Can I have some fries to go with that order please?

Looks like this is the real deal. A taste of things to come. If we thought things were tough so far, I think we were all fooling ourselves. As of this week, the batch has been quite graciously welcomed by the true spirit of the one year MBA course. And in quite gallant fashion one might add. And to think, we all volunteered for this.

For many of us, we thought that taking our normal sleeping hours from 8-9 and bringing it down to perhaps 5 hours was perhaps the greatest sacrifice we were making, but try not sleeping at all. This seems to be the order on the menu until the end of this week….a week whose end we are all clearly looking forward to. Despite being subjected to the brutalities of the workplace where the extra few hours put in seemed almost barbaric, this week has us redefining the word ‘insane’. Allow me to read out the menu… 3 exams, 1 product launch, 1 case study presentation, 1 presentation to be done on chart (as you would have read earlier) and 1 book review of at least 1500 words…all to be done in a span of 3 days. And the three exams are all biggies…Economics, Statistics and Operations management. For all of us who were drawn into a false sense of security that we had seen the worst, life just upped the ante.

It’s the second night in a row that we’ve gone with a maximum of an hours sleep. People have been showing up to class in a near zombie state. We’ve all reached a stage where our mere sub-conscious seems to have taken over daily activities. And the profs haven’t been given us any mercy what so ever. Attendance and class participation is being monitored even more seriously now. A respectable number of people have fallen victim to sleep in the middle of class, only to be woken up by the professor asking them a question regarding what was being taught. I am quite sure that the cafeteria’s business has nearly tippled thanks to the sale of only tea and coffee. Quite obviously, this would go hand in hand with an increase in the sales of cigarettes in the small shop just outside the campus. The stubble on my face is not because I’m trying to cash in on the whole rugged look, but is an indication that we need way more than a mere 24 hours in a single day. And for each of us, there are our own ways in which we sport the bruises of the last few days. Dark circles and blood shot eyes are the most common scars.

But, all the agony aside, I think this is probably a good thing. At some deep level, this is a sign of the kind of responsibility that industry expects from us and for us to be students with both experience and an MBA degree, we’d all probably look back at days like these and laugh it off thinking it was all a piece of cake. Like Steve Jobs said in his speech at Stanford, “ A lot of things make sense when you connect the dots backwards.” So, the lack of sleep, brain wracking, number crunching, practice and reviews is probably a good thing. At least for me, a great comfort comes from the fact that we don’t have a single reported case of mental insanity or mental breakdown from our seniors, so maybe this is all part and parcel of the order called an MBA degree. Since I’m digesting so much, can I have some fries on the side please? Actually, I had better not ask for any more….lest it leads to indigestion.

– Nikhilesh Murthy

Buckle up your shoes-it’s a Great Laker’s b’day.

Everybody is studying for the test or busy with the assignment or doing pre reads in the evening. Suddenly the laptop flashes a mail with the subject “Birthday Boy”(BB) asking us to congregate in the hostel lobby or the auditorium to celebrate one of our batchmate’s birthday. We, being the time management gurus set the alarms in our clocks and cellphones to wake us up at 12 am(no way can one afford to sleep as early as 12 am but why take a chance). The mail has changed our priorities now. Preparations are on, No not for the assignments or pre reads or tests but for the bumps.

I was in a fix as to how to make a memorable impact (you know where, right??) in the ‘bumps’ ceremony. An idea flashed and I called up Sippi productions to enquire whether they still retained thakur’s shoes( Ref: sholey movie. Customized shoes with nails. ). Obviously they were not willing to part with them. After all, film industry people too have birthdays. Anyways an urgent brainstorming session was called and everybody pitched in with their ideas about delivering the best (kicks). Everybody reminisces the last day when he kicked his friend so hard that he flew up to his room on the first floor. Mind you, this is serious stuff and nobody laughs. Rather other guys come up with their own ‘Real’ stories. Guess, all news channels overheard us someday and resorted to showing ‘Breaking news’. In a nutshell, each story says, ”I am Hercules. Nobody can stand my kicks, Period”.
Ok, 15 minutes remaining to 12 o’clock and everybody departs to come back with sports shoes on in just 5 minutes. I wish this could be the parameter for marks on punctuality. One small observation,” The Product life cycle of a shoe = duration of birthday bumps”. This rule applies to all ‘birthday bumps enthusiasts’ irrespective of political, social, economic and technological factors ( Ref: PEST. Go to www.wikipedia.com). It’s a blot on your self esteem and integrity if your shoe doesn’t wear off after giving bumps. We knock the birthday boy’s room and no response. No problem, happens all the time. We trace our friend down huddled in the wash room’s corner. May be, that’s why they say,”Men are dogs”. However a subtle difference here- we didn’t even have to smell any of the BB’s belongings to track him down. No wonder, FBI and CBI are coming for the campus placements this year.

