Maximum City

"Tujhse hai zinda yeh dil ka shaher ..rozana rozanaa ... "
This is what Bachchan sahab is singing right now and am thinking not about my dil but the shaher, that is this Mumbai. I know googols of keystrokes have been keyed for describing this metropolis but still its vastness and bhaagti jindagi never ceases to invite thoughts.

I had been to Mumbai earlier during my college days but it was a temporary sojourn always, so the city never looked the way it did last year in June when I knew the stay is going to be longer than a few years (2 years of MBA + dunno how much more). The entry of our train into Mumbai, I think just before Virar, reminded me of the entry of hogwarts express into the clouded and spooky mountainous terrain of Hogwarts (Please don't chuckle, I didn't make this up just now.Try coming to Mumbai in the rainy season around June and you would know). Hogwarts it is not, but the college is a lot green and musty thoughout the rains.

The experience of local trains, lifeline of Mumbai, is a learning in itself day after day. There is a large group, amazingly women also, who love to hang on the railings of train compartments, even if seats are available. Am not sure if they are planning out Abhishek and Aishwarya's wedding or thinking of Shilpa Shetty's troubles , with the air gushing wildly through hair they gaze incessantly into the horizon. I can not dare comment on those who are sitting on roof tops. Each local train is carrying at peak hours what seems to be a million people in the 12 dabbas. The people in trains are either happy or just plain expressionless. Not sure what comes first, the quest for survival or finding happiness in small things in life or may be there are perfectly intertwined. In the lives of a majority of Mumbaiites, am sure one can not separate the moments when cribbing for good life (comfortable travelling to work-place is one important parameter to good life I think) yielded gradually to condescending existence.

One can see an excellent juxtapositioning of contradictions on local stations. The bottom 2 feets of walls and footbridges is reserved for 'rang de lal' cadre of paan / paan masala folks and on the other hand are shiny white glittering posters of Kumkum and Dulhan TV sops. I am sure earlier generations of pan masala chewing people in order to try out some newer dart boards would have tried spitting on the hoardings as well but due to awkward results of such an exercise the posters have stayed enviously white and shiny.

Once I was amazed to see two middle aged men coming back from office in the local, sitting close to each other and singing. When I took a seat next to them what I heard was not at all possible in any other city except for our Filmy Mumbai. Each one was having a book of lyrics of Mukesh and were very intently singing the songs with passion and once a song was over, they flipped pages and had quite a discussion on what should they pick next.

The life and the thoughts do not end here and am sure Mumbai will bring in lot more ... to this blog and to life ;-)

Do's and Dont's

Not the typical do's and dont's listed on the polythene bags enveloping new electronic gadgets : do not swallow or feed to cows or offer as gift to kids under 12 but just some random comparison of lifestyle changes from being a bored s/w engineer to an upcoming (funny word) MBA.

Things I DO (can't say I love all these but still)

• No time table for sleep, but there is some thumb-rule : never before 3 and not after 6 (in the night ;-0).
• Learnt the trick to sleep on chair.
• Jeans is the daily wear now.
  
• Get to Crib with friends for each rupee spent on autorickshaw or bus.
• Can afford to keep stubbles for weeks.
• Wear chappals throughout the day.
• Re-realized the importance of 'Pen is mightier than Keyboard'. Had almost forgotten how to write using pen and paper. In CSC amidst loads of copy and paste the only writing that I did for almost 3 years was marking pencil corrections on printed requirement docs or solving crosswords from TOI. Now with 2 economics, 2 HR etc courses in my pocket you can imagine the reams of paper I would have gobbled.
• Eat umpteen number of Vada Paav, get up close and personal (hope you are not misunderstanding me) with Mumabikars in locals, wait till eternity in BEST bus to reach a 12 KM distant location ...
  

Things that DON'T (or things I miss) happen in college now

• The $ sign which used to come up ringing in the eyes every start of the month.
• Miss my friends back in Noida, here it is more 'If you don't beat the shit out of me I will' attitude.
• Missing the punjabi / jatt language of dilli, chhole bhature in breakfast, hot jalebi after dinner, Gajar Halwa; Sutta in cold, foggy delhi december night, domino's pizza in office after a back breaking code/test/deliver weekend frenzy ...

