branded for life

what is in a brand... mbas would say that brands are an intangible entity that help you relate to a particular product in a particular sort of way and that it is the top of mind recall of a particular company's product over similar products of other companies... in short a brand is a product's identity creating the first among equals relationship in the market...

there are brands that are in fact products now - people now don't photocopy, they xerox... all low floored a/c buses are volvos... all packaged waters are bisleries... all general internet searching is googling... all mahindra type 4-wheel drive off-roaders/open top vehicles are jeeps... an mp3 player is an ipod... a piece of quality A4 paper is a bond paper... a scooterette is a scooty... any cola drink is a coke... all chocolates are cadburys... baby foods were all cerelacs and baby powders were johnson and johnson... prickly heat powders were nycils... portable cassette players were walkmans... emails were until recently hotmails... and a b-school was an IIM...

well so as a line extension on the same brand the great indian government decided to open 7 more IIMs as part of a national welfare program... this might appear to be a great idea to provide an opportunity for the millions of youngsters who don't get into the top b-schools each year... but to me it is more of lazy ploy by the indian government to fool students and their recruiters and a long term strategy to dilute the IIM brand... it is more of a ruse to fool the people into making them forget the lack of infrastructure for quality educational institutions in india... the only reason why iim students are in such great demand is because they are in such short supply... how would it be if we could convert all b-schools to iims and all engineering colleges to iits - then will we have a standardized indian population of mbas and engineers... and what is the next target - all medical colleges will henceforth be called aiims ?

i just can't accept the thought of creating a new college or taking over some old college and calling it an iim or an iit... take the example of roorkee... it was a cult brand by itself before it became an iit... now people feel cheated when they crack the iit-jee and are offered an admission into roorkee... if it is an existing college, it is a grave dishonor to its existing name.

of course starting a world class educational institution is not easy and bringing it on par with the existing competition is no joke... but then it is not a case of "if you can't beat them, join them uninvited" philosophy. how can you possibly claim that a college say opened in some remote location like the northeast, (no offense meant to the northeasterners, but then those states have been isolated due to inaccessibility) why would any non-northeasterner agree to go there and settle down there to teach? and if we argue that we will get local teachers doesn't that defeat the purpose of an iim - the brand being a global one we should at least have exposure to different regions of this country at least... or is it a plot by the indian government to release a spurious iim just to keep the people in this region happy and garner their votes?

many people in favor of the brand extension argued it costs a lot of money to setup a new world class college equivalent to the iims and in the initial years you will probably operate at a loss since not many would apply to these colleges without a brand... well i can only say that it costs a lot more than just money to build a brand like that of the iims...

what does the indian government know about education at a level that the iims and iits have achieved... just because they were initially created by the indian government they are not still the children of the indian goverment that they can decide whatever they want to do with them. just because they have a ministry it does not mean that it is qualified to make decisions affecting educational freedom... in fact it just means the opposite - just because they have a ministry, they are the least qualified. it is more of a lazy shortcut method to increase india's only currently abundant natural resource - intellectual capital. i do not wish to quote specific examples beyond the generic iims because that might explicitly portray this post to be sort of biased (which it is anyways)... but then you do have success stories of colleges extending their brand name across the world; but my counter argument is that these colleges have borrowed brand names only, and they have created a better offering compared to the existing brands - it is not an attempt to just ride on the wave of the existing brand image and cheat people...

how would it look if Reynolds called themselves parker or mont blanc… how would it be if the local udupi hotels called themselves taj or radissons… how would it be if maruti called its cars Suzuki… how would it be if hmt or titan called themselves rado or tag huer… it is not to bring out that one is a lower quality brand, this is just to highlight that each brand has its own niche in the market… that cannot be denied or taken away from them…

after all, a brand is a brand is a brand…

rain rain go away

I hate rains...

My earliest memories of rain disrupting my normal life have never been memorable... And i hate any deviations from a normal life that i want to lead... That i lead it abnormally is a different story, but i dont want anything disrupting it... I don't mind the rain... As long as it is behind a glass-sunroof, preferably slanted, above my living room while i sit in the living room totally dry with a hot cup of coffee and a louder home theater system...

I vividly remember rain disrupting my cricket-match schedules, my weekly school library book-issue schedules (i was a book-aholic then) and then the usual going home schedules... Yuck !!! Wading through all that floating garbage and diluted knee deep sewer water - something you get when you mix the two extremes of purity...

