A page in my journal

It's been a long time since I posted something about what has been happening to me and my life. In fact, ever since I decided to change the shape of Mode C and make it what it can possibly be - my face to the world, I have been writing stuff that is as far from my life as possible. This helps me avoid any unpleasantness that inadvertently occurs when I get too close to my emotions and feelings about something that has been happening around me. It helps me avoid absolute (negative or positive) references to real events and people and thus, exonerates me from the sins of life blogging...or that is what I would like to believe, and that is what has made it possible for me to retain Mode C in whatever form it exists today.

All the same, in nature with the public vehicle that Mode C has now become, there is another angle that can be touched upon and that is, to let people (who are interested, of course) know what has been happening in my life without going any deeper. So here is an account (warning: those not interested in me or my life may skip this post right now and wait for my next movie review :-)) of what's been up since I landed at IIMK and moved into G hostel (which is the last Mode C knows about my life)...

The juniors have come to the campus, one hundred and sixty six of them (minus a couple who have left for greener pastures) and they certainly have made the campus more colorful in terms of their shear number and of course, the initial enthusiasm that a generally high work-ex batch brings with it as a part of the two year holiday package. There are quite some married people in the batch and one couple is actually staying together on campus (and no, not both of them study here). They have been doing the usual, getting bulk deals on laptops (a good deal they got, too), arranging for the lowest possible bank loan interests (which has been dealt with properly, too), and of course getting involved in the politics as committees start getting nominations and the election dates come closer.

Talking about elections, Backwaters received 43 nominations amidst widespread allegations of misconduct by Backwaters committee members in trying to influence the nominees' choices. sTrEAM Backwaters, of course, maintains that the large number of nominations was all due to the "different" presentation they had made to the junior batch. Getting that presentation together had been a delight, of course. I had a basic idea which was further sharpened by the sTrEAM's inputs (especially Pakow's Troy idea). Although there was initial skepticism about the entire thing, the team that we are, all of us got round to executing the thing with full gusto and the result, a presentation that was something that has not been done before. Although it could have done with some editing, I am still proud of my sTrEAM and the way they believed in a vague idea and made it a reality...a small thing for some, perhaps but not at all inconsequential as far as I am concerned.

Konnect had a presentation, too and although I had decided to remove or at least minimize my association with Konnect, somehow I got involved in this one, too. Another something that has not been done before...more of a performance than a presentation. With editing proving to be our nemesis yet again, the overall impact was nevertheless, quite decent.

Recently, I have been inching away from Konnect to make sure that it gets owned by more people in the batch and does not end up being the dream of an individual. For me, it can never be an individual initiative and unless the batches here take note of it and start setting foundations for Konnect, there is no chance of any tradition being born. There will be problems galore and some of them have already started creeping in. Even as of today, Konnect is not considered official (not a committee, neither an interest group) and perhaps, it should not be made official by force or persuasion. Perhaps, there is much more to be done yet before the current batch realizes that there is no other option but to give a standing to Konnect's popularity...but as I said, unless this dream is owned by more and more people, there is no going forward.

Once I have started on Konnect, let me bring things to the logical sequence by talking about the Treasure Hunt that Konnect organized a few days back. I had to get into the thick of things yet again despite having yearned for seeing people take the entire thing up by themselves...but there has been progress, no doubt with more people joining the Konnect bandwagon. Kudos to the Konnect Team for organizing a splendid first event of the year and kudos to those who participated in Kaptain Konnect's maiden voyage (especially people from the senior batch who proved the dictum wrong that only juniors participate in anything requiring enthusiasm and seniors either sleep or sleep soundly).

Things have actually come to a passé as history repeats itself and my over indulgence in public activities (read taking random initiatives) once again received flak from unknown sources. Like in college, there has been nothing directly spoken to my face (how I wish that had happened, instead) but there have been what can be called feelers (direct or indirect) that point to the futility of it all. Kdio had not been my idea but I had taken it up for the good initiative that it was. After the most polite of hints that I received from some body who wants to know "how many people think Kdio sucks", I was pissed off but later, saddened...more due to my lack of understanding than that of the person(s) involved. Now again, I am going into my emotions which I had promised I will not. So let me end this particular episode by saying that counter to that one action by one (or few) individual(s), there have been so many supporting me that I am sure I will be back with Kdio (and other such initiatives, of course) sometime soon.

In the meanwhile, classes have been pretty sporadic and given the schedule of the visiting faculty for most of the courses, the trend is likely to continue. None of the marketing subjects that I have taken this term have started yet and it has been a dosage of finance that has been keeping me busy so far in this term. Fixed Income Securities, Management of Banking and Financial Services, and Portfolio Management have all started and apart from FIS, I am comfortable with the other two and of course, with the compulsory Strategic Management course. As far as FIS goes, I have to brush up more of my basics (well, almost all of them) if I am to enjoy and utilize the immense knowledge and experience that the course faculty brings to class.

