They say that the honeymoon period begins in reverse order in IIMs. So to say it peaks the month before the course ends and starts somewhere midway, i.e. with the start of second year.

My prolonged absence from what used to be one of my frequent pit-stops, my blog, is due to the unforeseen academic load that has viralled in. This unusual load is not a matter of chance or of co-incidence, as most people believe. The talk doing rounds is that a two-pronged approach was taken by the PGP (Post Graduate Program i.e. MBA Program) office to curb this infidelity to their sacred subject, ‘Academics’. Firstly, they brought all the important electives in this term, so if you have even an iota of hunger for learning you got nowhere to run to pal! Secondly they squeezed a normal 3 month term into a 2 month ‘crash-course’. I don’t know where crash course got its name from, but from my end it looks to be inspired from the fact that there is a very high probability that the course will end up in a crash!

Anyways looking into the various aspects after my previous blog, here goes.

• Summers was a fantastic learning experience. Got a feel of an Investment Bank though the workload will almost quadruple when I finally join one. I finally decided on the first stroke in the white canvas in the post-MBA employment scenario. I was decided on Investment Banking, but was not sure which branch would it be. Now I know which one it will be and more importantly the difference between them. Private Equity has become a long term career goal and Hedge funds the intermediary one.
• Delhi was a welcome change. It was great to be back in my home-town for a longish span after almost 7 years! It was hot as a furnace, even in the nights when on one day it was 43 degrees Celsius! It was home though and that made all the difference!
• Went for a visit to the school of ‘Babus’ in Mussoorie: Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. This is the place where newly minted IAS officers are polished before they take chair and officiate as Babus of India! The systems in the institute were actually generations behind what we have in IIMs and it was without doubt that it wasn’t faring half as well in living up to its mandate! In fact, the IAS Cadre Students (Officially called Officer Trainees or OTs) were so reckless with government property that they actually opened all taps of their hostels before they left for their postings at the end of their training. As a result the institute was parched for water for one full day! It’s sad that these people will be undertaking the nearest equivalent of management of government machinery.
  
• Back in Campus the weather was sheer Bliss! The clouds and the rain drops laden breeze seem to be romancing all day long. The campus is so picturesque that I almost felt a pang of sadness that next year this time I will no longer be here! Our section went to a beach party one day. We all packed off early afternoon and off we went to Kappad. After many rounds of Ocean-water dumping, sand ball flinging, beach football, drinks songs and merry making we made our way joyously back to campus. The photos came out superb the next day and flaunt my flickr account now!
  
• Juniors are a primarily work-ex laden batch, however they are still being treated with kid-gloves by the system. They are having a very merry time and the euphoria of having made it to IIM hasn’t collapsed yet. Probably the Mid-term examinations will do that for them. We pray that they have a soft landing so that they aren’t crippled and can rise again!
• Our classes have started on Turbo mode from day one. I averaged 8 hours of classes till yesterday and today as I write I have chosen to conveniently skip two hours of classes that will be stretching to 23:30 hours! Management of Banks is proving to be more that living up to its precedent of being morbidly loaded, but the nice part is that the facilitator is a very nice and understanding person. Securities Analysis and Portfolio Management is by far the best course I have taken till now and the facilitator, Dr. Uday Damodaran is no way the lesser cause of that. UD sir is sheer music to ears, his classes are like listening to a maestro play Mozart or Beethoven! Financial Derivatives is a steep learning curve and the terror of Black & scholes model with their option-pricing model has already taken grip of students!
• Finally, booze parties have been allowed in the campus, and with that it brought back the sparkle to the freshers party and to the numerous hostel parties. Hostel ‘G’ods is recreating history and truly adding glitter to its illustrious reputation as rambunctious and happening hostel. Junies have taken to watching movies and competing in all frivolous competitions in true earnest. Academics has taken a backseat for them!
• After a lot of fanfare the Doctoral program was rolled off this year. We finally have Fellow Program in Management students in our midst! Surprisingly quite a few of them are rank freshers (what in IIM lingo is called ‘Bloody Fresher‘). They are provided air-conditioned cottages and a princely stipend of Rs. 12,000 per month for studying. The first year is common for them with the MBA students and thereafter theirs charters its way to thesis and doctoral research. Met two guys from them, nice people with an academic bent of mind and a steely resolve to achieve their goals! Wish them all the best as the flag-bearers of Doctoral program of this IIM!
• Watched two movies (even in this academic load!), ‘Corporate’ and ‘Life in a Metro‘. Of them, the later was easily avoidable and a typical bollywood quasi-masala contemporary genre movie. Corporate on the other hand was a very nice movie and threw up many questions of business ethics and its importance in the life of professional managers like us.