It is not that rain is always bad... I do remember once when our school announced free 5 marks per subject - that is a whopping 25 marks in your aggregate for all the dedicated souls that came to school on that rainy day. Probably that was the only time i was in the top 3 of my class much to the chagrin of the usual class topper who failed to turn up from his flooded home some 20kms away... Long live our vice-principal who had to take that decision (and risk getting a beating for giving away free marks which she did get obviously) since our principal too was stuck in the discomforts of her warm home... And then there was this continuous set of holidays for almost a week because of heavy rains and we school kids could stay at home and watch tv during the day and play carrom and sleep late snuggled under warm blankets and anytime we wanted we got hot mom-cooked food... My most delicious bread and jam was the free one on one of the rainy days when we were stranded at school and our management was contemplating if we should continue staying in the safety of the school cold and hungry or we shud make the arduous journey to our homes where hot food and concerned moms awaited us... And who can forget those amazing schumi drivings in the rain soaked f1 races or the million-zillion times where india must have been bailed out of a sure shot no-longer-embarassing defeats in the cricket grounds... Or those amazing floods in mumbai that saved me escaping my birthday bashes...

Coming to the trigger of the post - it rained yesterday; and yesterday was the day i decided to take the pleasure of driving to work on my bike... After a not-so-harrowing-but-in-fact-slightly-pleasurable ride to work i was looking forward to a similar ride back home... All the while no one had noticed the ominous black cloud creeping up above us... So there was the black cloud hovering above me like the alien space ship in “independence day” getting ready to fire the primary weapon at the precisely pre-decided time when i would be out in the open... And i oblivious to all this plannings decided to beat time and reach home before the rain could catch up with me... How naive !!!

So i get out of the building as it was not even drizzling when i was getting into the lift at the 5th floor... And at the ground floor it starts a heavy drizzle... News travels real fast... And so i decided to go back to the safety and dryness of my otherwise cold office... I take refuge in the library and 2 newspapers later i see the rain having let up slightly... I go for a coffee at my cafeteria and i watch the parking lot for sometime at something weird but unable to understand what it was... Then it struck me - a dry patch was not getting wet... That meant the rain had stopped and the rain gods have heard my prayer... So trusting of me... So i rushed out wearing my rain jacket just in case. But by the time i reached the ground floor the rain clouds were firing on all guns...

I waited for about half an hour hoping it would accept my acknowledgement of defeat, but then looked like rain had declared war... So i decided to brave my way through on my trusty bike... So i walk to the parking lot dripping wet already, so that i did not feel the tingling sensation once i sat on the wet seat... And off we went into the rainsoaked night...

Thick rain had made it impossible to see through my helmet visor and i lifted it to expose my face to the fury of nature... (i wont call it mother nature becos mothers are supposed to be benevolent and understanding... And always ready with a hot cup of coffee). So i make it some distance after which i had to remove my specs too as they were made of the same material as my helmet visor (though costing many times more per square inch) to enable relatively increased visibility... After passing lots of blurry signboards i somehow managed to trust my instinct - i was sopping wet anyways, another load of water for some more time is not going to make any difference... And my rain jacket was all bloated up with the water it had so meticulously soaked up and my arms were like two pipes pouring water like a chennai metro water tanker all the way...

Somehow i managed to reach home and parked my bike with some difficulty in the cramped and waterlogged slush... I trudge up the steps to my room-with-a-view... And it all stopped... The absolute silence was like paying its respects to the ordeal i have been through or maybe the martyrdom of my laptop, mobile and any other remotely screwable high value electronics...

I hate rains...

free-wheely in bangalore

this weekend was as hectic as any other... it was the usual slow_starter_build_up_to_a_peak_just_b4_hitting_the_bed type of a weekend... notice the underscores instead of the hyphens and the unnecessarily sudden abbreviation in a stupidly long word... i didn't intend it, but am too lazy to englishify it... and it is just an indication of the training on the software i went through last week (more on this later)...

anyways coming back to the status report of this weekend, there is a significant milestone reached that should help me cover many more miles... yup my wheels finally touched down (or should it be touch-downed) on bangalore roads... nearly a month and a significant portion of my bank balance later i finally got my NOC stamped on my bike's documents and got it booked on road cargo to bangalore from chennai...

ideally it should have taken just a couple of days and i should have received the documents at my office desk without any trouble and i should have comfortably travelled to the cargo office in a local bus for some 5 bucks and taken possession of my bike, but then my planets and numbers would not let me live an easy life (and this is another topic for my pending blog posts and i wont dwell on this now... i have to complete my short and sweet post for today and hit the sack for gruelling work starting tomorrow...)

and yes so finally i am the proud owner of the roads of bangalore... and i felt on top of the world riding my pulsar... the flyover might have contributed a little to the feeling, but who cares... i have my bike now and screw those autos and buses... now i dont need them no more... and that thought in itself was cause for celebration...

