There's no place like home

Part Uno:Delhi
It is 16th and “All my Bags are packed and am ready to go” this was my status message as the clock struck 12 on 16th September. I have the huge load of all my 1st year textbook’s with me(if anyone has any doubts regarding their sizes kindly check the last pic in the album named 3rd trimester @ IIFT in my Facebook A/C and you’ll know). With that mighty load on my back I took the Auto from IIFT gates to Hauz Khas Metro Station, that’s right baby, now the metro drops you off till New Delhi Station from Hauz Khas :) . Post the luggage screening and opening and closing of the bags for the CISF’s most honest x-ray scanning inspector, I move into the awesome Bombardier coaches which are waiting for me as I reach the platform.

I’m at NDLS within 20 minutes and I'm ready to board the Kerala Express from Delhi once again to Trivandrum. The last time I took Kerala Express from NDLS to TVC was in 2007 when I came to attend my job interview with IFFCO. That was in Second class sleeper, but this time I had an A/C seat, but still things don't change much as you'll see.

The 1st thing I do once I've stowed all my bags under the seats is to look at the passenger list chipkaoed beside one of the doors. Not to make sure if I'm on the list, but, to check out who else is there. M's of any age don't interest me at all unless there's an F of a reasonably acceptable age sitting beside them. But, that's for later. For now I mentally make a note of all the F-16s to F25s mentioned on the reservation list so that I'll walk pass their seats and check them out when my back starts paining sitting on the rock hard seats. Not much luck in there. My bogie was full of M30-M45 range. Well, okay. I don't want to travel among the hottest possible angels every time, but, what's the deal with so many M30 to M45s.

They say LUCK is Labour Under Correct Knowledge, but, the "Knowledge" part is something that makes me come back to square one every single time. But boy do you read what was in store for me.

I bet you know I am pretty pissed off because this post is being written after 1 am. I can't shake off the feeling that the Indian Railways with its offering of "the mo*^%&#-f$%^#ing AC-3 tier coach", along with my co-passengers, is out to screw me, have a smoke, then come back to screw me again. I present the following evidences:

1. The compartment, including the side berths, is meant to seat eight. However the passengers in my compartment have approximately 287 people to see them off. And they all squeeze in or stand in the aisle, leaving no room for genuine passengers. All of them wait till the last millisecond before getting off the train. This is accompanied by shrieks of "arey train chal padi!!", as if we paid all that money to go sit in a stationary claustrophobic cell.
2. Atleast one person attempts to swap seats. He offers a seat, usually a middle berth (Murphy's law) in a compartment 20 coaches away, or sometimes in the adjacent train. "Travelling together" is a big deal even in the night trains. If there is no such person, nocturnal predators with wait-listed tickets are usually on the prowl for confirmed ticket holders who can "adjust" for a few hours. Since I am a bachelor with the innocent face of a sucker, I can't escape being gang-adjusted repeatedly by a series of wait-listers. My medical results reveal that I may never recover from this severe trauma.
3. Atleast one of the co-passengers carries luggage that will put an Antarctic expedition to shame. Consequently, the entire floor space plus halves of two berths and the aisle become full, allowing only someone with the skill-level of Bob Beamon to make it across to the bathroom. Oh! and needless to say, all that hunk of luggage will not have a single book to read on the way, except "Stardust" which will be over by the time the train pulls out of the platform.
4. The presence of atleast one baby in my compartment is mandatory. And if the baby's bawling and howling is insufficient, the parents make repairs by throwing in some brain-dead baby talk. The baby talk comprises of atmost three sentences of the kind "Ale Ale Ale baby kyon lo laha hai...", "deko deko bahar doggie hai cow hai pigeon hai...aley waah aley waah" and "chalo mamma paas chalenge, abhi beta soyega, raaja beta soyega" and so forth. These three sentences will be repeated in an infinite loop until the mother dies of dehydration or I puncture my ear drums, whichever happens first. If the baby talk does not suffice, the dad usually initiates a suave and sophisticated game, like pulling a coin out of the baby's ass, thus cementing his skills as a magician, and the kid becomes all wonder-eyed thinking "Holy Shit! My ass did that ??" With all this talk of babies, I'm tempted to use the pun "berth control" here but I am sure it has been used a million times already.
5. The person on the lower berth feels "sleepy" at 8:30pm, just two seconds after s/he finishes dinner, forcing the others to retire. Unless I am the lower berth owner, in which case, I won't be allowed to sleep before 2:30am. Even then, a group of wait-listers will suddenly materialize to sleep in the aisle, thereby giving a new meaning to "sleepovers".
6. The person on the middle berth will sleep the longest, turning the rest of us into Hunchbacks of Notre Dame. On being woken up, he/she will generally give an Oscar winning "oh am I causing any trouble" look. The rest of us have, ofcourse, already been woken up by the obnoxious tea seller at 5:45am, who usually passes on secret information of the kind "abhi Aligarh cross kiya hai" along with the freaking mud water that passes for tea.
7. All the bathrooms will be occupied till 2pm, so the elderly uncle will lose all pretense of good manners, and will let loose the dogs of hell, otherwise known as the farting guns of Navarone. While the more adventurous of us can start guessing which pickle did uncleji have with aalo and rajma last night, I prefer to lean outside the door, looking for the next electric pole to bang my head into.
8. Needless to say, a delay by a few hours is to be expected. For example, my "prestigious superfast express train" took 53 instead of 50 hrs, and this was a good day I was told. The last 200 kms took more than 5 hours. Hell! I could have run faster than that. Shameless self-advertising ends here.

