A year gone by!

Today Alexander Pushkin, Sukarno, Björn Borg, Steve Vai celebrate their birthdays, Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj became a King, YMCA was formed, Tetris was launched, NBA was created, Battle of Normandy started, Venus crossed the Sun, the world will shift to IPV6 from IPV4 and I completed one year at Tata Motors Limited. One amazing year spent at Mumbai, Johannesburg, making new friends, meeting new people and going to so many amazing places. Hope the journey continues forever :)

This was my status message in Facebook on 6th June, 2012.  It has been one year since I joined the dream job that I had mentioned in my last post. It has been over a year that I've not blogged as well. I would accept at the outset that it is not because I've a super busy job. I had a lot of expectations in this job when I decided to select this over the OTHER Tata job that I had got after my Summer Internship at Tata Steel Ltd. This blog entry will also be an answer to a lot of my pals who remind me each time we meet that I had left a better paying job at Tata Steel. Tata Steel had been an excellent company and I had the fortune of working with very good people while I was working there, but Tata Motors is an Auto company where innovations like the Nano and also powerful image making products like the Safari. Post acquisition of Jaguar - Land Rover, it has some of the most beautiful machines that men has created. An example of that can be seen in this ad:

 

All this being said, now I work for Tata Motors Limited for over an year. A year that took me to a lot of places, made me experience a lot of things that I dreamed of and some which even were beyond my dreamworld. I joined at Mumbai for a month long induction that took me through the various stages of getting accustomed to being in a CORPORATE culture than the relaxed life one had in a B-School. Corporate world, now it sounds funny, because I still have the fun I had in college, albeit the people around me have changed. I'm lucky to be in Mumbai which is where half the classroom of any B-School gets placed. I had a lot of fun in the initial one month, mainly because of the location where we were accomodated during our induction - South Mumbai. It was amazing to be at a stone's throwaway from the best location in Mumbai called Marine Drive. I've spent a big part of my life in a coastal town and even now I say to my friends that a beach is not a great hangout place to goto. Marine drive is not even a beach, it is simply an artificial sea-wall built in the southern coast of Mumbai to prevent the water from coming into the town. But after 6 PM it lights up and gives you a simple but not isolated place to sit and gawk at the waves crashing onto the seawall. It is one of the best places to hangout with friends, have your share of looking at girls walking/jogging/running. Have a look and decide yourself if this is a beautiful place at night or not. I've spent atleast 10-20 nights chatting with friends till midnight and later in the night and the best thing about this place is that no cop, no moral cop will come and question you "kya kar raha hai be" even if it is 2AM in the night, no matter if the group consisted of more girls than guys.

Before I make someone feel that this post is gonna be a "I LOVE MUMBAI" piece like the one Pritish Nandy wrote in TOI blog, let me assure that it isn't so. So after a few weeks of spending each night at Marine Drive, chatting to new people who joined the job with you and go out to eat at all the amazing places in South Mumbai, we all got our projects. I got lucky in that regard and went on my 1st overseas trip(barring the short walk I had into Nepal while on a break to Darjeeling in my summer internship) to Johannesburg. The place was not having a great reputation, unless ofcourse you worked for the Mafia. People and websites started scaring me about the possibility of being mugged and even being killed for sums as little as $10(yeah, by then I was talking in $ and €).

Johannesburg or Joburg as the locals called it, is one of the best places I've visited. Yes, there were moments when I felt unsafe, there were people who scared the living hell out of me, but then I also loved the place a lot because of the amazing roads, the nice work culture of 8AM-5PM and most importantly because it had places where even Europe or US would've felt less opulent and at the same time had slums which were worser than the one's we see while landing at Mumbai airport. It was another country which had the dichotomy of having few rich men who held more wealth than the rest of the nation's population. It had a high percentage of people who were HIV positive and had no means to support themselves, so they indulged in theft, mugging and even murder. 

