The Other Side of View ...

Pre-Pre Script: Some one didn't like my post... And deleted it from the ISB Blog... So, here I am once again trying my luck... :D
Pre-Script: I live up to my reputation of not editing what I write... Moreover it is difficult to edit and do a spell check when you don't have word ;)

Hi All,

It has been more than 2 months when I take contributing rights for this blog and here comes a post straight from the guilt of my heart. I was taking 2 months break and I had few plans. One of the plan was to write few posts for this blog and spice it up. But here I am, sitting on the same couch from last one and a half month and still wondering what happened to all my plans. In my defense, I must say I'm lazy and this world cup made me much bigger couch potato than what I was. Even a significant growth of layers of fat on my tummy didn't bother me, what are the chances of a small piece of guilt perturbing me when I can't even see it. But as you see, I can put the blame of my growing tummy on my parents but this guilt has no takers. So, here I am sitting on the same couch and writing my first post in this blog.

For introduction, I was one of the few confident aspirants of ISB who has full faith in his abilities and was 100% sure that only God's miracle can get me an admit in ISB. If you are interested, you can read an incomplete lazy post of my MBA story (But please don't ask me, why I haven't completed it yet? I don't want to give birth to some more guilts). And, to make efforts from my side I have bribed all temples and gods in my home (Better known as city of temples. So you can see the relation). And what even Wiki Leaks is saying now Bribe works in India; finally, tough ISB ad-com lose to Gods and I got my admit.

While I kept rubbing my eyes and reading the admit letter for few days, I (a FB addict) was some how directed to the FB group. I was excited and started reading every one's long introductory posts and how every body experienced that great news. Initially it was fun and my heart was fully responding to those posts with wows and aaahhhs but people gave me so much of overdose that even a guy who was considering himself privileged to read all this started feeling lost in a big desert. Some kept on bragging about themselves, some started asking dumb questions, some started proving their diversity, some wrote about their hobbies, some wrote about their madness for sports, some told about dance, some showed their knowledge and some showed lack of it, some argued for the sake of argument and some gave insightful point of views, some people started helping other guys and some jumped unnecessarily even when they don't have anything meaningful to offer and no one needed that help. Then the group took an interesting turn and people started posting almost anything they find. I once even saw few old songs of Kishore Kumar sent on my mail id via this FB group. Some grew their confidence and started posting a countdown of no. of days left to leave their jobs. What on earth any one has to do with this information every day that a guy now has 10 days or 9 days left to leave his job? Then few people wanted their better halves to join this monster as well. As if they don't want to suffer alone and their partners should also go through the same pain of spam. Though what they write on paper was a noble idea that their partners will also get to know their fellow batch mates and future friends. But what they don't know is that it is practically impossible to know any one from this FB group of 500 free people. Any how my above thoughts should not be taken in a sense that I am complaining of all this spam in FB group. I am in fact one of those who have lot of free time and enjoy reading spam and do other useless things which pass their time easily. So, you all must be wondering what the hell is my problem? And why am I criticizing?

First of all some people are born to criticize. You show me a thing with 10 positives and 1 negative. Trust me I will point the negative thing first without any effort. But that is a personal problem and not the subject of this post. The problem is that it gets difficult for the otherwise confident guys (confident guys but on the other side of the shore) like me who got an admit in ISB with the help of a bribe to find the real info in the group. There will be some such confident guys in R2 as well and I thought my experiences of reading every crap post of this group may help them not to get lost in between high talks, herculean achievements and useless junk. The problem with us is that we believe what ever we read. This one mistake can be injurious to health and may result in lot of diseases like sulking, losing self confidence, missing important info and losing track. So, here is a survival kit for guys like me in this group of extra ordinary gentlemen and ladies.

You need to understand that this is a group of 500 future MBA's of India's best B-School. They got an admit by presenting their profile in such a way that they made it look outstanding, different and diverse in a pool of 4000 extra-ordinary aspirants even though they do the same old Engineering, IT, Banking or any other job. So, believe me people here can present a crap in such a way that it will look the brightest star in the sky. So the first rule goes believe what you see and not what you read or what you hear. And, here is a list of few statements (on left side) and their true meanings (on right side) just to make you feel confident:

I'm writing a book --> I've a lot of impulses and out of those impulses, one is the itch of writing. I might have started writing it or might only have thoughts of it.. who cares.. Let's say I'm writing it..

