The Year That Was

As I was about to board the bus, I looked back to the top of the last gate of Amausi Airport. It read ‘Lucknow. Arrivals’. I just realized that I wasn’t going to see the board for the next two months. I was about to leave my home for the past 10 months for a brief stint at Bangalore, back to where I had so many memories.
Exactly 294 days, 19 hours and 30 mins back I was at the same Amausi Airport. I was about to start a new life, a new beginning.The first month went well. My hard work in the committee selections paid off and I became a part of Team SynapsE. In one shot the doors to so many activities on campus opened up. In August, Section F had its first party at DC 54. We had a private lounge, some drinks (guess the topper?), a lot of hukaah (guess the other topper) and terrific impromptu dancing (The great Montek!) . And to top it all, the section anthem ‘Battiyan bujha do ki neend nahi aati hai‘. We literally sang the song like a zillion times on our way back in the cab (Dunno how the cab driver put up with that :)). A rocking party and a perfect way to celebrate our victory in Camaraderie 2010 where we won probably 80% of the competitions.

A week later we had the Dharam-Rishabh-you know who saga. A small mistake by Dharmesh led to 4 hours of ultimate fun and some embarassing moments for him. The talk of the campus and probably the basis for Dharmesh going on to work really hard during Index 2010 (Although he would disagree to that! :)). As they say ‘Ek choti galti aapko … bana sakti hai‘.
The first term break was totally welcome. The first trip back home, some amazing time at the Sunderbans, lovely sightseeing, home-made food. The stay was peaceful to say the least. But little did I know that the peace was shortlived.
Term II started on a very promising note. We had Varchasva 2010 on campus amidst a lot of scheduling issues primarily due to the Ayodha verdict and the associated tension in the city. It was fun though watching an event being organized of IIM stature (although I doubt it reached the levels it had promised). I won Dwandwa, the English Debate even though earlier my team was not the best team from campus (who cares!). The highlight was definitely the fashion show (isn’t it obvious?). We performed well overall but probably others had prepared better. Anyways, a nice time indeed. What followed that was a month long race. A race to get the best summer placements, the best job. I saw the best and the worst in people, best of solidarity and probably the worst of emotions. It was the end of November that Section F had its trip to Lucknow Mahotsav. What a trip! 30 people, a schoolbus and an evening at the Mahotsav. Still remember Saurabh Yadav’s mistake, Rishikesh’s monkey pose, Jhoolan Jhoola, pics with that Devil hairband and Rajasthani, Bareilly, Nawabi & god knows which all places’ food. A delightful evening and yes, that section F anthem – Battiyan bujha do ki neend nahi aati hai… sung all the way back to campus.

Term 2 break was amazing. A trip to Mumbai after god knows how much time and finally the chance to get my hands on my latest love – My new Canon DSLR EOS Rebel T2i. My friends – Debanshu, Debashree and Shubhro ensured that I had a rollercoaster 3 days in Mumbai and some truly great memories. A day long trek to Sanjay Gandhi National Park (Saale Prinshu ne exams khatam hone ke agle din itna chalwaya ki….), checking out Chowpatty Beach, Marine Drive, Nariman Point, Sheesha (the pic on the right); and back-to-back movies to end the trip. Totally engaging and whole lot of fun! That was followed by a trip to Bishnupur in rural West Bengal (by then I was in total adventurous mood with my camera) and a short trip back home to complete the year.

New year and I was back to campus. Manfest 2011 was coming up and my work as Vertical Manager started. The run up to the D-day had lots of night outs at H9 developing the games, lots of frustrations and a little element of goofups as well. An amazing experience and whole new feeling of organizing an international fest, something that I had been craving for.The three days of Manfest were exciting to say the least. Co-ordinating two events, covering them with pictures, Pain of Salvation and Bollywood Pronite with Salim-Suleiman & Neha Bhasin (the pic to the left). Rocking performances and total entertainment. The weekend ended with a superb Insti party but rather a forgettable night, the actions of which I regret till today.

Ignicion Core brought out the creative person inside me. Promoting the mentorship program through all kinds of channels – online as well as offline, automating the mapping was interesting. But what stood out was the experience of making thevideo testimonials (Hehe!). 13 PGP-Is, 13 profiles, 13 locations and close to 10,000 views. The initiative that differentiated us from all the other IIMs! And judging by the feedback and ratings that we got from the mentees, its been an absolute hit.
The rest of the term went off with preparation for the internship. And yes, preparation for student exchange to Copenhagen Business School, Denmark (slotted for later this year). The plans for a Eurotrip were materializing and by the looks of it, it sure was going to be an awesome experience. Anyways, project submissions and presentations marked the end of the term and I was all set to go back to Bangalore, the city where I made my dreams. Back to old friends, back to the parties and hopefully back to those stupendous hangouts (Hard Rock included).
Thus an eventful 1st year at IIM Lucknow and I was an half-MBA (sounds stupid). Made lots of friends, lost some; brought smiles to many, tears and anger to some. But hopefully I ‘managed’ to achieve what I had set out for at the beginning of the year.