The city was a treat to watch from the air as I landed at 8AM on a cool morning at the end of July 2011. I was simply amazed at the lack of people on the ground and the speed at which vehicles were being driven. I saw trucks doing 100kmph with full load of 40-50 tons, even old people were driving cars older than me at speeds above 90 and the city had such an amazing road network. This is how I always will remember it:

 

The reason I loved the place most was because of the amazing roads. The whole country had  some of the best roads that I've ever driven on. Some dream surfaces like this:

I drove so much in this place that some days I had so much driving that I kept on driving even without stopping for a piss. I had an amazing time both in my work and in my free time. I was living alone and enjoying it. Technology made it possible for me to be in touch with my loved one's even when I was 1000's of kms away. I saw some of the best cars that men have been blessed with on the road on a daily basis;  lamborghini's, ferrari's, rolls, buggati's, bentley's. You name it and I had seen it on the road in Johannesburg. Even had fun with a few of them while driving my 7 year old Indigo, trying to keep pace with a prosche boxster after a signal and feeling amazing when the chick driving the boxster couldn't find the right gear and I got ahead for a second. 

It was a place where I drove more than 10000 kms and totally loved the 5 months I spent over there. I came back to Mumbai and took up my new role from 2nd of January. It wasn't sales, it wasn't marketing; it wasn't anything that I had ever dreamt of when I joined TML. It was a role that even now I'm trying to understand and the less told about it the better. I had a lot of good days when I've met a lot of people who are the big names in the auto world, I've had the pleasure of visiting facilities where some of the best vehicles of the country have rolled off from.

In addition to all this I had a big promotion in my personal life, I got engaged on 19th March, 2012 and since then it has been an amazing journey for me on the personal front. I've been the butt of a lot of jokes from my friends who keep telling me how much freedom I'll lose once married and what all I've lost already by being engaged. But I simply enjoy the feeling of being in a relationship and I somehow feel better. I don't know what exactly it is, or which exact moment it is. But when I'm with her I simply have a great time, I yearn to spend more time with her and most importantly I look forward to spending the rest of my life with my wife.......

The Goa trip that went South & then went YEEEHAAA!

This is an amazing trip, which got me broke to rich and helped me fulfil my childhood dream!

It all started on Saturday morning with me having Rs 1500(Thank you Subbu, Moorthy and Vasu for the contributions) in my pocket and 3 tickets:One from Nizamuddin to Madgaon and 2 tickets for consecutive days from Madgaon to Trivandrum. The idea was this: My team - The great Maa II, consisting of Mayank, Atanu and Me(with a good deal of support from Akanksha) had sent an entry for Revving Up!!! - The Case Study competition at GIM, Goa and I was to present the case if our team got selected, but then we weren't sure if we would get selected. I was sure, but Maa wasn't :). So we had tickets for me to directly go home or stay back 1 day and present if we got selected.

Fortunately we got selected and the 35 hour long train journey went well and then I reached Goa, only to find that I was BROKE :(. Now that got me thinking what is the reason for my constantly bad financial condition. I'm in constant debt and can't find a way out of this situation even when I've won a good number of events/quizzes this year(2011). But I guess if I start on that then it'll be another blog post completely. Main issue for the day was I was left with Rs 120 at the start of the day when the event was happening. I had to get back to the railway station at night to catch my train back to Trivandrum and it's a sweet 40 km ride from GIM till Madgaon station, which comes to 600-650 in a cab. Basically I was begging around in Facebook/Gtalk and all other possible means to beg.

The day started well with me getting up ahead of time and getting ready by 9 AM and reaching the hall to find it quite empty. I like all the CONFIDENT MBA's started to look up the slides and added some finishing touches here n there. Then frankly I did get nervous waiting for the PPT to start, so I started chatting with the other teams and had a good time till I was called for the PPT. I was the only TEAM with just 1 guy here and with more than 80 odd pairs of eye balls pointed towards the slides and alternating between me and the slides I started. Initially it all went really well and I was fortunate to have a good panel which didn't interrupt and blocked my flow. That got me going and I was at one of the best presentations of my life I would say!

I finished with the judges quite impressed and asking the very first question which got me really happy, the question was "How many of your team mates worked in Automobile industry?" and when I said none of us, he was even more impressed. After a few questions more he was satisfied about the work we had done and then I got back to my seat waiting patiently for the other teams to finish up their ppt's and went about on a Hyper Facebooking spree. Some 20 comments and 2 updates later the time for the final announcement came. By this time I had 1900 in my SBI A/c. Thanks Sriram and Ajay Aliyan :)

It was a proud moment for me and I could say a very happy achievement for my team when the whole crowd said "IIFT...IIFT...IIFT" when the judges asked "So who do you think is the winner...". I was having the best smile of my life and the smile widened when I got the winners cheque and the three Nano shaped pen drives as special gifts :). It was literally like the cadbury's ad where "dil mein laddo phoot rahe the", the Rs 20000 cheque was just the icing on the cake :)