Amidst this hue (colors of our excitement) and cry (of our BB) we take him to the green auditorium. BB, a dynamic manager otherwise suddenly transforms into a meek mouse begging for mercy. Huh, how the hell did this mouse forget the last time he played a ‘forward’ from the ‘birthday bumps’ team. Some innovative statements like, “I have a slip disc”,”Doctor has recommended bed rest” or rather “An ant died under my car so I am depressed”. Who knows an insect lover goes soft on our BB with this strategy. Moreover girls are around to watch the show so our BB has to request for mercy in a hushed tone as well as try to cover his nervousness with a fake smile to look his manly best. This is how one learns crisis management.

The cake is brought and the BB is forced to nose dive into it. Every nook and corner of his face is religiously smeared with cake. Photographs are taken though in most pics BB is the least visible. What else can be expected when 261 people vie for their pics at the same time? Anyways we preserve our BB from getting lynched for the most awaited activity, “Birthday bumps”. Four guys lift our friend at a respectable height. However we have the facility of customizing the ground clearance as per individual demands. The harder you kick the more sense of achievement dawns into you. Just one loud cry of the BB and the frustration of grueling lectures, long assignments, lengthy chapters goes off into oblivion. Nothing else can be more satisfying than the punching bag itself complementing your kicks with different versions of cries. A good business idea for ‘Artificial Intelligence’ guys. I want my percentage in the profit.

Sometimes it so happens that any other guy who tries to be more vocal and act smart while kicking lands himself in a soup and gets bumps without any reason. So try to be low profile while doing such kicking activities. Do your duty and quietly make an exit. Moreover be ready to run anytime as the crowd may celebrate your unofficial birthday. I do not have the photographs of the bumps session as the photographer himself was busy giving bumps. Some questions remain unanswered till now -Did anyone wish “Happy birthday” to our BB? Where is he? If he’s in his room then who took our swollen friend back to his room? Not sure about the answers. Anyways it’s alright to forget silly things while much more important tasks are being executed. In the next day class our BB is the most noticeable guy, marketing different brands of pain relievers. All in all this 45 minutes celebration is one of the best stress busters and we all eagerly wait for someone else’s (not ours) birthday to come everyday.

P.S. These bumps are given by thorough Great Lakes professionals. So, I would reiterate Guru John Cena’s words ,”PLEASE DON’T TRY THIS”.

Cheers,
Ayush Aswal.

Some of the birthday pics:

pic 1: Scary Vighnesh(Kindly avoid seeing if suffering from Heart problems)

Pic 2: Farid nose diving.

Pic 3: Sumit (blue tshit) with his wife and two fellow goons infront of the canteen.

Charismatic Dr Harkant Mankad

Few lecturers inspire with their calm and ease as Dr Harkant Mankad. The three hour lecture passed by, and I remained seated for how long I do not recall even as the great man exited the hall.

The composed, focused and thought provoking content of economics delivered at an almost luxurious pace is testimony enough of the grey haired man’s resolve. There comes a time, when a student comes across a teacher he would wish to emulate, today was that day for a great many ‘great lakers’. His compelling quality in deliverance coupled with an almost intangible security, an assuredness that he would let the thoughts settle in all by themselves, that he would not weigh them upon us added a flavor of trust.

Even a good lecture has only few moments of stealing curiosity on the part of the student that precedes affirming and revelatory notes offered by the lecturer. A great lecture has the revelatory notes packed so closely together in it that the student is suffocated with the failure to apprehend the substance in entirety. A truly magical lecturer is at ease, puts the student at ease, establishes connection at the lowest terms of economic reciprocation and adds value to the bridge of the connection as the lecture proceeds. By the end of the lecture, the weight of the concrete connection casts a shadow of delight on the student and the student rests under the shadow for a greater part of the student-teacher relationship. Today’s lecture was this and much more.

“It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.” -Bertrand Russell.