PS: readers are welcome to add to the list ... i know it's a boring post but please bear with me, everyday is not a sunday.

Love is in the air

Not sure about the air but on the IP (lcoal chat client) and mails there is a lot of love. Everyone is nostalgically remembering their first love or the first departing and sending along the songs from Shiamak Dawar, Raja Hindustani, Bryan Adams to Bon Jovi (I have collected more than 15 songs of various genre and taste and I am loving this emotional chitrahar). Some hearts are brimming with regret and some others are chirping with love.

I had thought that will not sell out my pen / keyboard to these multinational conspirators who are capitalising on the softest nerve of human heart and will not write on this issue but I lost. All the corporate affairs are based on using one or the other of human fallacies and feelings. Be it jealousy of 'neighbour's envy, owner's pride' fame or fear of retirement blues for the pension plan adverts. It is only the interplay of emotions which drives our lives.

Talking of first loves, I remember the girl from my class 8th or 9th. Daughter of a military man, she was really beautiful and she (dunno why) had a special liking for me. Our group of friends used to come early to play cricket but for me cricket became a thing of the past and we used to sit in class and talk of some idle things. Now it all sounds too kiddish but there were such emotional upheavals with each and every day that I can still feel the chill. Then came the climax of my story, this girl was caught by our class teacher for fiddling with her report card to get her parent's signature. I was one of the studious guys and it just happened that I stopped talking to her (so mean of me !!). Next year she moved to another school, I heard about her once in a while but now there's no trace of her.

Some things are just priceless and are for sweet memories only !!!

P.S.: In retribution to the above I have reduced my studies and am making sure that my report card is never again a thing of pride for me.

"Your survival fight or a fanciful flight,
Your first kiss or memory of lover you miss,
An ecstatic win or the friend's grin,
A trancing shout or winning a bout,
The most beautiful dawn or a sleepy yawn,
Say it all with us .. Airtel Express yourself."

The collage was a part of our entry to create print-ad for various succesful television campaigns (ours was Airtel - Expess Yourself ). The entry was not selected :-(.

sabkuch.com is taken .... nothing's on my plate

I just finished sending a mail to someone on yahoo and saw an advertisement saying get domain names for as cheap as $1.99/yr from yahoo domains, obviously I was curious to give it a dekko. To my surprise, I keyed in some arbitrary words and found that www.kutta.com and www.kameena.com (no such site exists may be because of the fear of saffron brigade who can make a fuss out of anything on internet from orkut communities to bloggers) have already been taken :-)) ... it is not that I wanted to beat bill gates and the google wallas with hindi abuses or that they are the only things that come to my mind. I had earlier tried indiadekho.com / indiaride.com / indiafurniture.com / vidya.com etc nothing was available and (please don't smirk) in this quest I did not reach any websites which Indian censor board won't approve.

It is true that with the success stories like guruji.com, yatra.com and many more, no space on Indian vernacularscape would be left untouched. So people get going and book your slot in the web world if you have some sellable idea to be executed in a year or so.

Pyar ke Regional Effects !!

I know I shouldn't be writing this often to avoid indigestion of the vast expanse of my reader population but I had one pressing issue at hand. Just now read that domain maximus' writer Sidin got married to a punju girl. I was a regular reader of his blog (can't say that I grew up reading his blog but would have contributed a good 3-4 % hits out of the half million of his hit count). Last I'd read when he left his cozy job at ATK and planned to write, organize quizzes on his own.

The story is not about him but about marriages across the border (north-south, east-west and all other combinations). It is a happening phenomena these days as people are travelling all across the land for studying and jobs or may be because there is some conspiracy by the HRD ministry for improving gene pool of the nation. I know a lot of folks in close vicinity some of whom have seen victory and some others met defeat against the cultural wall.

I remember my farewell visit to the house of a colleague couple of mine (a mix of UP banda and Mallu bandi). They had a baby girl of about 6 months and both the grannies of the baby were present in the house. Both of them were coochie cooing the kid in their mother tongue. Once the baby cried it got to hear some mallu lullabis and a little while later was bashed in plain hindi for being a little too boisterous. The baby must be cursing them - 'Arrre baba pehle ek do words to seekh lene do mujhe kam se kam araam se' and things would get worse when her mom and dad would throw the burden of angrezi.