The glee wasn't contained in me when the HR told me that I have got a spot-offer and asked me to consider joining India's largest automobile company. It was a dream come true for me, a dream that had been in place in my head since I was 4 years old and got onto the hood of a Tata Truck during one of the 1st trips to my dad's workshop at Air Force Station, Avadi. A dream that made me pursue Mechanical Engineering, but wasn't fulfilled at my BTech stage. Even though I got into Tata Steel during my internship and then got a PPO, the happiness that I've now is much greater because this is a dream for me to follow what my father did for 21 years of his life and make it bigger and better :)

Thank you Mayank, Akanksha and Atanu for giving me a chance to fulfil that dream, thank you GIM for giving me a platform to present our ideas and most importantly to IIFT for giving me this awesome chance. Now I really feel my MBA did add a lot to my life :)

PS: 1st job of any Marketing guy is to promote his company; so here goes - Kindly visit www.tatamotors.com The site is updated very recently and hope you'll like the changes :)

PPS: This can also mean that CGPA doesn't stop anyone from getting their dream jobs in an MBA :)

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...

The Perfect Summer Internship

Hello and welcome to Abhijith's Internship Experience. Get ready to be swept for a crazy ride filled with gigantic excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and an ungodly amount of leg/butt cramps from sitting and staring at a laptop all day......well if you haven’t immediately closed your web browser after reading that exciting introduction, I can tell that you really want to learn about the MBA internship experience (or facebook is not open in your office and you need to kill time somewhere else).

I am into the last fortnight of my summer internship here at Tata Steel, and I have begun to consider the things that I wanted to have accomplished before I leave here on June 12th.

Notwithstanding the current (read BAD, but improving) market conditions in which we have found ourselves, it can still be difficult to find perspective on the "goal" of an MBA internship. Therefore, in the spirit of blogging and to make my friends feel better about my chances after I finish here and try to find a job, I have decided to filter my experiences here in the context of "a dream summer internship".

Without further ado, here are my top 10 ingredients of a perfect summer internship.

1. Work somewhere you can make a difference. It should come as no surprise that if you can't contribute materially, it's very unlikely that you or your employer will enjoy your attempts to "drive value and create synergies throughout the value chain" (insert some other MBAisque quote here). I took an offer I knew I could contribute to, and have been busy contributing since day 1. Trust me I am :)

2. Work somewhere that is challenging. No problem here either. I am working in a role that I do have some relation to(industrial products), but in a completely new industry. Without this ingredient one could get bored... not an option for an over-achieving B-school student.

3. Work for a firm that will add value to your resume. Again, check. Tata Steel certainly undergoing a test of its business model and maybe posting losses, but Tata is still Tata and their name is definitely a strength to my resume.

4. Clarify your role and responsibilities before accepting. This is something I could have done better one, because clearing up any miscommunications makes it a lot easier to "hit the ground running".

5. Don't be a jerk. Many of your peers will work for lesser-known firms, while still others will work for bigger and more prestigious firms. Who CARES! Never forget that many of the worlds richest individuals left B-School without an offer and then started their own firms. You never know who will be successful and who won't, so be cool to everyone.

6. Have fun. Do it while being true to the company that took the risk to hire you as an intern. Having fun means a lot and certainly the two months of internship are a relief from the stress and workload of a B-School. Go on trips, have weekend parties, meet old friends.

7. Network more with the people whom you work with. This could be with your guide, with other people working in the firm and certainly be good friends with the interns from other colleges. You can never tell when you'll need to make a call to one of those guys.

8. Look forward to getting more work. This is important because if you don't look forward to doing work, it does show on your attitude in the office and the guide and others might notice this as a sign of weakness in you.

9. Be smart in your analysis. Try to impress the audience, not by using snazzy animations in your presentations, but by having done good work in the field and then analyzing the data you've got. The analysis is as important as the data collection; as one project guide said the hard work is in getting the data, but the smart work is in doing the analysis. So be a smart intern in addition to being a hard-working intern.

10. Get a job offer. No matter how awesome you feel now, the job market is a strange beast and can change at any moment. Do everything you can to head back to school with a future job locked down. This is an essential ingredient of the "perfect" MBA internship.

If you collect all 10 of these ingredients, you will head back to school with the quiet satisfaction that comes from a job well done and enjoy a 2nd year much better than your first...

At least that's what I'm telling myself right now :-)

Life moves on..............