Disclaimer : The title of the post does not have much in common to the context apart from the ‘Eagle’. The tile is more like, my tribute to one of the all time great movies by the same name.

Today something strange happened which had me stop and thinking. As I went about the usual routine of my evening walk, I found my friend who bought a new ‘Bullet Enfield‘ just the other day. I asked him for a short joyride before I continued on my walk, he as nice as a person he is, gleefully obliged. We had been cruising in his new cruiser for close to a minute, when he suddenly uttered ‘Oh God!‘ and slowed his bike, almost to the extent of stopping it. When I asked what happened, he said nothing and again stepped on the gas.
We were climbing uphill, so it was like a wake up call for him before we would go sliding in to the lush green forests below; but a little distance when we were now safely going downhill, he said a bird came on his path and he had accidentally run over it. I did not feel anything, it was like a void. So what is the big deal, birds get run over every now and then. bikes, cars and even aeroplanes. They come in the path of these juggernauts and the loose their existence or almost.
After the ride, which was a full circle just as I had wanted it to be, he dropped me off at exactly the same point where we had started. I happily and contendedly went on back in my normal course of walk.
I must have walked some 500 meters when a sight caught me completely captivated for about 2-3 minutes. There was this beautiful eagle brown-black in color with startling and glittering blue eyes lying on the middle of the road with feathers scattered all around. It struck me like a lightning that this must have been the bird that we ran over. I definitely missed more than a beat, as I saw helplessly,  very much in a trance as to what to do.
The trance was broken by a slight movement of the bird, as it struggled to get to its feet. It was then I could see that it was alive, not much hurt except almost detached of one of his wings and with a leg badly injured. I must have said a silent prayer that the poor thing was not hurt in its ‘torso’. It had this glittering eyes on which it kept bating its eyelids, something so captivating that I would have cried, had I not been suddenly awoken to the fact that this would need to be taked to a side before any other traffic ran through it. (The road was a climbing road on the hills of IIM Kozhikode; so there was a blind turn right ahead, hence by the time any traffic saw the poor thing lying, it would have been too late to out the brakes just as it happened with my friend.)

Some people have that uncanny abiliy of striking an instant rapport. Not many of these exist. Even fewer of them have the calibre of building on the initial headstart for a rock solid and lasting friedship. This post is about one such guy, Call him D. Haven’t known him for more than 45 days, i.e when he moved in our apartment to fill in the slot of one of our rommies who had moved out(G). D came across a classified in a forum for available accomodation, posted by my other roomie (S). D had a rustic look and an earthly taste about him. Apart from that he had that impeccable village-type simplicity, which brings about a revolutionary sense of peace in most people. When I saw him for the first time, though I did not anticipate that I would begin to like and admire him so much within such a short time, I figured out he would probably not be as much of a pest, as the person whose place he was taking in our house, G. G was in all sense a true blue blood pest. He had all the elements in place. Could truly ‘PISS OFF’ even the most disciplined of Sadhus, we were still materialistic ‘maaya’ ridden earthly software devellopers. Withinn a very short period of time D displaying a genuine concern for othes, a broad mind and a healthy and caring attitude hit-out with S and Me. Soon we were having a seamless smooth sailing. Days were just breezing by.