and wot better way to celebrate than catch a movie at one of the only malls in bangalore (ok... i wont bitch about bangalore here, maybe some other post some other day... i am too happy to do that now.) my friends had booked tickets for die hard 4.0 (notice the intended pun for the software type numbering)... anyways, we had to travel to koramangala to the forum mall to watch the movie... i have been there couple of times and this time i had decided enough is enough... i have my bike and i wont pay through my nose to the autowallas nor will i take a stupid bus and walk some 2kms from the nearest stop...

so me and another friend, who i had to convince real hard to come with me promising that i would drive slow (as if i could drive fast in the roads of bangalore... ok ok not now!)... we were off, and traffic was pretty light and we made good time reaching the place in some 20 mins flat... and i was happy that my bike has still not lost its punch and we still made a good team though a bit rusty after inaction for nearly 2 years... and slowly we inch our way to the entrance to the parking lot for the mall...

my happiness was shortlived as the arrogant guard there would not let us in... well since that was the case with everyone, cars and bikes alike, i decided to forgive them with the understanding that it was a genuine lack_of_infrastructure problem; we moved on to the new parking lot we were directed to some half a kilometer away... and there the #*(#!^@ imbecile of guards were not letting any two wheelers in because the parking lot was full...

i felt like getting off the bike and blowing my top at these guys, but then today was a super_good_day even though i had not seen 5 red cars in a row, i had gotten my bike today... and i wont let anything spoil my good mood... so i took a u-turn and decided to park my bike at some spot at some other building nearby... luckily there was a footpath converted to a parking lot right opposite to the forum mall... i appreciate the initiative of the citizens in times of crises like today, screw the pedestrians... they can walk on the other side of the road anyways...

well that was it... i made sure that i parked my bike well deep inside the cluster so that at least it wont be the first to be towed away and went in to watch the movie... of course whenever there was a break in the action in the movie i chanted a prayer under my breath to tell god to play security and watch over my bike and make sure it was there till i returned...

well when i finally left the mall 4hrs later, i could see my distinctive number plates from a distance and thanked god for the good job he had done... and yes the icing on the cake was the "NO" i said to the #*(#!^@ autowallas... the ride home was brilliant with almost zero traffic on the roads and we rode back nonstop... and we also managed to take a detour to hunt for some icecream and coffee which we would have sacrificed if we should have walked all the way...

"FUN CAME !!!"

a hair raising tale

for some people it is the electric chair, for some it is the dentist's; for me it is the barber's chair... my nemesis for life forever gives me a tough time in society's acceptability list... one that causes my near and dear to join in the fray of shunning me...

i like having short hair... i had always wanted to join the army/navy or the airforce... i was fascinated by their haircut... but since IT needed me, i decided to make that supreme sacrifice, and settled for the local barber to gimme a feel of the army every month or so that my modest compensation package would allow...

but then to my parents it is a sin to cut my hair before it is at least 6 inches long or the time since the last cut was 6 months - whichever is later and that is when it will appear to them as if i might need a haircut... and even if it is longer than that it is a sin anyways... i have tried to argue with them that it is not actually as short as it looks to them and also vaguely hinted at getting their spectacles changed, but no use. a sin is a sin is a sin...

and it is not just my parents... somehow people have this fascination to comment on freshly cut hair... the society is against losing hair... probably it is the inherent fear of baldness that makes people happy that there is voluntary bald cut that they can make fun of...

i am also rarely satisfied with my haircut... very rarely do i get out feeling ok after that last snip after which everything went wrong... right from the point i decide to go for a haircut, my unruly hair seems to behave as if it is a naughty kid frightened to submission by the doctor's needle or the bogey man... i really begin to have second thoughts as to whether i really need a haircut now... but then i tell myself, that once i decide not to go, my hair will grow doubly unruly... so i go on... and the barber goes snip snip snip and i am happy that things are going on fine... and actually my hairstyle is looking much better, though he has not yet done upto my specifications... i even consider asking him to stop right there and jumping out of the chair... then there comes that deadly SNIP... after that there is no turning back... it is a classic case of the 2 cats and the monkey story... then depending on whehter the place has an airconditioner, the damage control happens making u look like you have just visited tirupati or like a football star with that small tuft above the forehead in an otherwise bald pate or just accepting to preserve whatever is left over and maybe next time will come faster...

there was a long standing joke about boys and girls take a fresh haircut... while it is just a polite "haircut?" type confirmation that gets a nod as a response from a guy to the girls gossiping about their neighbor's infidelity for an hour starting with a similar innocent question... but that is not actually true... though the timelines might be, guys can be as nasty as girls in telling you off that the haircut is not good... but then the guys dont realise that they are throwing stones from a glass house and to girls you cant say anything...