Hints: Look for past tense... Ignore anything ending with "ing" or present continuous...

I was blah, blah and blah in my college --> I actually don't have anything else to brag.. so I'm sticking to my college which I attended 5 years back...

I'm rich --> I'm needy and need attention...

:-) , :D, :P ... all smileys --> I'm trying to be funny...

I'm attending blah, blah and other unrelated or not understandable blah --> I'm free and jobless... And attend whatever crap I get on net...

I drink blah, blah and blah --> Believe Me... I'm hap and coolll... And, this is the only way I can show that thing here...

I'm from IIT ---> Yes.. I've a angel circle over my head... And I think I'm more eligible and better than all of you...

I hate IIT --> I'm jealous...

I play badminton for fun --> I can handle racket and might touch the shuttle if it comes slow and loopy right near to my racket...

I can dance a bit --> I danced in every single marriage of my community...

Words like "Intro", "I'll be last", "excited", "Energy" --> Please ignore my post

Words like "Laptop", "Windows", "OS", "IT" --> They are actually different synonyms of word "confusion"

Posts on "Pre-Term" --> Yes... You dumb fellows... I did it...

I'm a Vice President/MD --> I'm working in a start up or my own company... And, yet I felt a need to brag about it... So, here I am...

Well the list is long and I am lazy. Moreover, I don't want people to kick my ass as soon as they saw me in ISB. So my brain and my ass is pleading me to stop here. If you don't like or don't agree to some part of my post, I was talking about those who brag.. We all know.. you are not that person... :D

Post Script: The above post was on a lighter note and not for any generalization :P (See I put a smiley as well)

Round 2: "still not mature" thoughts on the batch

Just about when everyone settles down and the excitement is dying and people start having fun on the FB group, Round 2 results. ting! ting! ting!! In 2 days, I received 500+ mails from the group. 


Renewable Energy: If "diversity" was the single most used word during Round 1 intros, "Energy" was it for Round 2. How can there be so much excitement? A group of 500 people, about to enter one of Indias most prestigious B-schools, finished their bachelors at least 2 years ago and all of who have hit puberty around a decade ago.... still acting like hyper-active catholic-school-girls, jumping and screaming. 
I know... it's not necessarily a bad thing.


I might be the last: Every one after member number 450 mentions in their intro  "I might be one of the last" if not "I'm the the last". OK. You're the last. I can't afford to buy a trophy right now, I'm jobless. I've made a list of you, and on campus, I want to ask you why you thought that was important in your intro and the best reason gets a chocolate. Don't get me wrong, I said much worse in my intro, it's just that I'm confident you can't find it on the FB group. You see "I was one of the first".


Penny wise, Pound Foolish: 

• Number of discussion on loan - approx 1,000. Number of discussions on laptops - minimum 5,000. 
• Financial implications of Laptop - Rs. 50,000 at most (for people who paid more, the people who paid less are going to arrange for psychiatric help, unless it's an Apple, ofcourse). Financial implication of Loan - Rs. 14lakhs to Rs.20lakhs, depending on how smart you were before ISB and how rich your daddy is.
• Associated time period for Laptop - 3 years at max. Associated Time period for Loan - minimum 5 years.

The mathematics of this is all skewed.

Even in B-school, windows can't just be part of the house: The smart ones bought Mac with Snow leopard, the rest had to install Windows 7. 
Anybody who has installed windows before knows the heart-ache associated with it. 3 days minimum of actual installation (most of it spent hitting your head on the table) + Add to that downloading the OS (another 3 days on a 1.5 kbps connection) + some non-IT folks (including the fake engineers like me) + a FB group = the worlds most wasteful way of killing time. It was like explaining Java to my granny! One man deserves special mention here, he almost made the installation look humanly achievable. You know who you are. 