Next time, I am travelling in the cargo hold of the first airplane that I see.

Some people never learn, right? Yeah, they don't. And that's what makes this world funny. I'm honoured to be contributing positively to the Gross Happiness Index of the planet. I repeat, as I often do: If you don't have the balls to hold your breath for half an hour or so, you shouldn't be boarding the Indian Railways. Also applies to people with breathing ailments like asthma. Enough Bitching about Train Journeys. Now the good part:

As soon as the Train entered Kerala, the rain gods started their job and what a scene it was :), the picture below pretty much describes the entire scene which unfolded:

Photo credit: Train in the rains by Bramha.

Part Deux: Trivandrum
Out of the railway station and it's a different world every time I come here. Small city, now developing into a bigger one, some changes are nice; like wider roads, some are not; like cutting down trees for the same; nice, easy climate(not for all), and lots and lots of places to visit, especially the three beaches. But, it's my home I'm longing for. Now, just because it's your city doesn't mean you own it. 3 dozen taxi and auto rickshaw owners around me, asking me, no, telling me to board their vehicle. Then I find dad amongst the crowd and he gets me away from these buggers.

As much as you want to spend more and more time with your girlfriends and boyfriends, there's nothing that is remotely as inexplicably touching as a long and silent hug from your mom.

Now, it has been an unwritten rule in my family for the last 3 years since I've started living outside my house, the first thing my mom asks me is "What would you eat?". I remind her that I'd love the Chicken Curry which I had told her when we talked while in the train. Turns out the question was asked just as a continuation of the tradition and Chicken Curry is ready. I only have to take a bath and be at the table. I don't take a bath and no one insists me to have one. After all I'm the son. I have the best Chicken Curry and wipe off the last bits from the plate. I could’ve even licked the plate, coz it is my home and I can bloody do that here :)

My sister and her husband (I should get used to that more now) come at 7:00 in the evening. Hellos, hugs and we're out of the house to the temple near my home. Post this we have dinner together and then off she goes to her home and me and parents go off to watch the new Mammootty movie which has him playing a typical Trichur guy. While reaching the theatre for the night show, I felt like the whole car owning population in Trivandrum City has come down to watch the movie and I pick up an argument with a cop over the parking of the car and it went on to become a pretty heated one and that tells you about the status message. After a 15 minute verbal duel, finally when the cop threatened that he’ll get the tow truck and get my car pulled away I moved my car to another spot and got inside the movie. We had the very last row of seats and the kids rules that were mentioned above apply here also. There was a big family consisting of four couples all having multiple kids in the 0-5 age group out to ruin my movie. But surprisingly all of them slept off within minutes of the movie starting and I could have a good time watching the movie. I just loved the movie and all this reminded me on my trip back home that:

There's no place like home...

