Friends are similar

New Delhi. The capital of India is my playground now. IIT as it is known as. Its been 3 weeks that i have been here. I have made some new friends.  I am still in touch with my old friends  whom I miss a lot, but I have started getting along  pretty well with few people  with whom I am going to spend the next two years of my life. I was walking with one of my new friends  at 3:00 a.m in the morning (ya we do stay up that late) and suddenly he said something to which I replied "Hey i had a friend exactly like you in my last college" to which he replied "I  too had a friend who was very similar to you". Is this a mere co incidence? I don't think so. To test this just recall mentally all the friends you had in the past. If they were from different places even better. After you carefully analyse their traits a strong correlation will appear between them. Why do you think this happens? This is because the friends you chose  depends a lot on your behavior and  some latent psychology peculiar to you. You will always go for similar type of people with whom you will enjoy to stay with. Of course exception to this rule are there but aren't exceptions a part of life.  You might make some friends arising out of compulsions or selfish motives but such people are of the type "out of sight is out of mind". The once you will truly chose to hang on and be in touch even when you are far off  will follow a pattern. 

I am so fortunate

We had a very senior official from coca cola to lecture  us today in our campus. He was telling us about the Operational Excellence. It was a brilliant lecture. Between the lecture he said " In order to be successful in the future you have to selectively forget the past".  On coming back to my room I was thinking about it.  We spent a lot of our time thinking about the mistakes we have done in the past not realizing that it is destroying our present.  In the majority of the free time we get, memories of the past keep haunting us.  Why I couldn't make it to IIT?  Why I was not able to tell her my feelings? I should not have said that to him.  The list is countless.  Now if we replace it by the questions : What can I do further in my career to get a better salary?, How should I go about finding a girlfriend?, I will say sorry to him tomorrow. Not only will this result in a better future, it was also make us more confident.  As a famous saying goes "I was in blues for I had no shoes , until I went on the street and found a person who had no feet." .  Whenever you feel dejected and low in your life look  out for people who were not as fortunate as you are.  Once in the morning assembly my principal was addressing me. At that time I was cribbing a lot as I was given Computer for my class XII as the seats were full.  My  principal pointed out to a bunch of street children who were watching us standing on the wall of our building. He said  students, look at them. Ask them how much they wish to be  here standing at your place. You are fortunate that you can afford to study here, so don't waste the opportunity God has bestowed on you. It was a very emotional moment for me , as I had tears in my eyes after seeing them. I never realized I was so fortunate. That day changed my life at school and I happily accepted the subjects assigned to me. I follow  that practice to this day....

ITS A BAD IDEA

Well MBA is hectic and demanding. After two weeks in DMS IIT Delhi , I have realized that. From the last three days I have zero balance in my cell phone but I have not been able to go to the shop just in front of IIT main gate to buy a new sim. Why I need a new sim? Thats because I have brought a pathetic IDEA my gang connection. So lets me describe "what an idea :)". As I entered IIt Delhi campus I found a stall promoting Ideas MY GANG connections. They promised very cheap calling rates and nearly free messaging (@1p) within the gang. I couldn't resit the temptation and went for it. As a part of the promotion I was also given a parker Beta pen on which the cost price was mentioned to be 125. As I have used parker in the past I knew that the market cost of the pen was Rs. 50. As I turned the cover the reason wes evident. it was written in bold letters "Specially packed for IDEA". This is a case of cheating. Its only in a country like India that a brand of national level can blatently afford to flout laws.
If it was limited till here that was O.K The nighmare started when I started using the connection. The network of Idea is like Electricity in U.P. It goes and you dont know when it will come back. similarly network of Idea also disappears without any prior information and as the murphy law goes it happens when you need it the most. The call connecting rate is also really low. I sometimes had to pray to God to get calls connected. The gang rates are not applicable from 5 :00 p.m to 11:00p.m again a time when you have to make most of the calls. The free sms scheme is not available for Independence day, friendhip day, Rakhi, rose day, sari day and any other day which Archies and Hall mark have ever thought of. So all in all a request too all Delhi residents -->> "ITS A BAD IDEA".