I've been away from the blog for a while, heck this seems to be the standard opening line for the past few posts of mine.

This time no dialogs, just letting the pics do the talking

I'm on a pan India tour thanks to my employer. We've been taken around Gujarat, UP and later on to Kolkata, Pune, Mumbai and Delhi. I've finished the Gujarat leg of my tour and done half of the UP tour and right now am sitting in the room of Jayram in IIM Lucknow and blogging this at 2 30 in the morning, while he's snoring next to me. :) The pics are in random order coz i didn't have a lot of time to fix them up.

India's Diverse Driving culture's. This one's from Ahmedabad :P

@ the Harvard Steps (that's what they're called if i rem right)

With the Mr Thampi in LKP in IIM A. Had a great time there coz of him

Striking a pose in front of the Louis Kahn Plaza @ IIM A.

Thampi explaining their midnight frisbee playground locations

Never stop posing for snaps. :D

"Those were the best days of my life - My IIM A Days :)"
Would love to say that :D

A view of the LKP taken by me in my Nokia 6500

I seriously didn't notice this board until the very end, else i'd never have taken these IIM A Pics :)

Thampi after the exhaustive dime tour of IIMA.

A kid Became Gandhi and welcomed us into Sabarmati Ashram when we went there on 2nd October

The Three Monkey's - Sabarmati Ashram again

The Charkha and writing pad that Mahatma Gandhi used

Gandhiji's Room

Gandhiji's eternal message

Maybe the head's bowed down due to the state of affairs in the country he freed

Evidepoyalum mallu restaurant kittum :P

This was a Jain Temple in Kutch Dist in Gujarat that we visited

Most common mode of transport in rural Gujarat. Called as Jhakada :D

The long road ahead............

This is a letter written to Indira Gandhi by Nehru, saw on my visit to Anand Bhavan in Allahabad

Calmly flows the Ganga on a dew filled morning

A Hanuman Temple that we visited en route banaras

Benaras Hindu University - BHU

The temple inside the BHU Campus. It was a magnificent spiritual experience

In front of the Anand bhavan

A peek inside the extensive Nehru personal library @ Anand Bhavan

Me @ the Triveni Sangam in Allahabad

The Golden Buddha @ Sarnath

Errr. Call it what you can :D, just a snap during the training

Onam 2008

Onam 2008 was the best Onam of my life. Period!

I'd never had a onam like this for a long long long time. Only when i was a kid did i get to enjoy the onam like this. You're always special when you visit home after living outside for a few months. Maybe it's because the people think you're a GUEST and behave nicely to please you, or maybe some genuinely missed me being around. But whatever it maybe i really loved this break away from my monotonous work life.

I'd not really planned to come home for onam. But then my company was sending all new trainee engineers on a pan India trip in september-october and hence i'd to use all my spare leaves or else they'd lapse and go away free. So i thought of surprising my parents and freinds. But then cash shortage made me ask money from dad for the tickets, so that surprise was done with. Then i'd tried to hide my visit from my girlfriend and had hoped to surprise her. Again failed miserably. She seems to read my mind and i couldn't help but confess. :)

Then i didn't hide this fact and posted on our college batch community. Then the posts that followed were really NICE.

So coming to the point. Why i liked this onam was the fact that i spent more time with my family than with friends and i LOVED it. Usually i hated spending time with my family, especially on vacations. Almost all my breaks used to be spent with friends @ Kovalam or veli or some place like that, but miles away from home. Now being away from home has made me miss home and my family a lot and hence this time i was determined to give them some quality time. I loved it.
Spending time with friends also was fun, but this time everyone had time only to discuss their tight work schedules, bad bosses and horrible working hours :). Then the usual vayinottam @ Kanakakunnu palace grounds in the name of Onaghosha paripaadikal :). Went to Uni-Y for a great onam programme. This time i knew a lot less people than before, but then it was fun. Sheer fun.

Then the major thing i loved about this trip home is getting to meet my love. I'd missed her a lot and seems she also did so. I'd hoped to spend 2-3 days at the max with her, but then we made up for the lost 4 months with 4 meets in 8 days :D. That was totally awesome for me. She did manage to surprise me with a gift - A shirt. It seems she's good at picking nice shirts. She'd given me a shirt when i'd first joined for this job, but this time she'd the help of another common friend, and they both managed to WOW me with their selection.