The cost of Hernia: Everyone coming to ISB seems to have extra baggage, pun intended. The baggage of immediate concern can only cause hernia and a severe depletion in wallet size. Another hot topic on the group. Pay the Airline extra or hire a cargo truck? Well, both have been done, and you'll be glad to know, the best solution is to not bring that much stuff. Moving on to the other baggage......


philanderers and monophobia: The fear of being alone was quite visible in the number of people who wanted to travel together, book the tickets together, book the taxi to go to book the tickets together together... you get the drift. More importantly, a random statistic was thrown out - apparently the divorce rate in ISB was high in one batch many many years ago, but no one knows which batch. All facts in this blog are unverified and not-verifiable, hence verified numbers will not be posted. While I'm sure this caused a lump in the throats of some, others found  it important to compare it with the national average of other countries! Some even found it necessary to make it into a Bollywood love story type thing and spoke about how many more people found love in b-school. I actually do recommend this article, read it along with your mom (whether you're single or married). Apparently, in bschool, the ones who arrive alone find company and the ones who have company leave alone. 


Pre-terms: To revise or not revise that is not the question. Whether to intentionally fail the Assessment tests is more important. Any fool can study a little and clear them and if s/he does, then s/he can not attend the pre-term, hence you must fail. Simple, isn't it.


The questions section: No, The "informative" questions haven't stopped. Yes, this section is now going to be made part of every entry I make. Maybe, next time i'll actually copy-paste the question. No, the seniors will not sell you their left over shampoo. 

Gyan: No matter how div*&se we are, Round 2 admits have asked the exact same questions Round 1 admits did. It isn't their fault, it's Mr. Zuckerberg's. Him and his useless Facebook! Future batches who might be reading this, please have all useful discussions in Google groups. Those are archived and available for the greater good of mankind. 

I need to head out now and load some of my stuff into one of those trucks these guys have booked. Thanks to those who did, I have more stuff than can fit in one car! Be back during the week of 17th Apri 2011.


Disclaimers: 
* It wasn't about you
* It really wasn't. 


PS: If you want that chocolate  Mr/Mrs "I am the last", and you can't wait till college starts, FB-Mesage me why you said it.

Ready for School

"If the geeks of ancient India are to be believed, it all began, all of creation, including all of life, all of Facebook and all of the telecom spectrum, from a primordial state which the Gautama dude later called 'suchness' for lack of a better expression. Because this fundamental condition from which all matter and energy is created, is beyond all expression, all language, all being and all non-being. Put in scientific parlance, it is a non Cartesian state of infinitely curved space-time continuum which do not yield to the postulations of classical, relativistic or quantum physics. Every ISB application, like all things manifest, is therefore born of such 'suchness' in the metaphysical as well as scientific sense. So at the most fundamental level there is no statement, there is no purpose and there is no tangible relationship thereof.”

In a desperate attempt to stand out from the Indian/IT/Unfortunately-Male crowd, you thus fill out a Statement of Purpose half inspired from the Upanishads, half plagiarized from Deepak Chopra and almost all bull shit, click the submit button and as a cursory afterthought, curse yourself for overdoing it. Yet again buddy, congrats.

You curse yourself for that fateful day months ago, when you decided to tag along your colleague to the obscure Christopher University (name changed for fear of legal assault) to attend a 'part time mba' sales pitch. You curse Prof. Tom Weismann (name changed for fear of physical assault), HoD Marketing, for handing you a FREE copy of the Kaplan GMAT guide with the assurance of a seat, in his words, coveted by future business leaders across America - 'provided you clear a score of 500, which I am sure you can with due diligence'. Having made futile attempts to give away the book to innocent passersby, you shove it into the darkest recesses of your least frequented closet, for fear of taking the GMAT by mistake and landing up at the aforementioned college even by accident. Kaplan would inadvertently be salvaged by your unnecessarily meticulous wife, and placed repeatedly in line of view. Almost as if to remind you of your worst failures years ago at the hands of the desi version of the GMAT, whose name even Voldemort would dare not mention. Slipping into bouts of self pity, you curse the GMAT, That-exam-whose-name-shalt-not-be-uttered, contemporary management thought, the utilitarian education system and the whole edifice of capitalism for rendering your life miserable. You curse Harry Potter for no particular reason. You curse every one under the sun and the One presiding over it. (You remain extra careful not to curse your wife)