Abhinav Bindra wins gold

The long wait for an individual gold for a country of a billion people is over. Abhinav has done it for us and made the country proud. But merely basking in this glory and thinking this will mark a new beginning for the Indian Olympic endeavor would be wrong. The truth is we are still lagging far behind in training our athletes to expect anything out of them. What has been achieved till now is just a result of their individual efforts and perseverance. India where cricket is a religion and Sachin is God, other sports are largely neglected. The training infrastructure provided by our sports ministry is nil no form of encouragement from them is expected.
To analyze this subject lets go down in the history. India has been taking part in the Olympics since 1920. The first gold has come after 88 years. Contrast this with China, which won its first gold medal in the 1984 Olympics and today it is challenging the U.S in the medal tally. The Chinese government concentrated on training and nurturing the talents of their sportsmen and provided them world class facilities. They concentrated on medal rich sports and the result is before all of us. Indian sports arena is dominated by politics and controversies. The people holding posts for different sporting federations just misuse their authority to the largest extent possible. The athletes have to rely on their personal finances to pursue their dream. Abhinav owes his success to his generous and encouraging father who supported his child to chases his dream. Mittal Foundation had also come forward and helped Bindra with finances. These collective efforts bore fruit for him. Now that he has won everybody is coming forward to reward him. probably he will receive gifts in excess of few crores. What needs to be done now is an introspection as to why are we lagging behind. The system need a complete overhaul. Otherwise India will continue to finish among the last in the medal tally.

Engineer. Are you sure?

I just got my final year marksheet. Pappu engineer ban gaya. I was successful in incrementing the total number of engineers this country has produced by 1. Ironically today when one of the professors asked me "Who is an Engineer?" , I looked at him as if he had said something in French or Mandarin. Actually I have never thought on this subject. This question was ignored right from the day I joined my engineering college. I am expecting to find the answer to this question in another 5-10 years. In the mean time I will avoid being referred to as an engineer. We are getting close to B.Sc day by day. I think the governement will one day end the B.Sc degree and we all will be engineers. Till that day the diffrence will continue to exist on papers.

JMET and DMS IIT Delhi

Time: 7:30 a.m. Place: C-36 Aravali Hostel. The alarm clock is ringing for the third time in the last ½ an hour, as it was snoozed on the previous two occasions. Thankfully this time I wake up. Oh my God! I am late again. I finish my morning chores in the next fifteen minutes. No time for breakfast, still I manage to have a couple of slices of bread en route to college. I reach the class just in time and get back to the hostel after a 3 hour lecture session. After lunch the classes continue till 7:00 p.m. Do I feel tired? No, rather I am even more energetic after the great lectures by some of the finest professors of India. The lectures are followed by dinner and a meeting with placecomm which lasts till 11:45 p.m. This is followed by working on assignments till 2:00 am. Suddenly my inbox shows a new mail which asks me to write an article for a magazine, and the mail has come from the senior who has not been generous looking at my packed schedule. I have to submit the article by 04:00 am. So I am able to catch on sleep only from 4 to 7:30.
Welcome to Department of Management Studies IIT Delhi. The account mentioned is a typical day in our life. Going back in time, the journey of admission to DMS started from August in 2007 with the JMET form, which was to be filled online. As I satisfied the eligibility criterion which was a “First class in Engineering”, I went ahead and filled the form. The syllabus was nearly same as that of CAT so it did not need a very special attention. JMET exam was on the 9th December, and as my CAT was a debacle I was left with no option but to perform. The paper had 150 question divided into 4 sections (English, Reasoning, DI and Maths). Along with the knowledge of fundamentals, speed was also an important constraint. Each of the sections had a minimum cut off marks which was not known to us. I just came out of the examination hall with my fingers crossed.
IIT people used to conducting JEE believe more in AIRs than in percentiles. In the results which were declared one month after the written paper I secured rank 173 with 61.75 marks clearing the cut offs for all the sections. Now we were required to apply into the IITs of our choice with an SOP. Fortunately I received a call from DMS for GD/PI. The moment I entered the campus, I was completely mesmerized by its beauty. You just can’t resist the desire to belong here after a single visit.
On the D day I got ready and walked to the DMS building. The candidates were divided into groups of 8. The topic of the GD was abstract “Nurture nature at what cost”. After the GD I headed for PI. The PI was a grilling session where I was questioned on my engineering subject, the projects I had done and some current affairs. I was lucky to have the dean of DMS in my panel and it was a great pleasure interacting with him. I left the campus with a strong aspiration to be a part of this B School and the IIT campus.
My hope transformed into reality when I received the offer letter from DMS to join its MBA program. It was not only signified that I will be an MBA but also brought me the coveted IITian tag all of us dream of.
Time flies here. Its been 2 months since I joined but it just feels as I came only yesterday. Here at DMS we are being taught by the finest faculties who command huge respect in the industry. Prof. P K Jain is considered the best teacher of Finance in India. I feel really lucky to be a part of this DMS family.