In Dr Harkant Mankad’s economics, rationality is explored to the limits of illimitable stretches; in his economics rationality fails to find a place. In his economics, rationality is dethroned and is replaced by an innocuous facility ‘sentiment’. He holds the ‘micro economic anatomy’ in his ‘market’ and strips it conveniently until the exposed ‘sentimentality’ is stripped to a bare minimum- nubile flesh. He calls it ‘irrationality’.

His contention that the ‘odyssey generation’ fails to acknowledge the passage of time and that the whole generation unanimously refuses to admit adulthood, his explorations into the ideological differences between the two generations, all of these could have been misunderstood as philosophical inquiries, if not for his talismanic abilities to weave the net with micro economics.

The generation that refuses to give up-one that he belongs to- for him is a representation of a pool of burgeoning ‘purchasing power’. The demographic imbalances in the north and south India are for him are mere distribution of power on the former (owing to the overwhelming population numbers) and distribution of prosperity on the later.

We are a generation of men and women dragging ourselves to the shopping malls.

‘Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes’ -Chuck Palahniuk.

But, for Dr Harkant Mankad, it is demand that chases purchasing power, it is value of money that chases prizes.

Space Trauma-part 1

That night, as I was walking towards the water dispenser to fill water in my bottle; I noticed a massive space ship landed beside my hostel block. It was badly damaged, lacerated all over the spherical surface fuming red hot sulphuric acid gases. On its way, the space ship must have hit the light post and the adjacent compound wall, for the wall was no more and the flag post melting under the exposed heat of the ship’s surface. The spherical ship was balanced on a tripod that extended into the ground floor corridors of the hostel block and curiously enough, one of the legs pierced through the cement structure above the stair case as if the structure was virtually inexistent for the sphere’s legs.

 Everything was happening so fast that I failed to notice the sphere’s apparently wavy surface. With every foreign particle that hits the surface of the sphere, the disturbance created by the impact traveled through the cross sectional surface of the sphere in waves or undulations, it was as if one was holding a mat at one end and flipping it.

 Then as if I struck the right chord of my memory coil, it occurred to me that the sphere might as well be a projection of a five dimensional body into the world of four dimensions. The ship was not complete, what I saw was a projection of ship, a gross reduction of actuality.

 Now a clank and then with a hissing noise, the door of the space ship opened. As minutes passed by, I watched the unfurling of the episode with great curiosity. But, for a long while, nothing dramatically significant happened apart from the light inside the sphere dissipating. I could not fight the irresistible urge to enter the ship any longer, so I descended the stair case to reach the door, pulled open the door ajar and the door fell onto the floor caressing the ground on one end, while still latched in its position on the other end. The insides of the ship were infinitely superior to any technology I was hitherto exposed to on earth; some consoles had differential equations written on it. A huge screen in the middle of the ship displayed numbers and their equivalents in music compositions written in chord progressions. Perhaps the mode of communication was no longer English, it was perhaps mathematics and music.

 A case with words ‘to earth men’ inscribed on it was left in a protective shield encased with a plastic resin of some sort that I never found on earth. I carefully loosened the grips and removed the case from its original locked position. It was closed with a number lock. I looked around and could not find anything, and then I turned the case upside down to reveal in a dent carved in the bottom, a series of numbers. It was a puzzle, I sat down and after few failed attempts, I was able to open the case. The case had a metallic disc in it protected in a plate of viscous fluid. I cleaned the disc off the fluid and made a vain attempt at comprehending the grooved inscriptions on it. Something was bothering me, the thought that the whole episode unfurled as if someone deliberately planned it like this, for I was previously acquainted with the particular number series, otherwise I wondered, if I would have ever deciphered the truly ingenious puzzle. The viscous fluid trap was also easy, for I knew beforehand that the tip of the object should be held up exactly vertical for over two minutes and the fluid slips off the plate all by itself. Without prior knowledge, one would have hurt himself terribly with the fluid’s awfully superior property of eating into human’s skin and bones.

It took a while, but eventually I accepted the unnerving conclusion that the disc was indeed designed by me in 2009. Blenched with fear, I began palpitating incessantly, how long have I been asleep? What is the current year?

Regressing from B-school to school

It’s a known fact that innovation is the basic requirement in every marketing assignment; where the whole idea is to let open the flood gates of creativity and let the waters flow. And the professor made sure we took creativity in ‘presentation’ to a whole new level by making us return to the way we made presentations in school. And I can quite easily say that a lot of us found the whole experience quite amusing.