Today, he left, for greener pastures with a new company, at a new location. And yet, what he leaves back is a sweet and frangrant after-taste, a breath of fresh air, just the feeling that a peppermint leaves on your mouth the first couple of minutes after its consumption. I know with time, he will slowly and steadily be cornered from our minds, afterall my two years in professional life has indeed taught me that “Out of sight IS out of Mind”. Hence I put in hold my other pressing matters to pen down some learnings and experinces from my this NEW Friend. ( He will still be every much present if and when either of us, he or me, needing each others assistance..)
From him I learned that small sacrifices indeed go a big way to win friends. Showing genuine concern for others and caring for others elicits more than reciprocating response from the other end, thereby drammatically changing a hostile or an unfriendly environment by sowing the seeds of trust and confidence. I also learned that B-Schools invariaby miss out on the most powerful weapon to win friends. ‘Humility’, this is one quality which eludes a magnetic attraction and pierces through the tiers of hierarchy that might exist. With over 8 years of experience in the highly niche area of device and peripheral interfacing sofware and drivers, he was the prize catch in the sotware industry. And yet meeting him, you would invariably mistake him for the numerous jobless youth, doing training at various ‘Garadge’ training centers and fighting to get a job, to do something somewhere, whatever be it.
Now all of these come at no price, or at most at the cost of minor inconvenience to self. Is it worth it, A Million/Billion Dollar Question ! Well if you ask me, it depends. Depends on the scenario and depends on what you consider worthwhile. D won a lasting friend in me, with those small actions and those small gestures, and at the cost of sounding boorish I might add that most people find me very resourceful and indespensible as a friend, thanks to my inter-personal skills and my extensive network of friends.

‘Networking’ is the new power mantra of the corporate world. All the parties, seminars and symposiums are almost built on this single point agenda of building a network which could later on prove instrumental in building inroads for a lasting business relationship. So much money, resources and effort spent in order to get new acquaintances and build on relationships, what a pity would it be to loose opportunities to build this networks with people whose paths accidentally cross our lives. For one, D with his immense device driver experience working for Microsoft, would be a ready approach to me, if at sometime I want some inroads to Microsoft or to the highly Firewalled world of Core Device Firmware/Software Devellopers.

Attached Below: (L to R) Me and D

“Cogito, ergo sum” (Latin for “I am thinking, therefore I exist”)
is a philosophical statement made by René Descarte

Rene is considered the father of modern philosophy, and not without suffecient reason.
In the past couple of days I have been in absolute doldrums. Life seems rather surreal and unreal at times. Alive and kicking at one day and inexistent on the next. The problem as I see it is largely a problem of choice. Choice it seems are delivered in ‘Quanta’ or packets, always some or none. Either there is dearth of them or a flood of them.Faced with multiple options, often credible in their own right to justify indulgence, we are required to implement prioritizationof objectives. It is in ithis process of determining pririties that we have to make our choices, implement some tradeoffs, gamble with our cards, play on our luck, & make our sacrifices. All these require us to one thing the most : think.

On one hand there is the easy way out, the road travelled and travelled again, quite an easy recipie for an instant two minute noodles. On the other there is the road less taken, the one meandering through the foothills and valleys in through your dreams. The road often to be taken is the one of compromise between them both. A textbook “Follow your dreams” approach often simplifies to an extent of Over simplification the complexities and uncertainitiesx of life. While I totally agree on “One Life” and hence the ensuing “”Live it to its Full” comcept, a typical manegeiral approach would involve having a credible backup plan in place, as a measure of contingency. Just if things don’t go well.

Someone recommended me today to “Get More Focussed” in terms of not straying down various career options just for the heck of it. The uncanny irony in the situation is the fact that my critical assessment or SWOT analysis reveals the opposite. the thing I probably need to do right now is to get discharged a bit, just cool down and relax. Planning and preparing are really taking a toll especially with excesses in that area hampering the prospects of me making the best of any situation then and there.

Have already begun evaluating other options, many actually, in fact too mant to tell the truth. Need to funnel in in to a select few on them and progree on them diligently with a horses’ blinkers attached to avoid any further distraction.

Meanwhile, Manu Sharma, the Killer of Jessica lal is back on the streets roaming scot free thanks to the tireless working of Delhi Police. I have believed often that people like Bina Ramani and her daughter, suffering from compulsive party disorder need to be critically monitored for anti-social activities. the ‘high society’ indeed gets its ‘high’ by often commiting acts which are blasphemously anti civilisational in natur. Like wise most yadavs whether it it La’loo prasad Yadav or D.P.Yadav should be boundary limited to their cattle farms and its cattle sheds. They are seldom worth of a penny more. The supreme court has infact reprobated the police for a apparent disinclination to prosecute the accused.

With Salman khan hit & run, Black buck case, Tandoor murder case & now the Jessica Lal murder case an increasing trend is visible. that of legal system thoroughly incapacitated by corrupt officials in general and police and the judicial bench in particular. The result is that the crimnals are having a home run. Would be tragic to se the majunathan Shanmugam case head the same destination.To contribute our two bits on this issue lets go here and do our part for this brave soul.