Nostalgia

I m really gonna miss these days

I am gonna miss my college days

This song by 'Gaurav Dagaonkar' is a one which comes too close to the spirit of nostalgia and could have been composed only by someone who really was missing his college life from the bottom of his heart. I heard this song in the farewell function of our class where this was used as background music to a very beautiful video of our college life. Only then did I realise that yes it was finally coming to an end and would never get back these days. The journey which had started four years back on a rainy Sunday morning is now over. The engineering course is divided into eight half yearly semester, and each of them had a different flavor and aroma which is still fresh in my thoughts. The classes, the teachers , the assignments and last but not the least some great buddies, all of them are very difficult to forget.

These four years were characterized by learning in a new environment, loads of fun, chit-chats,time pass and yes some studies. When I joined the course I was not knowing what is Computer Engineering, and I still have no clue in this regard. But this does not mean that I have not learnt any thing in college. I have learnt how to remain awake till 6:00 a.m in the morning just watching movies and playing games, I am now an expert in finishing a 400 page book in a single night, I know how to attempt a paper of 100 marks even though I am not knowing a single question, I can play with deadlines, I know how to manage myself with the money which my father used to send me (by cutting all expenditure related to studies) and much more. Well sure I have changed. I read somewhere yesterday that the one thing constant in life is change and I am in no mood to defy that.

College life was not only about studies (in fact it involved anything but studies) but many other activities. My attendance used to range between 55-65 % in class but at 'NOW and THEN' (a cafe in the back side of campus) it was little less than 100%. Even though many of my teachers refused to recognize me but there was no chai-wala in the campus who was not knowing me. The discussions on the table ranged from international issues line 'war in Afghanistan' and 9/11 to personal issues like how to secure placements with such low aggregate percentage. The other very important agenda of our meeting used to be strategy making for survival to criticizing the system. For each of our problems we used to blame people or organizations. The targets of our blame game ranged from American president Bush to the roadside cigarette wala (for not providing cigarette on 'udhar'). This blame game was the best past time we had (of course other than sitting on net). This was the scene of the life outside class.

Coming to the classes part. A general engineering class resembles a movie hall because the back benches are more in demand then the front ones. In a movie hall we have to pay more to get the rows at the back (like gold , silver etc.), similarly in class you had to pay the price of coming early to the class to bag a back bench. Late comers were forced to sit on the front benches (because the last ones were already occupied) and sitting there they were left with no option but study. Also sleeping on the front benches was difficult than it was on the last ones. But I am an exception to this rule. I hold the record or sitting on the front bench and falling asleep. The incident goes like this, a teacher who considered me a good student was taking class and I was sitting on the first bench. She had kept her text book on my table and was teaching. In the mean while I put my head down on that book and fell asleep. When that page was finished she tried to raise my hand from the page but it had become heavy as I was having a nice nap. Suddenly she pushed me and I woke up highly embarrassed. Well what better can you expect caught by your teacher sleeping in the front. Coming back to engineering classes, the other very important aspect is 'never be on time : it might harm your reputation' . People seldom came to class on time. In fact some time students were so late that professor used to ask them 'beta are u late for this class or early for the next one?'. Still the student next day would unabashedly used to ask may I come in 55 Min's. late.

So this was how these days passed. Although discussing all that happened would generate more text than 7 volume of Harry potter novel. But all said and done college days were the best of my life.

A New Begining

I was just sitting in front of my PC from the past few days refreshing the orkut home page 10^16 times in a day. The number of scraps and community messages seemed to be as constant as the adamant attitude of the left on the nuclear deal. Gmail was also not very encouraging although my memberships to different yahoo groups (I know its a sin to subscribe yahoo groups in Gmail) and some other sites ensured at least some activity. Suddenly I went through the orkut profile of one of my new college to be batch mate and I found a blog link in it. This gave me a third site which could provide me more means to kill time and ensure that I do not put the same load on the orkut servers. I opened my blog which seemed like I was taking a rusted car out of the junk yard and which was irreparable. Hence I decided to delete it altogether and went on to create a new post with a new URL.

Selecting URL was the first hurdle I faced. No matter how strange my URL was a message used to appear on the screen which said

"URL already taken".

No matter how strange my URL used to be it was already taken. Even a dictionary refused to help. Still after some 50 unsuccessful attempts I have got a hosting URL. After that the word verification proved to be the second problem. The word image for verification resembles some text which could very well be certified by a leading archaeologist of the 'early man era'. It seemed that Google had snapped them from some encryption's found in the prehistoric caves. But after asking for a new word thrice something remotely resembling English appeared on the screen. But still retyping it correctly was a far fetched dream. I think Google must take a cue from the famous show of Big B the 'KBC' and provide us with 4 options and 2 life lines. I finished this task also but only after I had used a magnifying glass of some astronomic focal length. And finally here I am. Hope the fate of this blog is not the same as my last one.