One more love-struck couple (MP ka banda and Bengali bandi) : their parents have agreed for the marriage but now when things come to brass tacks they are finding it really difficult. The families are having trouble finding a common ground about nitty gritties like number of sarees, mode of marriage, vegetarian vs non-vegetarian feast. They have booked friends to be ready for acting as a witness to the court marriage. I am looking forward to it, it's been long since I witnessed a court marriage (last was that in 'Sathiya' I guess).

I remember while travelling from mumbai to delhi some 2 years back, along with us in the same compartment was a marathi baraat who were coming back with their punjabi bride. The bride and groom were playfully enjoying their journey while on the other side was one KK-series-wali-not-so-good-lady murmuring to our neighbours the usual doosri-taraf-waalon-ki-burai. How tough it would have been for the two to bring the Jai Maharashtra and Sada Punjab to the same table.

I think we have come far from the days of 'Ek Duje Ke Liye ' and things are smoother for the love torn souls. We now have Mallika Sherawat and Rahul Bose in PKSE discussing the peculiarities of Dilli ki ladkiyaan versus Mumbai babes and stories of clans fighting over marriages are left for Priyadarshan comedies only.

News time

snippets :

* I was coming out of the mumbai airport in an autorickshaw after booking tickets to delhi, basking in the glory of India Poised / Globalisation / WTO / privatisation of airports (and lots of other things) and feeling elated at having given some meaning to my life by winning a free air ticket. On the traffic signal I saw one girl about 6-7 years old, in tattered clothes and was begging for some money. She put her face close to the window of the merc standing just next to my rickshaw and by folding her hands around her eyes she peeked into the car and was continously murmuring 'hey madam please ...'. She did not get anything and once the light turned green she left towards the road divider and went over to the other side of the road. Don't know why I did not feel any pity rather one thought struck me : will this girl ever be able to ride a car let alone fly on an airplane. I am sure any benefits of the progress and development that the country makes are infinite years away from lots of people like this girl.

* Had the luck to listen to Nandita Das at WIMWI in their cult fest. The people from dramatics / classical music / theater etc have an eerie calmness about them. She was perfectly poised and talked at length about her life and her style of choosing only the most remote and unknown movies, her social service. Especially touching was her narration of incidents which took place when they had arranged for a game of cricket and tour to pakistan for a group of street children.

* In the campus, people have gone crazy over solving case studies and other contests and are busy pocketing decent (worth one party) sums of money. I have full confidence that some of them have still undiscovered pschizophrenic problem, they have invented imaginary colleges and are solving case studies of their own making. They have wasted gigs of memory for only powerpoint and MS word documents . Even Google would have surrendered to their searching apetite.

and so the life goes on and so do we ....

Run Mumbai Run !!

I felt proud at being a part of the Mumbai Marathon this sunday. It was a spectacular display of corporate revelry and citizenship. Mumbai looks beautiful while running - it is running daily in any case - but this time people were running for somewhat selfless reasons. Daily people push and jostle with each other for a window seat in the local train or a piece of floor in the compartment just sufficient to put a foot. At times folks are expressionless as the cast of 'City of the dead' but still living in Mumbai one can know very soon that it has got a heart - just ask for directions from someone and he would make sure that you are on the correct bus / train and people in general are there to help except for the autorick walaa who would want the best slice of your skin.
Apart from the gorgeous Kingfisher and Standard Chartered cheer leaders there were other feel-good sights as well like the persons on wheelchair (some of them very beautifully dressed) and some Amrish Puri style dads pushing and ecouraging there kids - run beta run only the last kilometer is left !! .
I was not aware of the enormous amount of charity that gets generated through this.The runners can get corporates to sponsor you and the money gets donated to various NGOs. It makes it even more worthwhile to run - you run for your health, for revelry, for fun, for citizenship and for a noble cause. This time we were running for no cause or may be
there was a subliminal cause of being associated with the society.