The other perspective

 

It is strange but true. People seldom try to put themselves in other shoes and get the other perspective before thinking and talking about something. Vikhyat was speaking of the fun and spirit of the game day before yesterday when he was not a part of either the people getting the points, nor of the people losing them. Today at Antakshari, when his team was liable to lose because of the small issue that should have been neglected from the fun point of view, he came up shouting and was even talking about being given a second chance if the results were to be too close...talk of different languages being spoken in different situations.

Anyway, Konnect was not at all satisfying today. With only 15 odd teams turning up, it does take your enthu down...what with all the time that we spend publicising, organising these events and then finally seeing only 50 people turning up out of a total of 250. C hostel did not come at all, not even with a token participation...ah well...

There was another minor skirmish apart from the one that I was mentioning about in the initial few lines of the post. Vishak was the time keeper and all of a sudden, he vanished into thin air (he had an urgent call and could not inform anyone before going). This resulted in the team from F (the first team) getting a little extra time and finally, when it was Team G's (Mayank, Prashanat, etc) turn and I refused them the same despite the circumstances being similar, things got a little heated up again.

In another instance, Prashant jumped the gun and before my accepting or rejecting the answer, started talking about his own version of the answer, forcing me to cancel the question from being passed on to the next teams for bonus points. By the way, this was what angered Vikhyat and made him lose sight of the bigger picture of having fun :-)

Jokes apart, I am really wondering about what else I should do to get a better response from people. I know that ITC is coming up and so are the end term submissions for seniors and cases aplenty for us juniors, but all the same, I don't think that two hours are all that scarce. We plan to have Dumb C finals and Pictionary prelims on Monday...let's see who all turn up.

I shall be leaving for Bangalore tomorrow night and from there to Hyderabad to participate in the debate at ISB. I am still feeling guilty about leaving so many classes and especially the student presentation due in Prof Saji Gopinath's class...but then I have to take the call... can not really expect to have the cake and eat it too.

Konnecting priorities

So many things have been happening that I have completely lost track of my priorities. Somehow I feel that I am fast going on the track that I was on during my college days. With so many inter institute festivals coming up and myself trying to participate in as many of them as possible, things on the academic front have taken a backseat. With Dr. Chowdhury's Class Participation marks being based strictly on attendance, I am likely to miss out on quite a lot on the grades front. I am not even reading up anything on Fin and Ops either. With the term end coming closer, the load is only going to increase and if I carry on like this, it is certainly going to be a tough, tough time for me. In fact, even the supposedly comfortable subjects like Org Theory and Macro have started changing their faces, what with all the presentations, assignments, and projects lined up. BTW, the presentations in OB were good fun, with some nice stories in the mockingly smiling JC style as well as some draggingly non-stop folded handed montone from Pavithra, in addition to many others.

In the midst of all this guilt that I have been heaping over myself, I have also become a party to the team that has gone ahead with this initiative called Konnect. Last night witnessed the first of the events at Konnect and as Sandipan said later, I got an idea of what to expect in future. A decent gathering of about 60-odd people did make sure that Konnect has a decent chance to be sustainable in future but all the same, the kind of format that we have thought of for Konnect, actually (and even expectedly) resulted in a minor skirmish.

It all happened when Mustu and Ramesh's team at dumb charades depicted the figure of the alphabet A while trying to guess "A Suitable Boy". As I had already mentioned at the beginning of the event, any codes for alphabets were not allowed. When I tried to disqualify the team from this round, Hostel D residents, with Sandipan and Vinay shouting the most :-), started creating a ruckus. Things were going fine and I was trying to explain my logic on top of allegations that similar behavior had been excused earlier in the event. I was trying to tell them that earlier, I did not see it myself but now that I had seen it happening, I could not swallow the same. I thought that this would sink in but it was then that some more people got in the act and with Rohit, Sandipan, and Ravi (Konnect's bouncer???) going in for the pushing matches, the situation went from bad to worse.

Vikhyat says that I was wrong in finally ruling to disqualify the D Hostel team because after all, it was all meant for fun and the this was the bigger picture. Rules were minor issues that could be modified in view of the bigger picture. Though I did not tell this to him last night when I just heard him out and was rather weary of people not understanding the idea behind it, I do think otherwise. As far as my understanding goes, when we (Vikhyat included) thought of Konnect as an idea, the big picture was not just fun, but establishing a tradition of fun. I know that it sounds like a lot of crap and heavy stuff but it remains a fact that you can not really expect people to take something seriously if that some thing has no structure. This was also why I did not want too much flexibility in the events that we were organizing...why I did not want the event to be declared without making sure of the prizes, venue, clashes with other events...why I did not want to send a mail retracting the team size from 3 to 2...