Ending as usual with Calvin:.

Rain Man (198 - Starring Dustin Hoffman & Tom Cruise

Browsing through the various compact video disks at the neighbourhood library, I came across this rather unheard-of movie. Picked it up, thanks to its assertion to being adjudged the Best Motion Picture award for 1988. It was one of those longish movies (’bout two hours fifteen minutes) in which you are actually fatigued at the end of the movie. Every moment makes you think and introspect about the little idiosyncracies of life that leave logic behind, and allow the full emotions of life to be unveiled in ways that logic can never explain. In the process it gives you some invaluable lessons of life.
Plot goes something like this : Charlie Babbage(Tom Cruise), an yuppie esoteric car dealer, discovers that he has a brother Raymond (Dustin Huffman) who is autistic (mentally challenged in a way) and is institutionalised in a mental health center, when his father passes away and in his will funnels most of his wealth to a trust. At first Charlie sees Raymond as an obstacle to achieving the 3 M$ inheritance, but with time he starts to like his number savant brother. He drives him back to California, in an effort to wheel-in back his share of the fortune. During this epic road trip, threading through the various hassles and intricasies that autistic Raymond causes, Charlie undergoes a change. He starts to love his brother Raymond.
The story speaks to the unique nature and skills that even the seemingly dull witted almost always posess. It speaks about the love and affection that blood relations invariably bring along.
The film’s greatest achievement is successfully framing the plot around a character incapable of emotional development.

The viewer can almost identify the growth of feelingsin Charlie towards his autistic brother during the course of the movie. This is starkly evident when Raymond accidentally mentions Rain Man and Charlie realises that he was the same rain man whom he so fondly used to recollect. Also when he talks about his mothers death and then the song that Rain Man used to sing, can you feel the small spark of emotions in the hedonistic Chrlie being re-kindled. The movie ends with a very pleasant after taste in the minds of the viewer probably because his beliefs in the “basic good inside all beings” getting cinvincingly proven. The fact that there is that element of goodness in all of us reassures us of the viruosity of life.

This movie got among others Best Actor in Leading Role (Dustin Hoffman), Best Director, Best Screenplay & Best Motion Picture  along with getting nominated in four other categories.

I would highly recommend this movie to any peson who likes to observe, analyse and introspect life!

An Analytical on influence of Chaos theory on Life

For those of us to whom Chaos theory does not mean much, lemme elucidate a bit. Chaos Theory is one of the most revolutionary concepts in physical sciences which goes to describe the charateristics of Non linear Dynamic systems that under certain conditions exhibit a phenomenon known as chaos, which is characterised by a sensitivity to initial conditions (butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, the behavior of systems that exhibit chaos appears to be random, even though the model of the system is deterministic in the sense that it is well defined and contains no random parameters.

In layman’s words Chaos theory describes the behavious of systems exibiting Chaotic motion. The phrase “chaotic motion” really has nothing with whether or not the motion of a physical system is frenzied or wild in appearance. Chaos refers to the issue of whether or not it is possible to make accurate long-term predictions about the behavior of the system.

What makes it so Path Breaking in nature is the inherent differentiator in the form of the cause-effect relationship which form the foundation of most discrete, partical physics and mathematics. Till now, it was assumed that it is always possible to make accurate long-term predictions of any physical system so long as one knows the starting conditions well enough. So there was no room for any Ambiguity or Entropy or Randomness or Chaos.

The Chaos theory is in a way a faithful successor to Weren Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. In quantum physics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that one cannot assign with full precision values for certain pairs of observable variables, including the position and momentum, of a single particle at the same time even in theory. If we look at it into a little more depth we will see that it echoes a similar philosophy which is that exact determination will always be subjective rather than objective in nature due to the inherent instability or the inbuilt dynamism of nature. Someting hich is revealed by the of the environment or the degree of randomness of the environment. In all such matters regarding the determination of physical state the Gaussian Distribution is religiously followed.

At the time of its discovery, the phenomenon of chaotic motion was considered a mathematical oddity. In the decades since then, physicists have come to discover that chaotic behavior is much more widespread, and may even be the norm in the universe

Now Lets look at life for once. Every passing day we make plans; schedule our workflow in our 8 hours so to say.
Looking at it from a bird’s eye view we have a certain amount of idea how the next minute, the next hour, the current day, the present month or the current year is going to go in terms of what would be our role and what are the scenarios we are likely to face. Funny thing is, that with time we realise that the harder & more thorough we plan the more it crumbles to pieces in light of events which invariably take place and in doing so shape re-shape our lives; in a way re-defining the rules of the game. Quite often we improvise our plan of action so as to put them in line with our current scenario and make them more apt or applicable.