Weeks pass and you begin to develop a kinship with Kaplan, finding use for it as a headrest, a paperweight, a chopping board and occasionally as a dumbbell. At work you begin to seem a little less there. At home you begin to seem even more absent. Then one fine day, for no apparent reason (detractors might point to a missed promotion in the March appraisal cycle) you decide to Just Do it, in the Nike sense of the phrase. You Do Kaplan, you Do Manhattan, you Do Princeton and in your spare time you do their maternal aunt as well. Three months later, with ample help from your karmic forces you've “Yay Done it!” and you feel on top of the world. You curse everyone all over again, this time with a typical MBA attitude and smug jubilation. You feel a bit like Ricky Ponting, so you try to pull yourself together. You now dare to raise your sights a bit higher. From Bharatidasan college of Management your greedy eye now dares to cast itself upon the fabled hallways of ISB.

Now sitting in your cubicle, with your Thailand born American client of Caucasian features screaming in your ear for another failed deployment, you realize to your horror that not only had you badly screwed up the SoP, in all the excitement you had made the fatal copy-paste error of no reprieve - you had mixed up your responses to essays 3 and 4. You write a profusely apologetic email to Ad Com requesting them to switch your essays 3 and 4 from the backend. You realize that the ad com surely knows better than to select someone so full of bullshit, let alone an unusually careless and worst of all, overly apologetic person from the Indian/IT/Wish-I-were-a-lady community.

But one fine morning, waking up to the offer of admission, you are reassured yet again that you have prevailed despite all odds. You are convinced of a long standing self allegation that you are indeed God's chosen child. Humbled and overwhelmed by a universal sense of gratitude, surprise!, you clench your fist and curse everyone all over again, putting the latest cuss words to use, this time just for the fun of it. But you keep the volume low so as not to miff your sleeping wife.

Then tragedy strikes. The dudes start a Facebook group to ‘facilitate interaction and networking’ (ahem) among the class of 2012. The social networking ignoramus that you are, you join in anyway if only out of compulsion to impart your infinite wisdom and superlative vision to the perhaps less gifted of your future class mates.

Having published the odd piece online which received a record breaking 7 hits (though that includes your immediate family and two neighbors), you had anointed yourself a worthy successor to Rushdie. Now you find that your batch mate has published a national best seller. You had prided yourself for being a war veteran having survived several successive failures in You-know-which exams years ago. Now you rub shoulders with gentlemen who fought and won real wars and who shoot infiltrators in the valley for target practice. You thought of yourself as a consensus candidate for the Nobel Prize in physics because you had once suffered the Brief History of Time and happen to know the full form of GSLV. Now at the canteen you might bump into a true blue scientist working on the Chandrayan mission. You heave a sigh of relief that the zen monk at ISB is thankfully from the class of 2011, now that you are an exalted spiritual master in your own right having survived the odd guided meditation video on Youtube.

In numerous other ways the facebook group continues to make you assume a little less about yourself. You think about them all - entrepreneurs, creative artists, the omnipresent IITians, super studs (err…as in students) and you find your self-esteem making an auto correction. For some obscure reason you do not curse by instinct this time. Instead you feel a sense of gratitude. You feel grateful to all things and people including Prof. Tom Weismann for conspiring to put you in the company of, at the risk of sounding kiss ass, such an illustrious peer group. Amazing as it sounds, you even feel grateful to your own wife, and for some apparent reason you fail to recollect.

Having come to the fringes of reality at last, you rest your case. You surrender.

You are NOW ready for school.

In Limbo..

The movie Inception has been making rounds in my heads since I watched it a few days ago. Cannot help but compare how our lives are going the Inception way.
Consider this:  Right now ISB appears to be the reality and this wait has kept us in Limbo ! We try getting kickbacks to the real world (read ISB) through the FB page, and people who are already there in the real world (our seniors). But the kickbacks aren't strong enough to take us out of this limbo ! Guess the real kickback is going to be the O-Week which will formally bring us on the ISB world ! :-)

But Hey Wait ! The ISB world will not be real either ! Will it ? It will be a dream within a dream scenario again with ISB this time as the dream and the Corporate World as the reality. We will be slogging out against each others Projections till the Placement month of January, hoping for a good kickback again, this time to the Corporate world with fatter paychecks and a mind full of gyaan ! And it takes no Extractors to find what's going on in the dreams of 90% of the batch! Shhhh.... Its Consultancy. :-)

Hey wait again ! Lets get this thing a little more complex ! Is corporate world the reality? Where do we head to after a hectic days work ? Friends, families and may be ourselves? But we already have them with us now ! So why are we getting ourselves these kickbacks for the coming year ?