Am back with a kahani :-)

Many cubic meters of water has flown down the volga ( don't ask why volga, jlt ) since I last sat down to write on the blog.

Something weird happened on my trip back home in december. After the exams I was all spick and span, ready for the mumbai delhi flight and had made sufficient arrangements, or so i thought, to fight the cold in delhi but the civil aviation ministry, the low cost airline industry in india and god of rains indra (don't know who takes the responsibility of fog. It is close to clouds and rains so let it be him please) had other plans. Please don't close the window, it is not the usual stranded-passenger-struck-@-airport-cursing-on-Aaj-Tak story, it's different. Amazingly the flight was on time. The in-flight crew was courteous. This is inspite of the fact that she refused to give me change for a rupee 500 note for a 60 rupee lunch package which consisted of one small sized samosa, which people back in delhi would gulp in a single bite, two cookies and two slices of bread with butter and if it wasn't for my papi pet I wouldn't have spent that handsome load of money on this packet . My neighbour and I started off on a good note (the pun intended as the lady sitting next to me helped me with the change). After about an hour, the flight attendant came with a box full of boarding passes of all the passengers and said they were offering 3 fortune free return tickets for the lucky winners and he went to some kids for taking out the names.

The winners started making their miss-world-winner-esque awe and ooh gesture, one dropped a tear and some other winner jumped in the seat only to bump his head in the overhead bin. All the people in close vicinity turned to catch slightest glimpse of the winner (so that while getting down they could show their children look betaa !! this is what winners look like, this guy is only next to sachin tendulkar in achievements ). Only one more winner was to be declared and when I heard my seat number I did not know how to react, the flight attendant came and collected my details. Congratulations started pouring in from the remotest corners of the country/flight despite of the seat-belt sign on people came to give me a hug . (No please don't smirk, I don't know how to look awe struck in Aishwarya Rai style and I definitely did not bump my head on the overhead bin you can ask the lady sitting next to me on 4D seat ).

I was feeling like Manmohan Singh would have felt if he ever won a lok sabha election ( again you are not allowed to question my analogies, this is MY BLOG ok ?) (the analogy was corrected after someone pointed out, see comment) but the climax was yet to come. The captain announced that due to inclement weather conditions we can not land in delhi and none of the airports were ready to let us in and hence we were flying back to MUMBAI, everybody gave a sigh of disbelief. The announcement came as a shock to some as if Ayesha Takia had just dumped them. GoAir was ready to fly us back to delhi the next day and nothing much could be done at half past 12 when we landed back in mumbai and so after a dinner of bread omlette I had to go back to my hostel . My meeting with the 'dilli ki sardi' had been delayed. Nonetheless I went to delhi the next day and then after a rocking party in CP went to my home later and now this trimester is one 'GURU' and one visit to Kashid beach old :-).... more on that later ... stay happy !!!

Tere Mere 'Status Message'

'The higher you go, the more of your rear is exposed ...'

The easiest way to attract your friends' attraction is to keep a whacky status message in your IM and people will definitely ping back with concern 'kya hua ' 'aisa message kyun likha' without a good message you are just another blinking dot on their IM space and will not be noticed. You did not exist yesterday and it is this status message that gave you the CPR.

I will list down some attention grabbing status mesaages ( courtesy Gtalk and yahoo messenger and of course my friends )

'koi meri neend bhagaa de ...'
'kabhi kabhi yun karna main dantoo aur tum darna ...'
'jaag uthaa insaan ...'
'kaise bhoolegi mera naam ..'
'rain drops keep falling on my head ...'
'original gaon ki biwi' - don't ask me why would one want to be the biwi of a whole gaon ;-)
'no wucking forries'
'karm kar phal khareed kar khaa'
'I met myself and lost'
'Live one day at a time' - as if I was skipping every alternate day
for the ever questioning kid 'exams kyun hote hain' 'why me'
the crapiest 'why fart and waste when you can burp and taste' eeks
left for readers to guess 'i feel like ...'
informative ones 'feverish' 'trying to study ..' 'left for da day' 'in the loo' 'scratching my back' - the last two were not actually seen on the messenger
and then some cryptic ones which only they understand
'MTV bakriyaaan ...' 'Bugs says 'I'll bite you' ' ' Aunty khush huee '

unfortunately one can't keep history of status messages and thus am not able to reproduce some of the fundoo ones which couldn't stay up in my head. Copying status messages has become a cognisable offence, which result in severe bashing by the owner and public ridicule 'saale i have heard this status message before' 'you copied his message ... chi chi ... may you rot in hell' as if you just can not feel the same feeling twice or can't have the same thought somebody had at another point in time. Here is a beautiful message I got on our internal messenger

