Free Thought

100 days

2008-07-31T01:01:00.003+05:30

It's been over a hundred days since I came to ISB and I cannot but wonder about the sheer pace with which the last three months have gone by. The paradox is that time seems to go by slowly every day (especially when you are sleep-depraved in a class and you wish you had done your assignment a couple of hours earlier and grabbed some shut-eye:) ) but before you know it, the week is over and you wonder how things sped by so fast!

The B-school environment has been superb thus far - great people, some 'interesting' ones (put it down to diversity!), a whole maelstrom of activities going on all the time, some sleep, a whole lot of a lack of it, fun, learning, arbit CP, competitions, dunkings, loads of work and what not.

Its 1:19 AM and at the risk of jeopardizing my pre reads for tomorrow, let me venture forward to put forth my point of view on entrepreneurship, a core course in Term 3. There are many views on how relevant the course content is. Some think that entrepreneurship is an intrinsic ability that cannot be taught, while others believe that it can be learned - the value of the course for me has been in examining my beliefs and attitudes about entrepreneurship. Having worked in large and small companies, I am able to relate to many of the dilemmas faced by the entrepreneurs in the cases and I think learning in this course can happen only through introspection.

ISB and more

2008-05-04T23:01:00.002+05:30

It's 11:01 pm, I've got stats class to prepare for, a marketing case with a deadline sharper than a knife and I choose instead to make my first post from ISB.

Week 1 of core terms has just come to a close and one thing that has struck me as peculiar is how time seems to slow down and rush by almost simultaneously out here. I hope to blog regularly (hope being the operative word) and put out a flavour of the life inside here.

The card conundrum

2006-05-19T12:57:00.000+05:30

My inclinations towards thought and rumination - not to be confused with day dreaming - which have lead to the rechristening of my blog but a short while back - have lead me to decorate the title of this post with the word "conundrum". But I digress - let me to my main thought stream return.

The average Indian IT engineer is constantly pursued by hawks eager to sell her (a concession to my raving female audience) credit cards of all shapes, sizes (yes, there ARE 2 sizes for credit cards) and credit limits. The culture shock that one talks about when a desi visits the US has very little to do with blondes in bikinis (almost everyone has seen baywatch and this is a rare sight in a town 30 miles inland) and has a lot more to do with the alien concept of credit history.

Yes, the concept of having to shell out $500 as a collateral for a "secured" credit card is alien to me! The benefits of building a credit history have been hawked to me many a time by T but my efforts to do so have been crippled by P (procrastination). Perhaps, Freud would have diagnosed the underlying symptom of P to be my inability to come to terms with my social degradation from an animal of plenty (of credit) to an animal of poverty (of credit again).

Mischief managed! Until next time...

The shore

2006-03-22T15:23:00.000+05:30

Stream of consciousness - penned four to five years ago after an expedition to the Beasant nagar beach in Chennai @ 11PM.

The sands, they spread before us, beckoning us to the sea
The lights, they glowed dimly, setting a mood very eerie
The waves beat the sandbanks, the wind bellowed around
The sands were still uncannily, crabs crawled uninvitingly

There sat we upon the shore
Trying to figure out why we were here
The mysteries of life vast as the ocean
Mocking at our endeavours

The tombs of sailors of past and yore
The boats of fishermen like wrecks ashore
The lights of ships sailing far away
Into realms unknown, let my thoughts astray

Who am I? but a grain of sand!
Who am I? but a drop in the ocean!
Dream on but conquer me you never shall,
Said mighty nature to I the insignificant man

Maelstorm of melancholy, handle you i can't
So we trudged away frm the dark
The walk was better more soothing on the mind
But never shall that night my memory unfind.

Free Thought

2006-03-19T08:59:00.000+05:30

As I have evolved, so has my blog. Walking down the lane is rather old hat, conjuring images of a hunched and wizened old man, wearily trudging down the path of life.

This is a blog where I shall pen what I want, when I want (more regularly from now on!) and not be constrained by restrictions of yore.

Goodbye, Lane.
Hello, Free Thought!