The reality check is that good salaries shouldn't be our kickbacks ! New friends and good relations could be  better kickbacks in the long run !
The reality check is that we shouldn't slog against each others the coming one year ! Thriving for knowledge could be a better kickback !

And to lighten up the mood, here is a cartoon I made based upon the idea suggested by Varun Sayal. If you like the cartoon, you can join in at Arbit's Facebook Page for more.

Arbit Choudhury, hailing from www.arbitmba.com will join as a management student at ISB this april !  A student with big dreams and bigger mouth, replete with jargon, Arbit will try making mockery of management concepts and theories. Ideas for the Arbit strip can be sent across at arbit[dot]mba[at]gmail[dot]com
 

Premature thoughts on the batch

So, the first thing we did after we got our admission offer emails, was to setup a Facebook group. We could have had a Google group or yahoo and all that other communication overload, but nothing would have propagated the nonsense factor like FB, which is why FB groups rule. Yes, we are the FB generation of India, deal with it. 

Our FB group was rambling centre. A rambling center that I'm greatful to; it helped me understand my batchmates better. Since FB is barely searchable it is impossible to verify the "facts" that I have mentioned here, and hence I urge all of you reader to believe me without questioning.

Based on my extensive research:

Dancing: One of the earliest discussions on the group. About 400 people out of the 150 at present, like to dance. Another 50 want to learn how to dance. I think we have everything from Bharatnatyam dancers to "exotic" bollywood dancers. We will break down the dance floor, quite literally.

Hate IITians: This is quite a large group. Infact, most women are part of this group. They just hate IITians. I don't specifically blame them, they are IITians. Within 2 days of a particular lady posting an anti-IITian post, there were 200+ comments on it. The funny part wasn't the open hatred for IITians, but the desperate attempt by IITians to garner some love. In the end everyone agreed to disagree, but the reputation of IITians on campus had taken a bad beating by then.

Gambling: Of the 150 people on the group, I'm quite sure 140 are gamblers, including me. The game in vogue was Texas Hold 'em poker. We even had 5 people who had chip-sets which they pledged to the ISB Class Of 2012. The good news ofcourse, only 10 people knew how to play. 2 people offered coaching classes and we had our first bidding war. We also had our first gyan session with people warning against price wars. Ofcourse, the opportunist bastard in me saw another way out. I'll take free classes for who ever wants and then rip them off during the game. Not sure if my bathcmates are dumb enough, but worth a try.

Sports: Here is an interesting one. The number of people who have an opinion about Nadal vs Federer matches = group size (150). The number of people who play tennis = 5. People who've heard of Bolton Wanderers = 15. People who've heard of Real Malorca = 4. We actually have a basketball team, including subs. People in this batch love to run. Mumbai marathon enthusiasts apart, i'm waiting to see how many run because they're late to class. Not sure if we have a wicket-keeper for the cricket team yet, but round 2 will have to really add up on those numbers. As of now, I can remember only 2 people who said "cricket" on their posts.

Anxious people: Lots of people were in denial. They thought they didn't get into ISB. That is the only way I can explain the number of people who were anxious about the new admits website link. Some people were very freaked out that ISB forgot to send the link only to them!!

Couples and Families: Of the Round 1 admits, most people are married! I tried to understand how many, but then quickly achieved the label of "looking for girls" guy. I don't deny it, I do find women more interesting than men. The more interesting part is the number of people who hate families. People didn't want families of the Class of 2012 admits to be part of the face group because of concerns like seriousness of discussions, dilutions of networking and "i think it's a bad idea". All this while people were discussing their favourite drinks on the same group. 

