did make it on time to the station with the train being delayed by half an hour, too. A call to the security gate of ISB allayed my fears, too with the information that my laptop was safe with them. Ramit, one of the coordinators for Poseidon, the ISB festival, has my laptop with him now and he will be managing the thing's getting to Bangalore shortly. I will have to go down some weekend (probably this one) to collect it from there.

I did want to spend a day in Bangalore, what with having already missed Prof Saji Gopinath's presentation and with the chances of a good birthday-cum-prize winning treat from Suraj, but with Pragati intent on making it to Calicut by the day bus, I decided to carry forward with my earlier plans. Believe me, the day trip to Calicut, though not all that uncomfortable, was a lesson and a memory, what with playing hide and seek with sun filtering through the windows, and making it just in time to the bus after the lunch halt, loaded with a bunch of raw bananas.

All was hunky and dory enough till I reached the hostel and realised that the key to my room was in the case of my laptop and as such, I was stranded till I either broke my door or found a suitable alternative. I could do neither and despite the flood of spam linking me with long haired people and talking about people I wanted to sleep with, I finally made it somehow through the night, out of my room and living, as Shounak remarked, out of my briefcase (in this case, though, it was Somas' bag). Luckily, I could get the duplicate keys to my room this morning and since the laptop should be here by the weekend, too, I have no real worries on that count.

In the meanwhile, things had heated up back at IIMK, too with another of the email wars following a seminar (this time, it was Horizons 2004, the annual management festival of IIMK). The senior-junior debate that ranged from people questioning others' achievements to sending sarcastic mails, raged on and on, so much so, that I had 101 mails in my inbox by the time I could make it to the CC to check my mails. The ITC Business Plan Contest was also over and with two teams having won (and probably qualified for the finals), congratulations are in order. Congratulations are also in order for the 14 people who got through Wipro and the five that made it to IBM in the laterals placement season for the seniors here at IIMK.

Ultimately, after all the fracas and the fun and the tension and the experience, I am back at campus with the last phase of the term approaching fast. It is going to be another spate of assignments, projects, submissions, and examinations for me, as we fight it out to finish another 1/6th of our MBA course.

Payment for a lost punchline

I was going to Bangalore after about five months and though this was, by no means, the longest that I had been away from the place, I was excited to be finally able to go there from Calicut. In fact, before I had joined IIMK, I had promised my Infy gang that I will keep coming to Bangalore every now and then (what with the place being only 6-7 hours away).

This particular journey to Bangalore, however, was for a specific purpose. A hastily organized and sparsely participated debate on Friday saw me being selected to represent the institute in the two upcoming debates, one at ISB on the 27th of this month and the other in Bangalore on the 19th, that is yesterday. So it was that I, Deepak (as members of the debate team), Sanjeev, and Gaurav (as the quiz team) stood in front of the college gate waiting for the Kallada Travels bus to Bangalore. With an immensely uncomfortable journey under our belts, we reached Bangalore early in the morning, all ready to take on the world. While the other three went on to Gaurav's house (he belongs to Bangalore), I decided to give a visit to Sushant. Richa was also there and was busy filling up the recommendation guidelines for her PL. She has taken GMAT and scored an amazing 740. On top of that, she doesn't want to go abroad and is applying, for the time being, to ISB (which I believe, will lap her up).

Chatting with them, I lost track of time and by the time I was ready and could get an auto, it was already quite late. I reached the venue in Kormangala at about 10 minutes past the scheduled time and was surprised to see no one there, apart from our team and another from the neighboring Christ College Institute of Management. Soon, we came to know that the eliminations were to be held at IIMB campus and they had already kicked off the process there. We managed to hitchhike on the bikes of the Christ College people and somehow reach the new venue in time for the eliminations. Eliminations were a cake walk, I thought. The topic of the debate said, "Opportunity is more on building Indian Brands than building Brand India". Each team was supposed to speak two minutes for the motion (one speaker) and two minutes against it (second speaker). I decided to go against, and after a spirited show by Deepak, managed to give some decent finishing touches to be able to qualify into the final eight from a group of 42 teams.

The quarterfinals had an interesting format and of course, a different venue. The two IIMs in the south zone were (probably intentionally) kept in two different quarter finals and the topic for the first quarters (which saw some lop-sided competition with IIMB and Christ College simply stealing the show) was "Indian Advertising: Imitation or Innovation?". Some bad performance by the other two teams and some decent going by IIMB and Christ College saw them through to the semis. The next quarters, in which we figured, had the topic "Celebrity Endorsements: Does it pay?". An interesting topic with a lot of arguments and counter-arguments, it made the debate lively. Deepak from IIMK opened the debate by setting the context of the discussion, defining what a brand stands for and how it can come to gain from celebrity endorsements, giving the examples of Amitabh Bachchan and Cadbury's and above all, quoting some fake figures from some fake reports, too :-).