The real India - revealed through its reality shows

2006-03-19T08:49:00.000+05:30

It is an known fact that the masses love the underdog; the story of the unassuming person who rose above them to become a hero, a figure of adulation. A figure that they can relate to as one among them who rose above to become one of the successful, the privileged. Can this explain the recent happenings in India's #1 reality TV show, Indian Idol? As I sit, I try to think through this phenomenon and decipher the mentality of the millions of my fellow indians who reveal a lot about the way we think as a nation through their simple act of crowning our next croon king.

Does the average Indian hate his fellow citizen who is better than him? Or does he feel the need to prop up the undeserving because the talented will somehow find a way to blaze their trail? Look at some of the evidence that is swarming around us - our horrendously wrong system of reservations which dismissvely shrug aside merit and reward lineage, the importance given to seniority rather than performance in government establishments - do they point to a decaying in our society and a disdain for talent and merit? Aren't these the very reasons that hundreds and thousands of our frustrated talented countrymen have left our country's shores to find success elsewhere?

Perhaps the story of the winning underdog in India's reality TV shows can be attributed to parochialism - a show of chest thumping by the denizens of India's smaller states to show that they too have a powerful voice in India? Is it not a shame that sixty years after freeing ourselves from the Britishm we have been unable to free ourselves from our ourselves?

It is known that contestants drop out of the reckoning if they appear too sexy. Does the abscence of talented girls in the top 3 for the second year running point towards the insecurity in Indian men to accept a smart and successful woman?

An intolerance of talent, parochialism and the Indian MCP - unsettling as it may seem, they do define a large part of India even today - an India different from what I have experienced in its cities. Perhaps, through these shows, we can better understand India - a country of paradoxes, finding it difficult to shed its mindset of the past and handle the changes sweeping through its society.

Of reality writing and humour

2006-02-12T02:45:00.000+05:30

It's a trend so big, king kong seems as dimunitive as a chihuahua in comparision. Yes, ladies and gentleman, welcome to the age of reality writing. This is where writers write funny stories about how they cannot write funny stories, where they share their lives with millions of strangers who they feel have nothing better to do than read about their duel with the shower that stops working in 0 degrees farenheit when you have have soap in your eyes and have a girl to meet in 10 minutes..

We shall now describe the travails of the author of this blog, who, being an astute trend spotter, has decided to pen his thoughts in the third person. The author, fresh from the victory of his battle with the bar-wani (who by his entry into the author's citadel posed a threat to the author's single minded focus on combating his monstrous writer's blog) hunches before his laptop.

The author realizes that true genius is theirs who transform the most mundane of daily experiences into pakenham walsh award winning essays. (topical school joke) He battles the pangs of hunger that rage within him and his thoughts hark back to the events of that fateful morning. He remembers it as if it were just yesterday ... (which, considering it happened this morning, need not be construed as a toast to his memory)

He contemplates on how to make an interesting story about a box of cereal smashing a crystal glass interesting, but drops the idea, not for its lack of melodramatic merit, but for his waning interest in trying to infuse the H-factor into it.

His attention diverted by the soaring temperatures in his room, he decides that he needs to chill. Literally. He resolves to evoke raucous laughter from his readers at a later date. Until next time...

Awaken the spirit within

2005-07-29T15:55:00.000+05:30

It was another day in the cubicle farm
Yet another day of mindless code
Being churned out in this our glass abode

When all of a sudden a wind of hope
Blew across my face - i felt a surge
That brought out an inner urge

And I felt a wave of creativity
Rise within me unabated
Twas like the doors to heaven ungated

Washed away were the ones and zeroes
We became fearless heroes
Of our spirit within.

Writer's blog!

2005-07-10T08:45:00.000+05:30

Many a raindrop in bangalore has been shed
Many a sky has gone grey from red
But for many a day words have been clogged
And I put it all down to writer's blog!

The promise of waxing eloquent over calvin, it seems, has become my biggest bane. And yet, as I muse in front of my screen this morning, my biggest boon, it is. Let me explain this conundrum. When I posted, I was at the height of my literary excitement. Words were gushing forth like a Bangalore storm water drains in spate. I committed to the topic of my next post, which would be devoted to two of my fave topics - Calvin and the fine exalted art of hyperbole - and the interrelation between them.