Its Party Time!!!!!!

Today was the 1st party I had since I've joined IIFT. It was a greatly planned party and was executed well by the senior batch cultural committee. We'd been eagerly waiting for the freshers party, which unfortunately never happened due to many issues(which I'd rather not get into now).

The party was Titled "Coalesce '09 : The Rock N Roll". The party had some cultural programmes and in addition we had the usual three things which are present in all IIFT parties : DJ, Dance and Daaru :). The cultural events had the usual of : Group Dance, Group/Solo Song and since we are a B-School we had an Ad-Spoof competition as well.

As part of the events I was part of a Group Dance team; no don't worry I didn't dance and break the stage, but I was the Music composer(rather arranger); I was the guy who mixed the songs for the dance which some 20 odd guys performed. It was a take on the event which we all might have done in our primary school days(atleast I remember seeing this in my young days @ school) called Action Song. In school days the song was sung by the same person who performed the actions. Here we had the song which was a mix of some old hindi songs and some new ones as well and the 20+ guys on stage enacted the same song in ACTION on the stage with good synchronisation.

We worked on the dance starting at 5 PM for the event was scheduled to begin at 7 PM. We had simple steps and by 6 45 PM we had a pretty good set-up ready for the event. I've not yet got any videos of the same, but I'll upload it asap.

The song has been uploaded for your listening pleasure if you desire to hear it :

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

The other events were fun and we were the 1st group to do the dance on stage. It was fun and the dance had great appreciation from all the students present in the auditorium. We guys performed the dance two times, thanks to a technical glitch and also audience request.

Then we had some great songs sung by the singers and accompanied by the musicians of our batch. After this came a slew of spoof ad's which basically spoofed the following products:

• Fair and Lovely
• Colgate Toothpaste
  
• Huggies Diapers
• Kamasutra condoms campaign
• Liril

The hit of the day was the KS Condom campaign followed by the Huggies Diapers Ad. Both these Ad's were spoofed by many teams we saw lot of budding Padamsee's and Piyush Pandey's at work.

We had some entertaining Bhangra performances by the guys from Punjab and some other dances as well which were good fun to watch. We had Saurav of our batch who turned out to be the star of the day with his dance performances being in great demand. His new styles and matka's caught the audience unaware and it was truly a great feeling to watch Saurav do dance with the same ease he solves Accountancy problems.

Towards the end of the events we had the prizes being distributed and surprisingly our dance got the 1st prize and it was an awesome feeling to be on stage to receive the prize with some 20 other guys who I swear would never have danced in their entire lives; atleast half of them would never have had the chance to be on stage for a DANCE, if anything else :). But we did it, we the underdogs got the prize.

After the prizes the party floor was thrown open and the DJ was playing some good music, but since it was 9 30 PM all rushed to get their growling tummies filled with the awesome food being served. In addition the BAR was opened by 10 PM and soon the party's mood picked up with guys and gals hitting the floor and showing their moves on the dance floor. The DJ started with latest Hindi film songs and then some Punjabi songs.

After some time I too joined the crowd and started to make my earth-moving MOVES. Yes, even I danced, so you know how HIGH the mood of the party was :). The songs were all welcomed by the crowd with them singing along and since this was the 1st time we all had a party together and most importantly this was almost the end of 1st Trimester @ IIFT we all were desperately in need of a Break and what a break we had.

This is one snap which I got from the many which were taken today. More to be added as I get them.


The dancing continued non-stop till 1 AM when finally the DJ called quits and the party was wrapped up. The last songs had all of us forming a mosh-pit and crying Encore. Even after that we had a budding shayar in the senior batch giving out some of his fine-tuned Sher's. It was a great evening indeed and now @ 5 AM I still am getting goosebumps thinking about the night's events.