Anyone who has worked for at least a couple of years in industry would completely agree that we are solely dependent on good old Microsoft PowerPoint for any sort of presentation. The moment the boss asks us to make a presentation, conventionally, out comes PowerPoint and people furiously adding animations and slide transitions. And for many of us, to think about presenting a subject any other way is blasphemy. There remains a certain comfort in reading from slides and seeing the usual standard graphics and templates offered to us by the software. And all of us have frowned at someone who has dared to be different. When the professor announced that the various study groups had to present their topics on ‘Creative Destruction’, for the majority, our heads must have started working out what animations to include and the usual jazz that comes along with MS-PowerPoint.

However, much to our surprise, our horror and our disbelief ( and other synonyms that indicate we were completely uncomfortable with status quo). The professor asked us to present the topic using chart paper. Chart paper? Yes…chart paper. He said he’s had enough of seeing mundane presentations and it’s high time we got innovative. And by innovation, he took us back to school. He was serious, and this wasn’t one of the double takes I have come to expect. He actually meant it. We were expected to make use of good old chart paper and colour markers to make the presentation. At least for me, this was tantamount to stepping back into the Stone Age. What was he going to ask us to do next? Cave drawings on the new spiffy campus walls?

The college almost resembles a collage-making competition like the ones we had back in school. Mature adults – behaving like school children, drawing on chart paper, sticking pictures, using coloured sketch pens and the works. One can’t but help laugh that life has gone full circle. People are running around taking print outs, and for once cutting and pasting does not involve ctrl+c and ctrl+v. For a lot of us who have grown up having poor old mum or an aunt do these assignments while we indulged in a game of cricket, this was absolutely unfamiliar territory. Come to think of it, I guess that is the whole purpose of this course, to prepare you to expect the unexpected. Looks like we can expect more such innovative methods to be back in vogue quite soon. Who knows, the next time we might have to resort to the use of shadow puppets or mimes to promote a product.

- Nikhilesh Murthy

Dr. Rocky’s phenomenal session

Lots of pre reads, assignments, presentations, quizzes had already drained me and again a 3 hours lecture of Dr.Rakesh Singh aka Rocky Sir(as he is fondly called) seemed to be the icing on the cake. All the four sections of our Patriots batch had to sit together and our class looked like a big colosseum. Even I, a literal book worm – who can eat a book but never read it- had gone through the pre read, an article on “India on rise since independence’. I hope this says more than enough about the gladiator who was about to enter the colosseum and leave us vanquished with his armour of questions and assignments. While the class was sitting with bated breath and trying to memorize the inflation rate, CRR, SLR, growth rate and other economic concepts, the gladiator entered. The gladiator, our Rocky Sir fitted the collar mike and greeted through the bose speakers. I, trying to look confident and enlightened (Reference Empirical Study: 99.7 percent cases have shown that if you appear confident and see eye to eye with Rocky Sir, you won’t be asked questions), greeted back in chorus with the class.

Our professor started with the introduction to India’s growth rise since independence. India had already tasted the ill effects of foreign interference by East India Company so it went for complete self reliance policy and avoided any foreign help. Imports were discouraged and small scale industries were given full co-operation.’ License Raj’ as it was called, the Indian policies mandated a large scale industry to acquire such a huge number of licenses that it was almost impossible to think of setting up a large scale industry in India. To keep the facts straight 80% of the Indian budget was allocated to small scale industries and 20% for the Large scale ones. Government gave subsidies to bankrupt industries and thus itself was running out of cash. Agriculture was not given it’s due attention. This all led to the 1991 economic crisis.

The lecture touched upon diverse areas related to our economy like the failure of Mysore Sandal soap, Mr. Manmohan Singh’s performance as the finance minister, SIDBI, ENRON, etc. Before I realized 2 hours were over and our Prof was still going great guns with sheer passion, telling each and every detail of our Indian economy. So much knowledge and that too delivered from the horse’s mouth, I couldn’t ask for more.
I was elated to have such an informative session and relieved too because by this time I had realized that there would be no questions asked today. This lecture helped me overcome my two phobias – getting caught by my friends taking notes in the class and fear of falling asleep in a long lecture. Taking notes is not considered as an ‘in thing’ and if a boy is found doing that by his ‘all boys’ group an irreparable damage to public image is assured. Endowed with an entrepreneurial streak, I TOOK THE RISK but I would say it was worth it. Nobody can afford not to jot down so much information which otherwise would take at least 1 month if one tries to find on internet. Moreover never ever in my life I have been awake and so much attentive in a lecture but this spell bounding session just sailed through and the whole class was left asking for more even after 3 hours.