The events that unfolded thereafter, were however not entirely expected. I was to suffer the, insufferable, that scourge of all those desirous in some way of putting pen to paper, or finger to keyboard. I was struck by a severe case of writer's blog! (sic)

What is writer's block? And what the hell is writer's BLOG? A typo? A desperate attempt by a psychiatrrist to publish a paper in "Million Dollar Disorders of the 22nd century and beyond"?
Neither of the above, im afraid.

The writer's block - a condition wherein one is incapable of translating thought to paper for a variety of possible reasons - is best illustrated by Calvin. Calvin goes up to Hobbes and says "Check out my new invention!" (a block of wood) "I call it writer's block - when you want to stop writing, place it on your desk!" Thats a great example of out-of-the-block thinking!!

The writer's blog is a term I devised to describe the condition of one who has comitted to the world to share his/her literary genius (we're all geniuses to ourselves, y' know) and reneges on it out of fear - fear of comittment, fear of not posting material of some standard, fear of muscular movement (also known as laziness), and so on.

In posting this article, I have vanquished many such foes within, and anyone with perception would note the committment to write about calvin has, to some extent been met. As for hyperbole, not a word about it has been written anywhere, yet in every word it resides! Go figure!

The value add of the IIMs

2005-05-12T23:29:00.000+05:30

Let us then begin our walk down this path with a question that I have been grappling with for a few days – about what defines the value of an IIM. Are they really are as good as they are made out to be?

There are many reasons why I have thought about this question. The first is the selection process that is followed to select B school students in India – where your managerial aptitude is judged on your performance in a 2 hour ritualistic ceremony called the CAT. A B – school is as good as it’s selection process; and while there is no doubting the impartiality of the IIM selection process, is it good enough?

My biggest crib with the selection process is that preparing for the test takes precedence over almost everything else in an aspirant’s life. The focus of any MBA aspirant is not to improve one’s technical, analytical, management or social skills – but to master hundreds of problem types and shortcuts in order to crack the world’s most demanding aptitude test.

One may argue that the CAT does test the skills that are desirable in managers – decision-making skills (X: do I answer 1 mark or 2 mark questions), dealing with uncertainties, perseverance (Y: I’ve been studying for this since my engineering days!), the ability to take risks and so on. But by focusing so intently on the CAT, we encourage people to stop adding value to their real lives and instead, to focus solely on cracking the test.

Another reason this question keeps popping up is that none of the IIMs are recognized to be in the league of any of the top 50 B – schools in the world. This makes one question if the quality of learning in an IIM is world class or not.

So where does the much vaunted value of an IIM diploma lie? We could try to answer this by asking what students want out of an IIM. On top of the wish list of most would be money – a dream fuelled by media reports of astronomical dollar – denominated salaries bagged by a few students. Some would be drawn by the prospect of learning, others by the brand – a very powerful one in India.

I, however, think that the best learning you take out of an IIM is confidence – confidence in your capabilities, borne out of having triumphed in a contest of 2,00,000 people. And no learning can be more valuable than that! Paradoxically, it is in the CAT madness the true value of an IIM lies!

In my next article, we will touch upon my pet themes of hyperbole and calvin – stay tuned, folks!

Walking down the lane

2005-05-12T21:46:00.000+05:30

Another blog on the wall! Everything has a purpose (apparently) and so does this blog: The purpose of this blog is to make itself purposeful!

Random mumblings apart, I do not intend this blog to be a chronicle of my life; we have enough information to deal with without having to be bothered with gory details of the state of my love life or dilbertian situations at work! Rather, this is the first in a series of articles that I will be writing to chronicle not my life – but rather, my take on life! To clarify on that point – the difference is that while the former would have been focused on the inanities of my life (granular details that I would think are not worth expending effort on, by me as well as the discerning reader), the latter would be an abstraction of my experiences; and a commentary of sorts of the world as I see it.

That summarizes the mission of the blog; and the vision of the blog would be to achieve levels of literary erudition that some of my favourite columnists have attained; Subroto Bagchi and Shashi Tharoor, for example.