Whatever happened, it actually resulted in something good for Konnect beacuse this is what we were looking for...a feeling of belonging for your own hostel and a sense of rivalry with others (the tone of the rivalry could have been kept down a bit ideally but then again, chalta hai).

Amongst other things, after the not-so-successful stint at BT Acumen in Bangalore, I am all set to go for the debate at ISB, for which we already have the topic and the information that there are about 20 odd teams registered and more expected. Gaurav is a good speaker and I just hope that I can do enough to match up to him and give the IIMK team some character (and not take away from it :-))

The campus seems to be full of ITC Business Plan banners and despite what Gagan says about it all being a compromise to reach a position where we don't have to compromise, I am still sceptical as to whether we are heading for a habit of compromising. At times, such a strategy, instead of adding to your image, actually erodes whatever there is of it, but then again, as Abhijit says, this thing might as well be happening in IIMA, for all I know. Whatever be the case, here's wishing all the teams who have qualified for the contest the very best of luck...Kolkata shall be ours.

Of parties, emotions, and Konnect

The party last night was one of the best that I have attended for a long long time. This does not reflect on the parties earlier but more on my mood last night which was, in one word, good. It was as if all was right with the world and everything was in its place. At the same time, it doesn't take away from the hard work that Reuben and Rahul did to make the party a success. Though their idea of introducing games in the party did not really take off as it should have, the party was fun.

The effect of the party was diminished to an extent by people not turning up, especially those who have not been placed so far. In my own humble and personal opinion, if the reason for not turning up was only that the party was being thrown by people who have been placed and as such, was disrespectful and perhaps even mocking towards those who have not been placed yet, then I must say that a wrong trend is being established here. Going by this logic, who do you think will be a part of your celebrations whenever you plan to have it?

Last night's party had all the usual ingredients, the booze for boozers, the snacks for snackers, the dance and music for dancers...but more than that, the part of observing people take their skins off was the most interesting. That is what people tend to do under the effect of spirits, take their skins off and show their real self by actions and words...and that is what happened last night, too...Abhinav, Rajat, Vikhyat to a small extent, Sumit, Deepak and so many more...

On different lines, Aditya raised a very pertinent question this evening as we were getting ready to go for an outing to Kadavu Resorts for dinner (by the way, the ambience is good at Kadavu but the food, not all that great). He said that a person (I have a fairly good idea of who the person is, though Aditya refused to even give me any hints as to his identity), while discussing my blog with him, was wondering why I keep writing my emotions in public.

Telling a story, relating the happenings, cracking a joke through a publicly read blog are all fine but why do I, knowing fully well that my blog is being read by a lot of people, tear open my wounds and emotions that should normally be kept to oneself? On second thoughts, Aditya said that even he wondered the same at times about my blog.

I know that it is difficult to make any one understand because even I am not very clear about why I write what I write....but I will try, not because I need to explain my actions to anyone, but because there are moments of self doubt where even I am unclear as to why I make such a public show of washing my dirty linen.

It is like this...whenever I feel the pinch of something, I want to get it out of my system but not totally so. I want to talk about it to someone and take the load off myself. Since I am generally not able to get too comfortable about talking to people about my problems, I generally write them down on my blog and with others reading it, it feels as if I have washed my hands off the suffocating feelings. The blog also helps me keep track of my feelings and emotions in such situations and as such, record my life as it happens, thus ensuring that if, after ten years in my life, I take a look at my blog archives, they will tell me exactly what I need to feel blessed about and what I need to be careful against.

I know that it may sound like a lot of bullshit to many but then again, it is my blog and it is my reasoning and that somehow ends the entire discussion, doesn't it? :-)

Another thing that has been happening recently is Konnect. It is an intiative that some of us here at IIMK have planned. With big goals of setting a tradition, Konnect is all about connecting people in teams and fostering the hostel, batch, and institute identity amongst the junta. A series of cultural events have been planned, and the winning hostel might actually get a good deal as a prize (if our negotiations for the sponsorships pay, that is). The logo and the ads for Konnect have come out really well (and might even land me up in some trouble if I am not careful enough with dropping names). The teaser campaign that we ran for Konnect, though not garnering enough mail spam, did raise a few eyebrows and more than a few questions.

Since today's call for volunteers, there have been four of them already and hoping that others will join in, I believe that there is indeed going to be born, a new tradition at IIMK.

BTW, as Vikhyat says, the logo of Konnect is actually Tee Shirt Material :-))