I think each and every person enjoyed to the hilt and those who missed the party had missed a big part of the MBA Life, the IIFT Life. For them I've just this comic from XKCD.

You can only dream of the fun we had today

Sleepless nights; sleeping in classes. That's MBA :)

Its been about twenty days since I’ve joined IIFT. As I sit in the cool confines of the A/C classroom now i can look back at these days and i can see a small smile coming to my face.

Life has been hectic over these days. I've been awake at hours I’ve never seen for a long long time(getting up @ 5:30 AM for yoga); sitting in classes with formal shirt and pants; sharing a hostel floor with members of the fairer sex; having birthday parties that go on till 3 AM in the night; sharing a small cake with 160 odd students; asking housewives about their favourite toothpaste; writing assignments in subjects that I'd never learned before in my life; analysing my own psyche in the dream world during classes; making PPT’s till 2 AM in the night; having coffee at 2 AM and on and on.

There hasn't been a point when I was sad or feeling that I had made a wrong choice. Living away from home isn't new for me and I’ve always felt at ease doing so. The trip to Delhi was the 1st time I was travelling by air. I had a good time. It was an early morning flight and even though I’d heard about the flight being the fastest and the safest means of travel until I travelled could I feel it. The flight wasn’t a pleasant experience as such because around me there were 3 families and all of them had small toddlers. One of these started crying and the others will follow as if in chorus.

After the flight I reached IIFT along with a friend from TVM, Ramakrishnan. He was a friend from college days and it was good to have someone along the 1st time here. We reached and got our rooms and I was on the 2nd floor. One among the 6 guys who shares the 2nd floor with 18 other girls. This looked like an opportunity at 1st but then later only we came to know that this is a threat. We guys are scared of keeping our reputations intact by being in this floor.

The classes started on 2nd July with the 1st class being Economics for me. It was a class that was interesting, and the prof was one genius who was giving out gyaan as if he was Adam Smith and we all were his greatest disciples. Some of us had the blank look on our faces when we got out of the class. But this look is better than the “I wanna sleep” look that we sport these days.

The classes are going on in full swing; but it isn’t classes that make the life in a B-School exciting. It is it the life, the senior-junior sessions, the interactions, the small chats, the long debates, the funny skits, the painful yoga lessons in the morning, the music that blares out of the speakers from the room that makes you wanna dance even if you can’t. All these things are what make life @ an MBA college worth living. The friendship, the camaraderie, the small joys, the midnight walks, the hot coffee’s shared, the poor jokes heard, the stories shared about had bosses and endless cribbing about the assignments and the case studies being handed out in classes like candies. All these things make life @ a B-School exciting. I'd heard a lot about this from my seniors who'd been to top colleges, friends who'd been to them and now I feel so special when I'm also telling my juniors and friends about these sleepless nights.

I just hope the 20 odd months that I’m gonna be here are going to be as exciting as the past 20 days have been. Life in MBA is just this one liner-Sleepless nights and Sleeping in classes.

Finally the long wait is over

Yes, the wait for getting into a prestigious institute for getting an MBA degree has culminated in my life with me securing admission to the MBA(International Business) course at Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT). The news came on 19th evening with the publishing of the list of selected students to the 2009-11 batch. I got in the list of students selected to the Delhi campus. I was in my room after coming back from work that day. My room mate was having night shift and was on the laptop doing what he does best(don't get me wrong, but he goes through financial news and chemical process updates; my guru in financial terms and funda's).

I had a feeling that the result would be out even though the IIFT official version was to wait till 20th. I came in and typed in the address and then changed. The site always was showing the GD/PI shortlist until then, but that fateful evening it showed something different. Something that looked so good to my eyes, but at the same time brought fear in my mind. Fear about the fact that, if i didn't make it, then i'll have to work for another year and i was sure i won't be able to prepare with the same fervour i had this time, thanks to my boss who's always on my @$$ to point out some mistake or the other. So with all those fears i downloaded both the lists, the one for the Delhi campus and for the Kolkata campus.