i dont claim that my haircut is a perfect one making me look handsome and ready to be cast instead of brad pitt in troy or that ash would fall for me instead of AB... just that it is hair today which will start growing from tomorrow... if it doesn't, there is always the tirupati cut to drastically reduce your sins...

it happened to me !!!

the key to all happiness

it was a very normal day... i got up at the usual 7am (yes that has become usual now...) and caught the bus to work... stayed there from 9am to 615pm during which i did everything possible - wondering why gtalk was not working only for me, trying to understand whether the user manual was stupid or trivial, drank tea, ate a heavy breakfast and an even heavier lunch, refreshed my mail folder a hundred and fifty times etc, not necessarily in that chronological order...

so in a very normal way i reached my drop point feeling all tired after a hard day at work choosing to ignore the make-you-fly-for-sometime kinda bumpy speed breakers on the way back... while walking back that 200 meters to my abode, i slipped my hand into my pocket and frantically searched that 4inch deep cloth bag in disbelief... my key was missing... the only key to the only lock on my only door was missing... the key to my hopes of catching a short nap before dinner was gone... i did vaguely remember a distinctly rattling thud as if something had fallen out of someone's pocket after a particularly nasty bump, but i was preoccupied with my plans for the snooze that i chose to ignore that... now i could not forgive myself for that fleeting moment of weakness...

well, anyways the MBA in me did not let me brood over the spilt milk or in this case the dropped key for too long, and i promptly called up my landlord and told him of my predicament... but then my great overlord Murphy decided to have some fun...

the call got disconnected due to his inability to hear me properly over the traffic he was driving through... but i thought he said something like he would check if the key had a duplicate and would call me in about 15 minutes... so in order to kill time i decided to call up some long overdue friends... the first number was switched off... the second was no longer in use... the third was busy... i got tired... looking around for someone to kill... oops, someone to help me kill time...

there was this poor neighbor who had bunked office as he was unwell... we had a long chat where we exchanged each other's bio-data... then again murphy wanted me isolated perhaps and this guy got a call from his long lost sweetheart to whom he started explaining what insurance was and how he sold it to poor unsuspecting people... anyways i looked at my watch and my cell phone's call register and calculated that there was still some 10 minutes pending for my owner to call back in his promised 20minutes... so i decided to try my luck again with other friends and i dialed... one of them did pick up the call and said he was on his way to a conference call with his clients in the USA... curse the indian economy that is so dependent on the USA that it does not even allow a guy in distress to call his friend...

so then i tried another and then another and then another and managed to squeeze some five five minutes of their time... that is when you realize that everyone is busy either going home or some other work related work... when you have your key the world goes home with you, but when you lose the key, you lose it alone... so i have managed to excruciatingly complete some 15 minutes of my existence... and i decide that my landlord's grace period is over and i dial his number... that is when i get the rudest shock - "the number you are trying to reach is not reachable"... even after 15 trials that guy is still in some unreachable location... was he unreachable by chance or was that his ploy and had gone into hiding hoping that i wud leave my stuff inside the room and return to my hometown so that he can rent it out to somebody else...

i then try the other number, a relative of my landlord, but that is another recorded beep this time - not even the mechanical monotonous voice... the number is busy... finally after frantically alternating between the unreachable landlord and the busy landlord's relative, i finally manage to get through to the relative... who is at an undisclosed location more secret than Area51 some many many miles away and it was impossible for him to come over... and he promises me that he would get in touch with my landlord... but before i could warn him that he was untouchable, the phone was hung up...

that was the last straw... i prepare myself for the worst situation... i anyway live on the terrace, so i can sleep there in the open air... in the early morning it would get a bit cold, so maybe i can wake up and exercise... only it would be a bit uncomfortable but that is alright... i would have to take the next day off and maybe around 10am go hunting for a lock breaker... as in a key maker... i would get him to come to the house and make him make a duplicate, i would pay him some 200 bucks... my friend spent 250 on a similar occasion but i will bargain... shit this 200 bucks is causing a dent in my budget... and i will have to eat at less expensive places... and worse i may not be able to save enough to buy a new bike if i keep repeating this... oh if i cannot even buy a bike i cannot even think of buying a nice apartment on the 4th floor on the outer ring road... the real estate prices are soaring... oh man !!!

while i was just bordering on the edge of hysteria, i see a dark bulky figure moving up the stairs... when the face became visible in the moonlight i let out the biggest phew that i have in my whole life... it was the landlord... my SAVIOR !!! but the suspense was still not broken, and i half expected the door would be... but luckily murphy decided to focus elsewhere and we did manage to find the duplicate...