'Sumday sumone might come into ur life & luv u the way u've always wanted. If ur sumday was yesterday, learn. If ur sumday is tomorrow, hope. If ur sumday is today, cherish.'


P.S. It is really amazing, in the meantime I was writing this post and went back to Gtalk to check for some more messages at least 5-6 people have already changed their statutes. This is a fast world :-) need to hurry

the Innside story

It is 10 minutes to 2 in the watch hanging on the waist of a bald guy who is grinning widely over some joke which the lady stading close to him must have whispered. There are beer casks being loaded on a horse cart in some distance. All the folks there have some familiarity about them, some Goan touch. They are a part of the murals painted by Mario Miranda in the Cafe Mondegar or Mondy's ( can google or search orkut for their fan following ). My friend was telling me something about his German client who was causing some problem over his last delivery of some piece of code. I just happened to look at the dish on the table next to us. It was some bland preparation of noodles. What would it be tasting ... obviously bland what else. The tables were so closely interspersed with each other that it gave an appearance of the bogie of a local train.

It always happens that things start glittering and the music which was hitting the ears earlier now turns into melodious background score and all the hullabaloo created by the co-beerers (don't click the dictionary s/w on your machine and start cursing me ... i know it is not a word ) on other tables sounds like sweet chirping. All this happens once you are down a few glasses of beer and then you tend to make a beeline ( not a peeline ) for that important part of the pub /restaurant .... which is usually alloted the most elegance out of the entire interior or exterior design of the place. It usually has the most wittiest of lines or pictures.

I remember there was a message on one men's restroom at a pub 'Do not throw cigarettes in urinals it makes them soggy and wet and thus difficult to light' ( So caring naa ... ) This is informational for girls because I am sure there can not be so much creativity on their side of the wall ( usually the two share the same wall ... now don't let your imagination go wild ) . It is said that you judge a gentleman by the kind of shoes he wears and a place with the kind of restrooms they keep. The restaurant owners put special creativity to the signs that they put on the doors of the restrooms. I know for sure that this is in order to confuse the innocent folks who are already a little high on senses of their own. Thank God I have remained a winner uptil now in this game of wits. Instead of writing clearly they would put a symbol of a girl with skirt and guy with pants. I am amazed what would the people from mountains do on looking at these signs where both the genders wear the same kind of long coat kind of thing and what about the girls wearing pants ... at times they will put the pictures of raja and rani from the mughal period or king and queen out of a pack of cards to let you loosen your bowels with royalty ... till this it is fine but then in one other place they had put 'MAM' and 'MOUCHEE' .. can you guess which one is which. I'll help you out .. the 'MOUCHEE' had a moustache and 'MAM' had i think lips ... the Restaurant is called MAMOUCHEE ...they serve excellent Lebanese food.

I dunno why I started off on loos but now that you have stood with me uptil now ..lets do a high five ( not the way sukhi and DJ do in RDB but a cleaner one ) and bye bye
p.s. the title is also courtesy Mondegar's innner sanctum

Add colors ...

This is one collage I made for one of my presentations on the topic of advertising. Advertising is an interesting field
and one of the most innovative one.





Not much words today just some more advertising colors ( in fact a single color ) from the posterior.
















and some more which unfortunately could not become a part of the collage




















:-)

Naina thag lenge .....

This is a song from the movie 'Omkara', the movie very beautifully captures the interplay of emotions which are coming as essence from the Bard's play. It has been very beautifully ( controversial ) mingled in the western UP setting. The characters have come out starkly bold and precise. Langda Tyagi steals the show no doubt about that.