Alcohol: Based on 2 back to back posts in the group, there are more book-readers than alcoholics. euch!!! Even at one of the meets in Bangalore, I was the only one drinking in a beer-cafe till one kind lady decided to give me company. I'm sure this will change once the course starts. Of the people who do claim to drink, their tastes are quite expensive. I can never afford to drink with them or maybe they'll all come down to my level - I think Atniquity Blue is premium whisky.

Networking: Why does everyone in b-schools say networking?! You're going to live with these monkeys for a year, it's not networking, it's called being social!! The most accurate way of summing up networking is here - http://thecoldcall.blogspot.com/2010/02/youve-got-friend-in-me.html. Yes, I'm a cynical b@star&.

Gender Inequality: The women in this batch have *way more* attitude than then the men. I'm going to do my very best not to get on the bad side of some of them women. While this might seem like kissing up to a few readers, I think of it as survival instincts.

FT Rankings: The rankings just came out. ISB - 13. IIM A - 11. SLAP in the face. Ouch. Life will move on. We will continue to find reasons why we are better than them and every non-MBA human will continue to not care.

Enfiedlers: 2. Yes, a dismal 2! One is a woman, which is adding to my earlier point of women with attitude. Both not sure of bringing bikes to ISB. Other bikers, 0 as of now. 

Dumb Questions: I don't intend to be rude (wink wink.. nudge nudge), but some people post the dumbest of questions on the group. If you don't have a relevant question or something valuable to add to the group, no one is going to mind if you shut the hell up. You do not have to go out of your way to ask a dumb question. That is referred to as "desperate class participation". They might allow you to put up pink curtains, but you should really ask ISB, not the new admits!

PS: Yes, it is important to toss my opinion about the batch around; simply because of the entertainment potential. 

PPS: The point of this post - to capture the current state of affairs before the Round 2 admits join in.

Welcome aboard!

Hey buddies,

Here are a few lines I penned down today.. Would be great to know your comments on this.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Through the lanes of dream and trance of glory,

Here I am, with my own little story.

Four and half years in the city of pearl

Solemnly waiting for the wings to unfurl

To the moment of truth did time roll by

I arrived at the path that’s less traveled by

It’s an uncanny feeling to see a dream come true,

Gradually it sinks in as the senses accrue.

Through a call on the cell I make my parents proud

And venture into the web world to search my home crowd

As the pagal guys pour their emotions on the net

The groups on facebook are moderated and set

Dheeraj, Suhel, Tamanna put the blogs in the spot

The discussions in google groups are already on the trot

With brand new friends and big plans to steer,

Let’s rejuvenate ourselves in the next quarter of a year.

Thanks for reading, I hope you are not bored :-).

All I have to say is, “Welcome aboard!"

ISB- Meri Jaan

I first visited ISB during the campus tour on Sep 4th 2010. I met a few alums who took us on a guided tour around ISB. I got to see the 'green' lawns (sorry Priyank, copying ur 'green' expression here ;) ), the swimming pools, the classrooms, library, atrium..all the while ooh aahing at the spread unfolding before my eyes. There were a few excited people who were video recording the whole event to show it to their parents back home! I neither took photos nor videos..(something inside was telling me I will live here..why take these digital versions) but captured all the beautiful scenes in my memory and lo and behold! A poet in me was born. Yeah! The true romantic that I am, I wrote a poem...

(Please read it at your own risk..If it made your hair fall, or your brain crumble...neither I nor my poem are responsible)

copyright- Jyothi

I walk the lane of my dream

Only to find at the cusp of La’ de La crème

The magnificent yellow wall

Soared my heart high and tall

I read the inscripted words with bated breath

Vowed myself to cling here till death

The long unwinding path

Made me forget all my math

The school lay in creamish brick and mortar

My heart tugged hard to catch a quarter

The lush green gardens around

Made every student here look like a bejeweled crown

I can hear the stone whisper

Stories of its long gone students that made the school crisper

The tables had a story to tell

Of all the students it bid a farewell

The place seemed to have a charm

That kept the pythons and cobras warm

Here is where I will stay

My dreams and thoughts will find a ray

This is the Indian School of Business

I bet can drive you happy with dizziness

PS: Incidentally even the Adcom panel got to hear this poem during my interview :)