Now i'm at the Chennai Central railway station while posting this, waiting for my connecting train to Cuttack and then back to hell. :) This might be my last onam spent with my family, or maybe the first in the series of onam's @ home. Only god knows.

Some snaps from my visit home.

This is where i started from

Catching a train. But where are the bogies?

A Kerala landscape pic on my way home.

Uni-Yans posin for Snaps - I relived my Uni-Y days once again.

Posing alongside the newbies @ Uni-Y

A kodak moment- Winning the Vadamvali @ Uni-Y

Onaghosham @ Kanakakunnu. Had a great time there.

With the Kalip pose-Atop the Lighthouse @ Kovalam

" Kovalam" or what's left of it

Had this snap taken @ Kovalam. Never seen foriegn kids playing on Indian soil like this :)

Trainil vere pani onnum illathathu kondu engene okke samayam kalanju

Before the theeta malsaram with friends :)

After the Theeta malsaram :)

Ona sadya was great @ home. Mom you're the best :D

Longest weekend of my life

The title may look like the one in Five point someone, the day where Hari and his friends Ryan and Alok meet with so many unfortunate incidents. Well in my case it isn’t as bad as that. But then that’s fiction, this is life. It all started when I got to my OFFICE :) on Saturday, 13th of April. It was the off day for my boss and technically I was the section head for the day:P. I was pretty happy about this, but if I knew the things what were in my way I’d never have been so keen to take up that position. It was the first time since I joined IFFCO that some SERIOUS responsibility had been given to me. Earlier it was always one particular unit in the section that I had to take care of, either a heat exchanger or a filter or a scrubber or something like that. Never had I got charge of the entire reactor with me, the maintenance of the world’s largest phosphoric acid plant was under me for a day. Yahoooooooooooooooo wanted to shout this from the top of the fume stack. But then what to say, something aren’t that good. It started when I got to know that one coupling had broken and that too in a critical place. It was a small flexible flange coupling that I’d always seen only in drawings in my s4 and s5 classes. These things were what we called as small fry in those days, things that were easy to draw because they had a symmetrical shape and weren’t having too many ratios to remember. If you get the shaft diameter, you can get the flange diameter, based on that you choose the number of nuts and bolts, and based on that you get the flexible packing thickness. But here the problem was that the gearbox shaft had a bigger diameter and the motor had a smaller shaft, so for this bit I’d to redesign the coupling. Also due to years of use, the shafts were worn off from their original diameter. The actual dia was supposed to be 160mm, but around 4-6 mm was lost. So while fixing the new one I’d to make sure that all these factors are taken into account. Being the senior-most with the least experience in the plant has its share of disadvantages; you’re always looked upon by the subordinates, either with jealousy as someone who got ahead of them through some more years in a better college or as a knew-it-all. It’s also very difficult for me to manage my temper with these people. Some are utterly lazy, typical to a govt job. They know that they won’t be dismissed from their jobs and so that job security is what makes them lazier. Some are worse, who tell me to stay away from any job and telling that even if I don’t do anything I’ll get paid. At times I also do these things, like now when I’m sitting in the library and updating my blog:). It isn’t a healthy practice to bunk one’s responsibilities, but then working in a chemical factory isn’t that motivating. At times you do need to take a break off from work to recharge your batteries.

So I’d planned such a break last weekend, it was a weekend which had a Monday as holiday. So I’d planned to go to Kolkatta. The city had a special place in my heart because the last time I went there, even with the uncomfortable ride I had, I’d enjoyed the time I spent in the city, with its British era buildings in esplanade, Museums, huge parks, zoo’s, not-that-great-looking-but-functional metro rail system, good looking gals, rosagulla’s, sandesh and other sweets, fish curries, communists who talk at lengthy why Nandigram isn’t a problem and that Prachanda will be a great PM in Nepal, Elgin road bookstores, Esplanade road-side shops selling anything from key chains to shoes, taxi’s that never charge as per the meter, Kali temple @ Kalighat, infamous hand pulled rickshaw’s, aspiring Ganguly’s and Baiching Bhutia’s playing around the Maidan area, high tech office building’s in salt lake, City Centre at salt lake with the Inox, Eden Garden’s with the huge Knight Riders’ posters. All these are things that would make anyone want to visit this place. As I mentioned before I’d visited Kolkatta last month, I had wanted to write about the worst train journey of my life, but then the beautiful city made me forget all the pains. This time I had come prepared and even though I had to get the ticket in Tatkal quota, spending more than twice what was the normal fare, I was willing to go. I found just one more person willing to accompany me and that was my roomie Nagendra. We both took the night train to Kolkatta that arried at 5 AM, after having spent some time in the waiting hall, recharging our cell phones and discharging ourselves:), we hit the road and took the 1st bus to Esplanade. Even at 9 AM not many restaurants were open; maybe Sunday’s are late openings for the shops in Kolkatta, or maybe we were just in the wrong area. We finally decided to have breakfast in a hole-in-the-wall kind of restaurant after a long search to see if we had some good place open. Surprisingly the food was better that what we expected. After filling our stomach’s we went to the Victoria memorial. We were quite early and being a Sunday the crowd’s weren’t there, except the lover’s who held hands and other parts right from the morning:D. By 10 AM the museum in the building opened and we walked into a collection of paintings and photographs that took us back into the 30’s and even early 18th century in some cases. We traced the history of Calcutta city in the Calcutta Gallery. It was the best section in the gallery from my opinion, because:

1. It was an air-conditioned section
2. It had very descriptive footnotes on each photograph and painting explaining what it was.
3. It had a very huge collection of souvenirs from many collectors.
4. It showed how the 1st capital of British India was shaped and what all struggles took place to have control over it.

After spending a good part of the morning here, we went to the destination that I had planned to visit after my last trip. It was Crossroads, the bookstore in Elgin Street. I loved the place right from the time I stepped in, such a neatly stacked and well arranged bookstore, with shelves and shelves of classics, bestsellers and what-not. It had got all the books that one would need. It had been the reason why I’d got back to my old habit of reading. I spent a good time in the store. I was very very happy to find that the manager remembered me from the last time, when I had asked for Hitchhiker’s guide the galaxy. He had looked crestfallen when he found that they didn't have such a classic piece in sci-fi. So when i went the next time i casually asked just to see if he remembered to get that book. To my surprise he got me the 6-in-1 collection of all the stories of Hitchhiker's guide. What a dedicated manager:), After this we decided to go to the famous park street. Bought a couple of stuff for friends back @ hostel, or else they'd have us branded with all the kitchenware if we forgot them. Then on the way we went to Netaji Bhavan, it was a nice experience. With a lot of memorabilia about Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and the INA it was again a great experience to see the photos which depicted the creation of the rebel wing of Indian freedom struggle. Then in the evening we went to the Kali Temple in Kalighat. The temple was full of devotees especially due to the Bengali New year eve. We managed to spend some time there without being bugged by the pujari's who're hell bent to make you do some kinda offering. All these travels were made possible due to the Kolkata Metro rail. Its nothing compared to the Delhi Metro, but then for something that was started off in the 80's i'd say its a great engineering and technological feat. The metro has convenient timings and has stations at almost all major locales. Also a ride to the taken is on the Tram. Its something that'll make you completely forget that you live in the 21st century. Its truly a legacy of the British era, that the communist sarkaar is still operation. After visiting the temple, we had one more place in our itinerary and that was to visit Eden Gardens. We had seen it in the morning from far, when we were going around Esplanade. We had heard that the Australian's in Kolkata Knight Riders were having their practice sessions in progress in the evening and when we reached esplanade we could see two of the four floodlights lit. It was an amazing sight to see the largest stadium in India(maybe the world interms of cricket stadia's). We reached there and tried a lot to get in, but the security persons were letting in only the people from media, that too after a very strict pass verification. As we were cursing the security, SRK and others in IPL it started to rain, with a very forceful wind blowing across the stadium. In the wind the giant posters of the Knight Riders in the top of the stadium got torn and i had a smile(ente revenge) muhuhuhhahahhahahha.

After this we took a cab and reached Howrah Station, there i took this beautiful view of the Howrah Bridge, thus ended the longest day in my life(errr typo, longest weekend of my life)

Street shops in Kolkata, a nice way to spend evenings


Rickshaw pullers in Kolkata-Something that i don't agree with

Wi-Fi @ Cuttack Station

Victoria Memorial @ Kolkata

Taxi ride in kolkata

Me on top of the books!

Bird Watching(and some background watchin as well)

For more pics goto my Orkut Album
PS: If some of the terms in the post above aren’t understood by non mech readers, its NOT my fault, you were the one who didn’t want to take up mechanical engineering, not me:). As we used to say in college, You see the difference between Man And Machine, We Don't!!! & Machines rule the world "We rule them "