We've had numerous discussions in which most of the folks tried to persuade me that the movie is utterly distasteful. They also argued that the movie is not a feel-good one rather on the other extreme. I do not understand why would people accept irrational crap coming out of the mouth of Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction but do not want anything which is closer to us and seems distasteful. Langda Tyagi is a representation of someone which is not us.Though we might associate ourselves with some hollywood character who uses the F word in all possible forms of verb, noun, adjective and what not but Bipasha Basu saying filthy words is distasteful. Why ?

Why does the smugness creep in ? We start compartmentalizing ourselves in the biggest possible sphere which is safe, rich and contains no filth and leave out the dirt and poverty out to other folks. The states, the language or geographical regions become bigger than us. I know I am responsible for my own conduct and otherwise at least the whole of India ( if not the entire humanity ) belongs to me. If Punjab is rich it is not only because it is endowed with rich earth but also because poor labourers go and till the fields every harvesting season. We can very easily say that the rickshaw pullers don't belong to me and the Jet Airways Hostesses in stark red are my own but it is not true.

All in all the movie is good and i loved the screenplay. The title of the post says that one could be deceived with looks .... the eyes might take you to the neverland but then you might also fall flat on mother earth.

I would like to end the post with a joke. A friend of mine was telling me that when one of his friends went to Japan they were making a lot of noise and became a nuisance for the co-passengers in the tube. One person comes up and says 'You Indians, Keep quite
!!'. This guy retorts " We are not Indians !! We are from Pakistan" .... I would be leaving for home tomorrow for a week's Diwali Vacations !! Stay Happy !!

subah ho gayi mamu ...

It was the laziest morning today, so far i mean. I got up and barely finished the daily ablutions ( which on an average take 10 minutes ) in 5 minutes. Even sun was shying off in the clouds. Reached the start of our daily "chalo bulawaa ayaa hai ..." journey at the doorway of millions of stairs which the lesser mortals say are 96 in number. I am sure there is some conspiracy going on and someone increases a flight or two daily but how would someone manage to do this when the whole is campus is up till 5-6-7 AM. I saw a tindy ( meaningless word don't bother ) doggy who was stretching and yawning, it was doing all this acrobatics to tease me, to make me think over and compare his royal lifestyle with my own . One or two more souls were trying to crawl upwards. Everybody had a different theory in one's mind about the ever increasing number of stairs.

In the elevator four of us exchanged blank stares, everyone challenging the other to take pains of speaking a word.No one did. I could make out from all the faces that they must have slept at dawn. Lecture started and I was getting confused as to how I was thrown off into a garden from the classroom every now and then. I realized I was finishing off my siesta too early and those were not the odd signals coming from outer space captured by SETI radars but the result of my snooze. One after the other they kept coming on to the crease and when all the overs were bowled it was 1:40 ... time for lunch and then put the snooze button back to ON till devil in the form of my groupmates wake me up to finish one or the other Presentation / report ...zzzz...

All work and no play make jack a dull boy

And am not dull, so am playing with the crowd the investophiles, the startegies etc etc @ http://mastishk.nitie.net/ .....

Earn, Yearn and the Oligopoly

:-) got summers in E(arn) and Y(earn for more). I know as little about consulting as Mallika Sherawat would know about Oligopoly. But just got through somehow, as they say you need to win the inner battle first rest all follow.It did for me.

Dunno if the above simile makes any sense but this is what is going through my mind at this Brahm Muhurat of the day when the entire crow(d) of crows is waking up for their daily shit parade and am on the bed with various polies. It is only due to the shitty nature of these hundreds if not thousands ( I would not settle for anything less than 999 in that case ) of crows and their other avian cousins that the main road leading to academic block in NITIE is called the PPO road. Here PPO means something else, which could drop on the best part of you ( no not the one u r thinking !! ) at the most inoppurtune time. I had a cat fight with one black ( no part of it was not black i assure you ) crow very recently who was finding it hard to pee and poo on the famed PPO road but needed a more serene and academically elevated environs of my room. Had to shoo him off after a full fledged exercise of around hour or so.

Enough of crowing .. Ms Oligopoly is waiting for me.