Every sentence uttered in the lecture was packed with data and awakening information. Comparison of Chinese policies with India’s, National Rural Employment Guarantee program of India, Labour laws, 1995 Maraccus agreement, Ganganagar project in Rajasthan and much more was covered in just less than 3 hours. Such was the impact of the lecture that I, a passionate ‘Page 3′ and bollywood news reader switched to economic times right from that day and am still sticking to the same newspaper. Just like one feels like hitting a gym after watching an Arnold Schwarzeneger’s movie I felt like delving deep into economics after this lecture. I am indebted to Rocky Sir for bringing this transformation in me.
A real Prof is the one who can change the attitude of a student for the best and I would say that our reverent Dr. Rakesh Singh possesses that rare quality. The seed of questioning, reasoning, finding answers myself and most importantly where exactly to search for solutions, has now sprouted in me and I will keep watering it with my earnest desire to learn more and more.

One free tip for future Great Lakers: Never ask Rocky Sir to postpone the deadline of an assignment. Chances are that it may get preponed but never extended. So be contended with whatever you have in hand.

Cheers,
Ayush Aswal.

Deserted Springs

Throughout our journey to the village, looking through the window I noticed a vaguely familiar disquiet. I could not put my finger on it, but the emptiness remained palpable. The wind caressed the tip of the green fields and they swayed in obedience, the tall trees with shifting leaves let the sun slip through the maze every now and then. A dog approached us, tail wagging and mouth gaping, eyed us curiously.  

 Few women from the village sat together conversing over tobacco. One woman with an air of authority reached into the man’s pocket- who was nonchalantly staring into the field-and pulled out a stale dark brown dried leaf and poured the crushed tobacco over it, flipped it over, rolled it onto itself and began smoking from the joint.

 A child standing before the dilapidated mud house ran into the fields as if in a mad rush, a woman went past the field balancing a pot on her head. Was it the balance I wondered, for she swayed her hips with a precision worthy of an artist’s admiration! A tractor shot past me and the woman gradually slipped into the muddy darkness.

 ‘Are you here for social work?’ a gentleman enquired curiously. He was wearing a checkered dhoti folded above his knees and a red shirt with collar smudged of dry sweat, his teeth were all brown and paunch overwhelming. He walked us all to his house, and the children followed us as if in a procession. Another gentleman identified himself and addressed us as we all proceeded towards the house. Greenery everywhere around us, the carpet of green stretched along the pathway on either sides neatly punctuated by tall trees here and there. Behind the trees, lied hidden in the dark were the huts. The huts were made of dry wood sticks staked against each other from opposite ends completing a triangle. The roof was laid out by dry grass that covered the entire structure. The slanting sides of the huts seen together in a row on the pathway was so romantic, the lady that stood against one of the hut walls added the last drop of paint on this romantic scene. The painting was done, once and for all, it just stood there completed.

 As we stood before the house, it began raining and the gentleman offered us shelter in his house. Once inside, we all stood against the walls in the hallway to allow a little lamb to pass into the house, the lamb with it’s mincing steps proceeded slowly towards the door. It was pretty dark inside; the gentleman lit a candle and carefully balanced it on a plastic chair. His wife was heating milk, stuffing small chunks of dry wood into the stove as the little lamb worriedly watched. The lamb had a curious way of watching; he would shift his head as if by a jerk to a different posture and fix it there for a while before shifting it to a different angle suddenly. The interludes in the process were the most romantic, where he would stare into the house transfixed as if staring into a vacuum. Contrastingly, his head movements indicated an expectation, of something vague and uncomfortable. He would tap into the ground when he gazed absorbingly; we all stood there and shared his discomfort. I wanted to tell him that it was alright.

 Then, as if in a flash, it all came back to me. It was this time and place, the romantic village that was so overwhelming that I found the city life dull and boring, as if the birds of spring have deserted the place. Here, in the village, it was always springtime.

 Great lakes has offered us all great lakers an opportunity to renounce the barren wastelands of the cities and embrace the romantic atmosphere of the villages.