Management as a science is scientifically unscientific in the way that it teaches us to account for and manage these Chaotic unplanned unaccounted for incidents so as to turn the tide in our favour. It is highly scientific because it counts on the chaos theory and instead of trying to limit its effect, tries to exploit it. It is unscientific because it goes against the basic Causal-Effect marriage pivotal to deterministic sciences and makes provisions on a look-ahead fashion for the anticipated diversions on a pre-emptive basis.

How many engineers we come across who wanted to become a doctor in their life but took a detour on not making it successfully through medical entrance examination. Like wise so many wannabe entrepreneurs who resign to a life of soap-selling after reading and digesting varioous case studies from a top B-School which thoroughly and effectively teaches them to anticipate the millions of probable risks they would run in any operation thereby silently killing in them first the courage to dream and then believe in it.

Funny as it may seem, the fact that equations in life are dynamic in nature makes it a lot more thriving and self evolutionary in nature. For once I believe in the ‘Connecting of the dots‘ principle made much popular by Steve ‘Apple’ Jobs. Reafding it and doing some thinking helps us to better appreciate the complexity in the existential system of the environment and the simplicity in the unpredictable way it operates!

Sometimes when you are going at lightning speed in life it becomes all the more to re-instate the previously decided objectives, just so that that occasional straying can be avoided and the progress is consistently “On course“.

So here as I sit in my this rather spacious aparment in Hyderabad, much bigger than the one in which I stayed for most of my kid life in Delhi, reminiscing about my pleasant childhood in Delhi and wishing for an instant that I could go back, even for a little while, to that comfort of Delhi, the familiarity, the parental care, the carelessness and the freedom to dream unleashed-unbridled. I get a realization than slowly the journey is becoming tiring and though I am not realizing it this instant, soon fatigue will set in. Before that happens I need to recharge my batteries so as to be Loaded for the next round.

Now, to reinstate objectives would be a simpler cause. But here we are talking of dreams, of aspirations, of hopes, of desires, of unchallant thoughts! Now this is is a different ball game altogether! So lets set forth this small exercise in a simplistic manner, using a Third Party Approach. Idea is to pen down all this guy felt and all this guy was coveting and fighting for when he got down to do a Re-fuel.

I see myself after a fullfilling tenure in professional life moving in for the KILL; an MBA from one of the top B-Schools in the world (Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Kellog, Wharton types..) probably one of the IVY LEAGUES. India is not good enough for me. Good as the IIMs are they still house some guy from CBIT Hyderabad who bumped off his 4 years in engineering preparing for CAT and that roadside romeo from St. Stephens whose B.Com /B.Sc. was spent appeasing his GF from Lady Sriram. NO WAY! I definitely belong to a different league. I have a very bright academic record and spent my 4 years toiling hard in my Engineering in Computer Science. Includingthree very successful internships at C-DOT, TCS and finally Kanbay. Been working in a coveted which pays me pretty well though I hate my job as such!

“Hone Hone de Nasha, Khone Khone ko hai kya,
Ek Saans main peeja, Zara Zindagi Chadha,
Hai yeh to yeh Jashan, Tu thidakne de Kadam,
Abhi saanson main hai Dum, Tu chalne de Kadam”

After my MBA I may pursue a Ph.D. or may join some Capital market research firm or an Investment Bank and this will be the beginning of my life-long infatuation with capital markets.

I will not compromise on my DREAMS. They are MINE for me to STRIVE, THRIVE and ACHIEVE. I am going to take what it takes in terms of effort and endurance. I will never BETRAY them or LET THEM DOWN.

Though going for an MS would be an easy exit, I would not do that because that is not what I see myself doing after 15 years, and 35 years hence I would not like to see myself being associated without my custom made career for an easier Over-The-Counter Ready-to-use one.

A step-by-step approach would be :
Go take the GMAT first and get a score in the nearest possible vicinity of 800.
So that the best of B-Schools Gun for me. Will make my move to meet that end then.

A Picture of the next place which I would like to call my DEN. Thats NASDAQ for you!