Cross posted on: Blogger

Aankhen

Hothon ne jiska zikr na kiya ho,
Aankhen unka paigaam deti hain |
Duniya se unko chupaaye kaise,
Har dhadkan unka hi toh naam leti hai |

Principle based Leadership by Dr. Kiran Bedi

On the 15^th of March, 2011, Indian Institute of Management Lucknow welcomed India’s first woman police officer, Kiran Bedi, to speak on Principle based Leadership; part of the Ethics workshop series being conducted for the 1st year students. This was Kiran Bedi’s 2^nd visit to campus, the earlier one being for the Management Development Program (MDP) participants.

Amidst the roar that welcomed her on stage, she started off her speech by stating the key to being a centered leader – being vibrant and enthusiastic. To illustrate this, she cited an incident from her life: when in 1994 after being awarded the Ramon Magasaysay Award, she had come back to Tihar Jail and celebrated the award with the prisoners. Thus she asked everyone to make ‘Being at joy’ a habit.

She then proceeded to divide her speech into two parts – Her beliefs on leadership and the Gandhian ways to policing. According to her, defining the purpose of one’s life is the most important part of leadership. One should have his/her own identity, be creative and work with the people. So when that focus has come and identity is set in, one should shape according to the purpose and brand oneself. One should demonstrate excellence and constantly improve. She cited her example by narrating what all she did when she was first inducted into the police force. By the first few days, she had quickly realized that she was in a commanding position but the people under her were constables and police officers who had more than 20 years of experience. So the only way to learn and contribute was to go to the grassroots. So she did night patrolling, went to the courts so as to make her juniors her allies. Other senior officers frowned upon her but she stood by her act.

She always believed in constant self-audit and self-awareness. When she was on New Delhi traffic postings, she used to randomly choose an area a day where she would come to know of traffic blockages and visit that place without any notice. This was to keep her officers on toes and ultimately set in fear of constant improvement amongst them. This way she stressed on the fact that everyday the brand was built and trust was set in. She also stressed on the value for health – physical, mental and spiritual; also to be grateful and give full credit to the person who deserves it.

As part of Gandhism, she said that maintenance of transparency was very important. 60% of all corruption in India was in the corporate sector. This was bringing in a dis-leveled playing field. She said that one should put a face to policy and look at the poorest client when deciding upon them. And one should have patience – one should trust time rather than resent it. Gandhiji had said – “Don’t wait, be the change” and “Ethics is the oil of enterprise” even before industrialisation truly set in in India.

Finally in the Q&A session, she described her immediate goal which was the National Movement against corruption. This is going to be a nationally selected body which will work towards eradication of corruption by raising awareness and conducting dharnas etc. Do visit www.indiaagainstcorruption.org for more details.

Search friction

Browsing through the pages of an edition of Forbes India, I chanced upon an article on last year’s Nobel Prize for economics winner – Dale T. Mortensen. The article was on a concept in economics known as ‘search friction’. In layman terms, search friction refers to the imperfect information about finding out where jobs are and where workers are for the appropriate jobs. He goes on to say that the traditional economics model of demand and supply does not hold water. Unemployment and job vacancies exist simultaneously because it takes time and money for companies and job seekers to find the perfect match.

Well… This is the effect of a whole term of Macroeconomic Environment… A guy who was never caring about these ‘wordly terms’ is suddenly finding economics interesting (and that guy is me by the way)!! But jokes apart, this is interesting. It explains a lot of phenomenon that we see daily. Haven’t we heard friends crying out that someone somewhere has got job in a big shot XYZ company whereas with the same skill set he is languishing in KLM (sorry I cudnt get another combination of triplet) company, which means getting paid less for same kind of job. Its partly his and partly the system’s fault. There exists imperfect information – in companies, with recruiters and even with job seekers. And its much more pertinent in India where formal systems are yet to get in place for a totalitarian information database. And these are the fallouts of a developing economy.

Perfect match… Hmm… Seems like some marriage bureau at work… But hey, don’t they also operate on the same… They also work on this ‘imperfect information’ and try to ‘perfect’ them… They also try to fill this gap, so to say… But does it always work? Well, that is open to debate. In the same way, there are so many internet based job search engines like timesjobs.com, naukri.com etc. But are they efficient? I know so many recruiters who still work on the ‘contacts’ mechanism, that is getting their own employees to refer friends because they believe that those references provide ‘perfect information’.