The opposition speaker from ICFAI, Hyderabad who opened against Deepak went on to question the match between Amitabh and Cadbury and also talked about the cost factor of involving celebrities in the ad campaigns (played right into our hands as we were prepared for these questions and had anticipated them with precision). My turn was next and I believe that I made a good start (in an unusual way, with the Rapunzael poem). I went on to mention my points about how cost factor can be neutralised if the advertising strategy is chosen correctly and the celebrity endorsements are used during growth phase of the product life cycle. What I did not do was reply to the Amitabh-Cadbury link and finish my speech with the punchline that related my start, body and conclusion (completely forgot both of them).

I had started with saying something that went like, "Rapunzael Rapunzael, let your golden hair down, says the prince. Rapunzael lets her hair down and the prince climbs up the tower and the two lovers meet. Love, anybody? Ladies and Gentlemen, Love is when Romeo meets Juliet, Love is when Laila meets Majnu and not when a rose is shown brushing against a sunflower for minutes on end without any purpose."

I went on to mention how celebrities give a physical form with which the customers can associate the brand, gave the example of Preity Zinta and Pentafresh, and more importantly, talked about the necessary marketing startegy decisions that need to be right for celebrity endorsements to work. The punchline that I forgot and that I wanted to end with went somewhat like this: "A Veer Pratap Singh and a Zaara Hyatt Khan will in deed have the desired effects, provided that they are backed with the typical Yash Chopra style."

So far, so good...but that is when the lightning struck. One of the judges stood up and said that he wanted to bring the discussion into perspective and asked the teams to discuss more about how exactly does the celebrity endorsement pay or not pay. Completely unfair to our team where both of us had spoken, this came as a jolt. BIM Trichy, the second team for the motion, however, got it as a Godsend and capitalized fully on it by starting their argument with the tangibles and intangibles that companies can obtain from the celebrity endorsement ploy. The moment they said this, the judges were seen nodding their heads as if those guys had struck a goldmine all on their own.

The opposition teams, the ICFAIs from Chennai and Hyderabad were both pathetic but as luck would have it, both the pathetic teams were in the opposition. As we came to know later, the policy was not to choose the best two teams from each quarter final for the semis but to choose one Government (that is, team for the motion) and one Opposition (that is, team against the motion) from each quarter final. We had already lost to our partner team in the Government on account of the judge intervention and though we did try to salvage the situation somewhat in the Q&A round, it was too little too late.

The semis were interesting with IIMB, ICFAI Chennai favoring the motion, "M-commerce: Myth or Reality?" and BIM Trichy, Christ College against the motion. More interesting than the opening arguments, the Q&A session saw some tempers flaying and some good use of rhetoric by both Christ College and IIMB. The other two teams were completely outclassed as these two teams (luckily, one in the Government and another in the Opposition) went about murdering each other. The IIMK contingent asked a few questions, too and in my opinion, Gaurav and Deepak could have done better than losing thier tempers. I completely agree to their point that the IIMB guys were acting too smart and that Gaurav was specially irritated because we were made to wait for the quiz prelims results since the morning...but then again, it came across as if IIMK were sore losers. Whatever be the case, as Amitabh said in Sholay, "Partner, ab bol hi diya hai to dekh lenge", and so it was that even I was poised to ask a question of my own but luckily for IIMB, time for Q&A ran out before I could put my own poser to their arguments.

The day ended rather dramatically for us with Gaurav making his displeasure known to one of the ladies in the organising committee. Though she did finally relent and told us that we were through to the quarters of the quiz, Gaurav wanted more (perhaps an apology?). Sanjeev made the peace and that was when we finally left. I stepped out at the Forum, did some window shopping, got me some posters that I wanted to have in my room for long, and then finally went to Richa's house. Having asked Deepak to book tickets for the 9:30 bus, we were waiting for Sushant to come and take us out for a good dinner. It was not to be, however, as Deepak told me, just in the nick of time, that we had got tickets only for the 8:30 bus.

It was all a blur there onwards as Richa literally dragged me along till I reached the bus stop with about ten minutes to spare. Sushant came to the place directly from his office. Thinking back, I felt lucky to have such friends who, if they wanted, could have left me on my own and said their good-byes but who, in reality, made sure that I made it to my bus and escorted me all the way as if I was a kid and would not be able to make it on my own. Thanks guys for all this and much more.