maybe that dream house on outer ring road is not just a castle in the air... maybe there is some hope yet... and I will make a few extra duplicates of the keys, just in case…

babes bulbs bells booms barsaat breaking mirrors and other bajaofying musical instruments

I recently saw a few movies – no central common theme except that the characters in it find “true love”… what is disturbing is the modus operandi of Mr.Cupid who announces that they have found their destinies… people seem to know the “ringtone” of Mr.Cupid… precisely put, people have set the ringtone of Mr.Cupid themselves…

In some cases it is people playing the violins behind them… then in some cases it is a guitar or the piano or the bagpipes (some arbit musical instrument of their choice)… then in some cases it is a combination of 2 or more senses… like bulbs lighting up around you and bells ringing… and if u are in love and you throw a walnut at a mirror on the wall and if it does not rebound to you broken into 2 neat halves and instead breaks the mirror… or else it might even rain whenever your love is near you, and/or something equally disastrous can happen… and in some cases it is just a boom… a boom as in a bomb blast boom… only this time it signifies the birth of a new relationship and hence it is good. And I think it is imaginary as it happens to only those people who are struck by cupid’s arrow, but I can’t be sure.

And that brings me to the big Q… how do they know it? Almost all the above scenarios have happened to me sometime in my life… like the other day I was at the temple at around the evening aarti time… and then all of a sudden the lights were switched on and the bells began ringing… there was no mistaking… but when I looked around, I realized that I would be better off accepting my mom’s minimum quality standards for the arranged marriage… ok, the setting might have been wrong, but my experience at the shopping mall setup was also not positive… there were just too many girls…

And then the other day I was in a music store on a sudden impulse to buy a guitar… and I had taken a friend along who played the most wonderful piece of music on the guitars he was testing out… sadly the shop had only male customers at that time… and trust me, I am not gay.

The case of the cracked mirror is absolutely a tale of woe – I can be assured of at least 7 days of hard time with my mom if not 7 years of bad luck… let alone me finding myself a bride by saying “mirror mirror on the wall, sorry for cracking you up with a walnut, but use the part of you that is not yet broken and show me who is the fairest maiden of them all…”

If it were to rain everytime you are with your true love, maybe it is better to stay away from marrying him/her… how would it feel if you had 365 days of rain in your city… people would just curse you (unless of course you live in Chennai). And for the disasters there is no place where people would welcome you with open arms… not even Chennai, unless it is rain.

And the boomtime… not a very happy tale either… so how do total non-believing ignoramuses like me get to know when the cupid’s arrow finds its mark… I don’t think the arrow hit will cause a stinging pain or like in many poetic compositions, does it cause a major pain in the chest region? Is it a sign after you see a girl or a sign to see the girl? And is the feeling simultaneous – probably not, because Mr.Cupid can use only the same arrow and if would take him time to aim and shoot… (I would not hurry him, lest he shoots way off target.) if it is gonna be delayed, can we know what is the maximum time lag…

A very depressing situation indeed…

But there seems to be a silver lining… a light showing the path in these very same movies… people who are together (like friends), tend to get the same kind of signs – as in a guy whose friend had a violin ringtone, would get the same violin-wala ringtone when he is struck too… and as in the case of bulbs burning and bells ringing, the only criterion is to find some place that always has these kinds of accessories hanging around like some Christmas shopping area… and of course, a friend who has found his love in the same way…

So, guys anyone who has had a good ringtone assigned to Mr.Cupid (and has got the call preferably) kindly leave me your orkut ID in the comments… I will add you as my “best friend”… and girls can leave any id – maybe we can discover a new ringtone together… or should I ask Rahman to compose one for me… ?

Aa ante arangettram*

For the uninitiated, I danced. Yup, you read it right… anyways just for confirmation – “I D-A-N-C-E-D”… for those who cannot believe it, I am sorry to let you down, but that is the truth. Let me tell you how I got myself into this mess… yes, I chased it and caught it. I take full responsibility for the mishap.

The occasion was our farewell and people were all wired up to do something to leave a lasting impression on others… so that everyone will remember them in a different light than what they have been projected over the last 2 years… and I got to know that the easiest way to do this was to dance… wait… before you decide that my post ends here, I did not jump at this point waving my arms shouting “pick me pick me me me”… that is still a long way off…

I come back from this back-breaking trek from harishchandragad and the next evening I learn that one of the guys is dancing in the world famous telugu song “aa ante amalapuram”… since I am a little well informed, I assumed that it is a fun song (and also the way it was sung out to me seemed to convey the same), I decided to watch the practice session and have a good laugh and go to sleep (I was still tired after the trek remember).