But there is hope. The whole concept of UID, popularly known as Adhaar, will, I believe, solve this imperfection. Just like the finance department is looking up to it for providing ‘financial inclusion’, I think this would solve the issue of search friction too. The whole information database that the UID system is creating is going to be a huge boost to many sectors. Apart from just providing the election information of each and every citizen of India, it can be used to store employment records, bank accounts, credit information, education information, legal information and what not. Wow! What opportunities will it open up! An employer could get information to any citizen with a particular skill set and work experience. No requirement of job search agencies and no need to post and update your profile there. Cool, isnt it?

तन्हाई

दोसतों के बीच भी क्यूँ खोया खोया सा रहता हूँ,
अपनों के बीच भी क्यूँ तन्हाई महसूस करता हूँ,
यह कैसा असर है आपकी जुदाई का,
कि दुनिया जीतने पर भी हार महसूस करता हूँ |

Cross posted on: Blogger

घायल

यूँ तो हम निकल पड़े थे येह दुनिया जीतने,
पर आखरी पड़ाव पर हार गए |
ऐसा लगा आपका तीर निशाने पर,
चोट दिल पे लगी और हम घायल हो गए |

Cross posted on: Blogger

मेरी ज़िन्दगी

जो पाने निकला था वोह मिला नहीं,
जो मिला उसे रख सका नहीं,
यह कैसी अजीब कहानी है मेरी ज़िन्दगी की,
कि जिससे सब पाया उसे हासिल कर सका नहीं |

Cross posted on: Blogger

Movie Review: Kaminey

Q: What goes through your mind when you go to the theatre to watch a highly anticipated movie like ‘Kaminey’?
A: You want a crisp story, good direction, brilliant performances, nice songs… In other words you want a total paisa vasool show.
And Kaminey delivers just that. In these times of utter crappy movies (like Kambakht Ishq) or total bore ones (like New York) or somewhat ok ones (like Love Aaj Kal), this movie comes like a breath of fresh air. And a lot of the credit goes to the director – Vishal Bharadwaj.
So lets start with the story. This is probably Shahid’s first movie where he has a double role. One as Charlie – a gangster who wants to be a bookie, lisps (pronounces S as F). The other brother, Guddu – an NGO worker who has big dreams, stammers and loves Sweety (played by the gorgeous Priyanka Chopra). Both got separated when their father committed suicide and went separate ways. Then during one of inter-gang-crossfires Charlie hits jackpot when he gets cocaine worth ten crores in the ‘guitar’ . Guddu gets Sweety pregnant and so has to marry her. But then he realizes that she is the sister of a top goon – Bhope bhau, who in turn wants to become a politician. What follows is a pacy story of how they get out of the mess and claim their lives. Not once will you yawn during the 2 hour show that the story is getting boring.
Next about the direction. Typical Vishal Bhardwaj stuff but then you want the same style. Anyone who has seen Omkara would agree that his dark handling does wonders to the movie and never does it get dragged into the typical Ram Gopal Verma style of gangster movies.
Now about the performances, Shahid does an commendable job. The biggest difficulty when playing double roles is to keep the two characters separate and Shahid does that part brilliantly. One person’s stammering and the other’s lisping are executed well. Priyanka does well in whatever small role she gets of Sweety. She has her typical bubbly and sometimes crying persona. Among the other actors, Amol Gupte as Bhope bhau was good too. But its mostly Shahid who dominates.
The songs all get overshadowed by one top notch number – Dhan Te Nan and its melody gets repeated throughout the movie. Among the others Pehli Baar Mohabbat is melodious. But rest all just merge well with the movie.
In all, a movie definitely worth watching once maybe twice (mostly twice). I bet you would feel satisfied and come out of the theatre feeling good that you had a paisa vasool time.

Photo: courtesy http://www.bollywoodhungama.com

Cross posted on: Blogger

प्यार में दर्द

प्यार खुशी देती है, दर्द भी, प्यार हँसी देती है, आंसू भी,
प्यार मिलने की उम्मीद देती है, बिछड़ने का गम भी |
आप नसीबवाले होंगे जो आपको आपके प्यार ने खुशी दी,
पर हमें तो इस प्यार ने देवदास बना दिया और शायर भी |

Cross posted on: Blogger

आपकी खुशी

एक और शायरी ख़ास आपके लिए …

यह हवा आपकी हँसी की ख़बर देती है,
मेरे दिल को खुशी से भर देती है |
खुदा सलामत रखे आपकी हँसी को,
क्यूँकी आपकी खुशी हमें खुश कर देती है |

Cross posted on: Blogger