After downloading, i put in my name in the find bar, 1st time due to some error, my name didn't come up in the list and the search bar glowed RED. I was shattered; totally devastated and just got up and went to the balcony of my room, from where i get this wonderful view of the plant.


I know its not wonderful, but i was just standing there and was thinking what'll happen to my life in the coming year. At that time my roomie said the file's loaded fully and he could see my Name in the list. I jumped back into the room and confirmed with my own eyes that i'd got in. The list brought tears to my eyes. I called up my ex-girlfriend 1st and told her that the result is out, but i can't see it as the net connection here is too slow. But i guess she could understand from my happy tone that i made it. I called her up coz I'd promised that she'd be the 1st to know when the results are out. Next I jumped out of the bed and went to inform Debasis, my partner here for writing the mock cat's every Sunday morning. He was sleeping in his room, and was quite shaken, he was very happy that atleast one of us made out of this hell.

Then i called up my parents. My dad was home and he was very happy as well for me. But being the dad he is, he asked me if i was sure that i wanted to quit my so-called-well-paying job and go for this course. I said YES YES YES! I've had enough of this job, with a Chief Manager who's never satisfied with your work and constant maintenance issues in the plant. I had enough of the work already and i had even planned to quit the job after completing 2 years in it, and take up a lecturer's job in my home town if i hadn't made it to IIFT.

More about my MBA journey in another post. Till then let me just enjoy the glory :)

Opulence @ its best

Malls malls and more malls. That's all i could see on my way to Gurgaon from Delhi. 1st was the beautiful Delhi-Gurgaon expressway, where even with just 10-15 mts between each vehicle, the average speed was touching 90-100 kmph. It was despite the fact that only the previous day a 7 year old was killed while trying to cross the road. I wonder which idiot left that kid to cross a busy road like this where even if a full sized Mac truck wouldn't stop the incoming traffic, let alone a kid.

Enroute we see the IG International Airport. Its another splendid sight in this route. The highway is a 6 lane with amazing surface. Leaving all this behind, lets come to the point. I reached Gurgaon and easily located my training centre and hostel. After having put up all my baggage, i decided to go out for a stroll @ 10 in the night with my friends @ work.

Just a stone's throw away is the mall road(don't know what's the exact name, but we guys used to call it so coz it had about 8-10 HUGE shopping malls on either side of it, with around same number under construction. The one's that caught my eye were:

Sahara Mall

City Centre

The Metropolitan(Chivas coz of the logo)

DLF's Ambience Mall- This is India's LARGEST shopping mall, with 8 stories and each one kilometer long(yeah u read that right)

So as we were strolling, we saw the Mc Donalds', the Pizza Corners' and etc etc. All the major brand names, one's that i'd heard and seen only in FTV, CNBC and all; like Dior, GUCCI etc. While walking a poster of National Treasure 2 caught my eye and i thought, i should see the film. Now i'd never seen a film in a MULTIPLEX and wanted to know what's the experience like, so we went to The Metropolitan mall which had 7 or 8 screens and was having the film in one of them. At first, the ticket prices alone made me go back. One movie for Rs 175, all for a bit better sound and a cozy chair. I could see 4 movies and still have spare change for popcorn back in my home town of Trivandrum.

Anyways i had stepped in and so we two (by now just 2 of had the INTEREST to watch the movie, others had better things to do; like watching all the good looking gals in the malls) went ahead and took the tickets. A cool 350 bucks were emptied from our pockets. Still i didn't learn my lesson and did the mistake of going and ordering a pop corn bowl and 2 pepsi's. They came to Rs 165. Total 350+165=515 for havin comitted the SIN of watching a movie in a MALL's multiplex.

After all this the lesson that i learnt was that, if i were to be posted in Delhi or for that matter any other metro, my salary of 20k will be vanished in a single day. I'm happy with my rural Orissa for a change, than enjoy the girls and the HAPPENING life in a METRO.