So I hungrily follow this bugger to the emba 4 classroom (primarily designed to serve as a lunch room for the emba gang, ideal for dance practices as this room has no furniture). Then there was a signal from above – the lift did not work that day. I should have known that it was an omen for my impending doom. But did I care? My sadistic hormones were on a high and I wanted to derive the maximum pleasure of watching people practice for some stupid gult song. So I walked up all the way – can you believe it – 3 floors on my tired legs…

Then I am sitting there urging people to start on that dance, when they started the reverse psychology technique on me… and the worst part is they hit me with logic… now no engineer or a sane person can argue with logic… logic so profound that it beats all arguments… the logic was “it is all in the mind da… if you think you can do it, you can… you can even climb mount everest without oxygen if you want to… when people who are less athletic than you (omitted part: but have lived all their life doing nothing else but climbing mount everest) can do it, why can’t you?”

So there I am intimidated by a belligerent group of southies who have also bought the logic of the mind thing and I have no choice but to accept. Then I realize that it wud have been easier getting beaten up.

3 pearls of wisdom:
1) never trust your dance teachers if they say that the steps are sooooooo easy
2) never get into contracts/agreements without understanding why there are no other contenders
3) do unto others as you would have them do unto you

We had 2 really patient dance teachers… yup that was on the first day… the second day we were the patients… the amount of learning that went into it is tremendous… in a span of 4 days I would have learnt more dance steps than I had probably learnt in my entire lifetime… it is not easy when you have to move as fast as 2 steps per second… that was when I realized why there were no other competitors to this song… and each of those steps had a zillion other body parts moving in tandem… it was easy doing them all individually… but when it came to integration testing, none of them resembled the original…

Feedback is a very important thing when you are doing anything for the first time and also racing against time to master it. Pinpointed specific feedback is absolutely essential and a solution for course correction is mandatory from the experts. We got a lot of those. An example is – “you are learning fast da (this is P&P funda – give the good news first). But sometimes somewhere some step you are not doing properly. Do them properly.” If you stupidly ask which step and how I should do it, pat comes the reply “I am not sure, somewhere some step…”

Anyways, there was no time for diplomacies, nor was there for proper education. And of course the drop out of the best dancer in the group of 4 helped… as the hotchpotch the rest of us were doing was barely noticeable in relativity. So our teachers stopped complaining too – threatened that they may have more casualties they in fact started praising us. We somehow plodded through more practice sessions, all of us never being in sync at all tries – sleepy and slow, or forgotten steps, or just plain clumsiness… even the dry runs on the stage turned out to be disastrous…

Anyways the d-day arrived and the choreographers had their own dance to worry about and so we were temporarily forgotten… we (the 3 of us) ran through the steps in our minds at all times, as stupidly flailing our arms and legs and occasionally the rest of the body in the middle of the road or in the mess would spoil the element of surprise (don’t even think that we were embarrassed at being the laughed at). And yes we had a short disturbed sleep before leaving for a warm up session before the event – snacks were served.

The event started and happened… nothing much as a rotten tomato found its way to the stage, and we were euphoric hearing the crowd cheer and bliss of ignorance of having goofed up our steps on stage. We just swept the stage like a hurricane – we were on the stage when it was dark and before people could get accustomed to the lights when they came on we were off.

And anyways it was our farewell and people were forgiving – I realized this when I saw the videos. Pray that nobody else realizes it, else my testimonials go for a toss.

PS. Anyone who wants to watch my great performance can ping me and fix up an appointment. I will point out in the video my exact position and time. Of course there will be a contract signed and will be taken to court if the confidentiality is breached.

*Arangetram is a graduation performance that is the part of the traditional format – the Margam ( path) . It reflects the different stages of the dancer’s consciousness. In Tamil Aranga means a raised stage and etram means climbing. It is also called as Rangaprevesha in Kannada where Ranga means stage and prevesha means enter. Arangetram is test for the Sishya ( student) as well as the Guru (teacher) as the Guru’s knowledge and the Sishya’s talent are judged by the Public. So the Arangetram is done only when the Guru feels that the Sishya is capable and talented enough to perform the Arangetram.