Ceteris Paribus Condition

'All else being equal'

The whole outside world is stand still and it is chaotic motion here in our lives.Things are moving so fast in here that within a matter of hours a company comes in conducts interviews, leaves the campus, we finish a case study, solve problems for next day's tutorial, have group discussions in class over case studies, sleep over the fin accounting lecture, gorge off paratha and juices way past midnight ( all these events do not necessarily take place in this order or they may also, I am not too sure ) . In the outside world things are still moving at snail's pace i guess, don't have too much time to look outside this jungle. All in all this jungle is fun !!!

The jungle is full of all sorts of sleep deprived creatures going through the whole rigmarole over and over :-) with newer and tougher deadlines and conditions.

Hi from Mum-bhai

Wrote a mail to my ex-colleague

"At 3 AM now, just felt like pouring out some words back towards my beloved NOIDA.I have been missing the cozy comfort of CSC.It was really easy to get up at 9 and reach office around 10 or 10:30 but here being able to climb the '96 steps to excellence' ( our acad section is on a hillock ) plus another equal number of steps in the acad building and the hostel at 8:55 or 9:00 AM and face the professors one after another fighting an untiring battle of 1.5 hours each with the drowsy students seems like an uphill task.It was easier to put your views on the Nortel Phone over to Steve than it is to shout it out loud in a case study discussion.All in all I am feeling the pangs of missing cool comfort but I really feel it was important for me to shake myself off that frigid comfort and get bare in front of the world and am enjoying it.I feel it is really important for every one to take risk and come out in open .... CSC is cozy very true but there are institutions and people outside who deserve you more :-). This is not a lateral recruitment drive for some other company or college but just felt that way ... .I feel greatly indebted to all of you for being very good and trusted friends.

I know the scene is so dynamic that by now half of the floor must have been filled with newer folks and the per capita beauty of CSC must have risen to greater heights ;-) .Enjoy karte raho and all the very best for all your party sharty ... sunaa hai Nainital ka trip ban raha hai .. great hai !!! All the besties !!!"

I actually feel that it was important to shake me and my ideas to the core that knowing and perfecting the art of one small area of business or rather such a small portion of life does not mean anything.It is important to move on and visit newer frontiers.

Go on sailor ... !!

life @ NITIE

Back here after a long time, first it was the black out of blogger by ISPs and then things were pretty hectic.

I am still not able to get the hang of things in true sense, life has been running at fifth gear since the day we arrived in Mumbai.The incessant rains and extreme greenery of the junglesque campus of NITIE has very much become a part of me.We were taught about the ins and outs of b skool life very early, the instructions were loud and clear no more sleep and rest.Things like group activities, case study presentations, committee selections etc took most of the time of our first month here.

I got to know the varied and very talented junta here, the people can sing and dance at the drop of a hat and create humour or satire through street plays or mime any time ( mostly creativity flows after 1 AM in the night ).Now people have started consuming Gigs and Gigs of movies, friend, Joey, the most unheard of classics of hollywood and what not ;-).

The morn comes ( without the sun ... still monsoons here ) and begins the race for beating the clock and reaching class in time ( we have to climb '96 steps to excellence' to reach the academic block plus another equal no of stairs in the hostel and acad bldng ) where all of the profs are ready with their surprises ( as if we are going to get awed with more than expected surprise tests or case studies ).Backbenchers try there level best to remain as unobtrusive and mute as possible so as not to disturb the class and in return enjoy the soporific environs of NITIE.I can assure you that no other B skool in India has got more beautiful view from within the class with high rises of Hiranandani silhoutted on the Vihar/Powai Lake.

and the race continues rather just started ....

Itz a jungle out there

this is the new delhi sky at dusk ... while we were coming back from our tiring trip from Sariska Tiger Reserve,Rajasthan.The place is close to 37 KM from Alwar which is infact 140 KM from Delhi.The reserve should be renamed as a peacock reserve as even the goverment servants in 'Tiger Den' shamelessly declare to the tourists that there is not even a single tiger left in the jungle ... all poached down by the famous Sansar Chand.Though the place is pretty retro, we enjoyed a few drinks at the bar which reminded me of the era when Naseeruddin Shah and Saeed Jafri sang "huzoor is qadar bhi na itraa ke chaliye .."