Great Lakes New Campus: From Scratch to Concrete

Once upon a time, a professor from Kellogg School of Management     painted a picture of having a B-School   in      India which would walk the same steps with the best in business. In 2004,     the first batch entered and since then the school has travelled a long way. It was a journey marked with innumerable      potholes, speed-breakers, railway crossings and dead snakes. At times it was raining, so heavy that the umbrellas would seem like leaves.  The  trip  went  on. And when the school reached a certain amount of stability, the pressing need for a new campus was felt deeply by the Great Lakes fraternity. One said” The school has the best faculty   that    other    Indian     B-Schools can only stare with an eye of un-diminishing envy.

Classrooms

A curriculum that is well merged with the global scheme of things and the quality of the batches is getting exponentially better with each passing year. What we perhaps need to think about is an icing on the cake. And what better way to have that than have a full fledged state of the art campus” . The thought was put on paper, the plan frozen and sent off for implementation. Varsha & Pradeep, celebrated architects were roped in to come up with the campus blueprint. It wasn’t a matter of any surprise when they proposed a beautiful prototype of the structure. Mr. Godrej (of the Godrej industries fame) was one of the pioneers of the concept of Green Building (The Godrej CII Green Business Center, Hyderabad) . Inspired by the same it was decided that Great Lakes would have a platinum rated, state of the art , green campus, the first of its kind in the country. MARG, a major infrastructure firm won the contract of making the campus ready for the Class of 2010.

Hostels : In and Out

Work went underway about fifteen     months back  and the first phase of the construction is a few     days away from completion. The next batch is all set to enter the brand    new    glass      and concrete    package from the session starting April 2009 .

A couple of features that  stand out as far as the infrastructure and facilities are concerned :

-          0% waste: Upon completion , Great Lakes would contribute zero % waste ( this includes smoke,   paper, organic , sewage) to the ecosphere. All garbage would be recycled into something      environmentally useful and stratospherically friendly.   A good percentage of the power   that   would   be   generated     for in-house consumption would come from renewable sources. It’s a small way of saying “long-live-planet-Earth”

-          For the Finance Czars and the D-MAT-fortune makers, the campus will have Virtual Trading Terminals where live feeds of BSE,NSE and other stock indices would populate the various screens .

-          A Transcendental Meditation Center for the students , where the folks would get an opportunity to lift themselves up  and leave behind the vagaries of a materialistic life and enter the realm of infinite calm. This would be a sure shot place for mind-enhancement, IQ booster and the numerous positive things that one needs to crack any cryptic crossword that The New York Times has ever published.

Main Blocks

Apart from that the campus would also have a well-equipped gymnasium for the folks to sweat the stress out , a 24*7 canteen and an open air amphitheatre . Let alone the common study room, library, general store, air-conditioned and furnished accommodation/classrooms etc. Also, the beach is just a couple of miles away.

With the campus unfolding each passing day the excitement is gripping tighter and tighter. We are all waiting for the day when the lamps are lit and the first class happens.

(Prakash Randheer  & Suryya Sarkar, Class of 2009)

 

Splash!

Holi-Day: For a change we did not have classes on the 11th of March .It all started when a few decided to shirk off their days sleep in pursuit of something more colorfully meaningful.  They went to the market to hunt for all possible coloring options. It was no day for dance and frolic for Asian Paints or Camlin. However, every year the ‘Hathras colour manufacturing industry’ located in UP waits for that one single day when they sell to make a living for the entire year.

Color Blinded!

After getting back with bike loads of shades, they went on a painting frenzy, rubbing the dyes on each other till each could be recognized only by a DNA test. Next, the apartments which houses fellow batch-mates were targeted. Waking up others from sleep and painting them red, yellow and crimson became the order of the morning. A few went steps ahead with oil paints, liquid bombs and such other minor non-explosives. Eggs were smashed ruthlessly. But this time it was not on pans over the cooking stoves.

Who's who?

 

Srinagar Colony is a place where most of the Great Lakers stay .Until five years back it was not known for streets blanketed with sheaths of multi-hued stuff or lane dogs shaking off tons of colored powder. Then Great Lakes happened and Holi started showing its true ‘colors’. The party which started with just two people grew into a huge congregation of about seventy, each more unidentifiable than the other- the white of the eyeballs striking out from a mass of painted skin that once were faces.  A few looked close to breathing scare-crows. White T- shirts weren’t white anymore.

The party went on till about midday when everyone dispersed under various showers . Consumption of Soaps, Shampoos, Face-Wash on that day must have saved Hindustan Unilever from any economic setback this quarter.

It takes many of us in a trance when we think how the Holi celebrations would look like next year round. The new campus would be fully operational. ECR Highway, the road connecting Chennai and Pondicherry runs parallel and within meters of the Bay of Bengal . The campus is located east of the highway , which means that the Class of 2010 would  be hearing the splash of waves hitting their ear drums while they are busy painting each other with numerous hues . An endless beach, mild breeze hitting the skin, the infinite waters and the waves kissing the feet !!

…Smelling great. 

(Suryya Sarkar)