Adios amigos

It is time to say good bye to all those people with whom I have had the chance to be with over the last 2 years… but I really don’t want to. I want this to continue… I mean I did hate the acads part and all those war over the grades and things, but I actually don’t mind doing it now. I am not usually sentimental… in fact I never am sentimental… well even if I do get senti at times it is often mistaken for humor… so well this post might actually be unsentimentalistic but I hope I do manage to convey what I feel irrespective of whether it makes you laugh or wanna belt me with rotten tomatoes…

Well since the first para sets the tone of my emotional state, let me confess the condition I am in for those who cannot read beyond the lines… I am confused… I really don’t know what I want to do… my last 3 months of useless existence (or so it seemed) without the hectic pace of the MBA up to trim 4 has me really wanting to get out of this place… friends turn backstabbers when you want them around… they go home or go into hibernation… just when you need them the most. Revenge was the first thing on the agenda. I should leave too… my family is waiting (ah-ummm on second thought they must have really forgotten their eldest child as it has been 9 long years… but still I got a place to go… )

But wait on second thoughts, do I really want to leave? Yeah of course the point of progress and call of duty and last but not the least the concept of having a regular money supply is enticing. But then we would all become money making zombies… no personal life… no time with friends… not much socializing… no chill out… or worse still our friends would become money making zombies and have no time for you… again that begins the vicious cycle of revenge as explained in the previous para. On hindsight, the reason I quit my job to do an MBA was because I was losing my marbles thanks to the latter situation. But with an MBA our responsibilities are expected to increase and so time spent with friends is gonna rapidly decrease… so if you can’t beat them, join them – become a zombie yourself.

I cannot imagine a life outside of the protected enclosure I have been through the last 2 years. Of course this was how I felt during my engineering graduation, but then at that time I did not run into this place seeking protection from the hostile world. Then it was like a warm place called paradise giving you the power of money to give you the freedom to live a life you wanted. But now I am going back, totally unsure if I am actually equipped for the war as I am portrayed to be. At least during my engineering my lack of experience helped me to be motivated for the adventure that lay outside. But now that I know what lies outside, I am not sure I want to go there again…

But then the last 2 years have taught me to be confident and face things as they come. So ideally I am better equipped than the people I would meet out there for they don’t know that beneath the exterior armor of the MBA, there is actually no protection, but I am stronger because I know that fact. Or maybe I am wrong in my self evaluation, but you know information is wealth, and wrong information is better preparedness and when preparedness meets opportunity it is converted into luck… you get the equation right?

Over the last 3 months that have been tantalizingly devoid of any work and have given me a lot of time to recuperate and reflect (read: sleep and day dream), I have actually begun to hate it… the long periods of dormancy is actually killing me… and having had a taste of the work life, I am not sure why I should expect otherwise here too… at least here I knew that there were others like me who would readily ping for movies and at work I am all alone. Well at least everybody else is cocooned into their own lives to respond to a movie request… and how can we watch a movie in as formal a setting as a workplace… a classroom is fine… in fact the excuse could even be that we are using the movie as a case study.

But I also hated the hectic MBA schedule of so many assignments quizzes and worst of all boring profs and classes… but actually what really makes me want to go back to those torture chambers again is the fact that I want to see the others too in the same boat. I cannot imagine life without IP messages… all those mindless MCs and chatting with your neighbors… well I don’t know if I would even have a neighbor who would know to use a good messenger let alone exploit the features of IP messenger… yeah of course I might get a good internet connection and be able to download unlimited movies and software from some remote person’s hard disk some million miles away, but I might not get the movie that my friends have seen last nite over the small grey window… how will I ever get those warnings and death threats for simple harmless movies like K3G and salaam-e-ishq and Jaaneman…

But actually there is no reason ever for even those friends of yours to actually keep you updated on trivial things in life as the movie they watched last nite… there is no reason for the not so close friends to even remember you even. The few seconds we get to meet on the streets would be lost in the exchange of pleasantries that are common while here… before signing off with a “keep in touch da” without actually exchanging details on how to and moving on… yeah of course, we have the mailing groups which would probably have a grand revival now… but then considering our busy schedules we have to show to our masters, how often would we do a check on those places…

It is all in the mind you might say again… it is just a mental block and you can keep in touch if you want to… and then that argument brings us to the beginning of the post, why all these elaborate good byes… why sign on the t-shirts all those lovey dovey messages… why write all those “god bless you and may you have a great future ahead” in the year book if you are going share my future anyways by keeping in constant touch…

Of course it may not be completely possible to eliminate the cyclic redundancies out here but then life will have to move on… there is no point in living in the past and we got the future to watch out for… but then the past is what we are… now again the confusion begins… I am back to paragraph 1…

water

we indians use water for everything - right from cooking our food to washing our butts and even until recently fighting... recently there was a fwd of a presentation that said something as unbelievable as world wars being fought over water and armed personnel guarding small water reservoirs... at that time it seemed unbelievable and too imaginative... but today it seemed quite real and scary...

everybody knows what the verdict is going to be - release some xx% of water to TN and keep (100-xx)% of water for KN. people are so imaginative that they wait till the verdict to start the protests. and yes coming to the imagination and the ignorance that drives it, i can't believe what i was reading on the posts on the different discussion boards... some were inspired from Mary Antoinette of the french revolution - "let them buy bisleri"... some said Cauvery originates in KN and hence all the water belongs to KN... why should we even share even a bit of that water... if this is going to cause further trouble to kannadigas, we will form our own country out of our state...

ok, i might actually be writing only anti KN comments here, but i never said i am being fair... i am not hearing both sides because the tamils have nothing to say other than "please give us water" in a more authoritative tone as if it is their birthright... well come to think of it, how many birthrights have we already neglected and desecrated to consider this on a seperate plane?

the tamilnadu government to my knowledge is a game of tennis played between the 2 prominent political parties or rather their leaders... there is always the habit of throwing the blame-ball into the other's court... never have they focussed on anything of use to the people of TN, but only on bashing each other when they have the upper hand. this water issue has also been handled in the same way - the focus of the governemnt over the years has been only on cauvery... TN pleads everytime, KN refuses, the tribunal forces KN to release water, the people of KN are agitated by the sympathy created by the KN government, TN people are happy over the victory achieved by the TN government and all the attention focussed away from the apathy every year on and on and on and on... the water problem surprisingly is a comment that i remember being mentioned in a 1952 tamil movie...

a few months or even years back there were talks of distilling the water from the sea, rainwater harvesting, closing out the borewells, and many more schemes aimed at saving water in TN. but all have been just a drain for the money siphoned out by the government. nothing usful has come out of it. a simple request like RWH which is to be ensure the colective well being of the people when implemented well, does not bring any cooperation from anyone. the people dont want to invest that 500 rupees into this simple procedure, the authorities don't care if it done properly or whether it is just a pipe leading nowhere, the neighbours and other people of the state support the intelligence of the owner and copy his ingenuity... there are other rivers in tamilnadu that have either been polluted beyond use or exploited for their sands and rocks during the dry seasons when they should be could be cleaned and deepened, cachement areas created or expanded in such a way so as to minimise losses and use the water that gets drained to the seas during the monsoons as sewage... the bores have touched depths as much as 500 feet and to think that earlier wells were hardly 10-15 feet deep, not even 15 years ago, because i myself have seen such wells and i wont hesitate to say it in a court of law... and on a thought, maybe this water table erosion was the reason that farmers are not getting enough water and cauvery is taking the whole blame...

a google result yielded some more distressing news: there were 4-5 other rivers too facing similar charges... a sad state for the country... considering that the northern lands have a perennial supply of water, even they are not spared of the water problem. the shocker was when i read that cherapunji. one of the wettest places receiving very heavy rainfall is facing water shortages... brahmaputra sends huge quantities of water into the ocean every year, and this amount is aprroximately 3 times the maximum requirement of the 4 southern states... the plan to connect the major rivers of india has suffered the usual lethargy in understanding the importance... it might come up soon, but when the context is so expensive to even think about...

this water issue has been nothing short of been exploited at the cost of all the citizens by the politicians of india to maintain their places. scores of demonstrations and fasts, proposals, meetings all achieving no purpose but to give the right amount of media exposure to the politicians who never have the necessity for river water when they can get the mineral water free-for-life as bribes... the media too has been having a field day passing judgements; winner: TN, first runner up: Kerala, losers: KN and pondicherry... this is going to fuel the ego between the states and result in more violence... and this is crazy as i cannot even have a friendly jibe fearing diplomacy and racial harassment...

however though, not everything is lost... this time the goverments have also learnt some lessons. they have been shrewd enough in anticipating a probability of violence (which is almost as high as the probability of the sun rising in the east) and have posted police force to the tune of about 16000 personnel in bangalore alone... this could be because bangalore being the most IT savvy city of KN has people glued to their computer screens and so once the verdict is out they can immediately post remarks on the net and order weapons on e-bay and rush out of office to burn buses... so all the terrorist IT folks have been sent home before they can cause harm, and the other workers have been sent home too lest they demand overtime for working on a national holiday. yeah i forgot to mention, they removed the expensive volvos out of the roads first.

i am not in a position to suggest anything new to the people or their servants - the government and the political parties. however, it is time something long term was arrived at considering that india is made of indians and that we are taught to be proud of the unity in diversity since the time of our school textbooks... however it is not as easy as blocking the wind by closing the door... whatever is done needs to be done at a higher big picture level... as for example in the cauvery issue, it is not enough if the water is released now... the states have to arrive at better policies and regulations to manage the water and other natural resources effectively instead of having a team of consultants or a tribunal advising them to start using toilet paper.

for this, the people of india need to stop dreaming and wake up... and also think on their own, not just for their own.