The Memory Remains...

As I try to survive the ocean of Semester 2 with 16 subjects, some 4 dozen presentations and infinite hours full of tension, I have started to feel like a zombie or say an android. Life is running on a speedway and each day passes as a PowerPoint slide, in a jiffy. But still somehow I am able retain the human within me, thanks to my pals in SITM, whose support and concern acts like a backbone in this otherwise tense life. As I was flipping through the HTML pages of Orkut today I came across this pic which really gave me a ride through the memory lane. Semester 1 has passed some 2 months ago but still is fresh in our minds. That was the time when we all met in this serene campus and promised each other to hold hands as we started our journey to the pinnacle. But gone are those days!!! Now we seldom find any time to crack a joke, to wink an eye or even to bring a smile on our faces. Life is now entangled between Word docs and Excel sheets. The only thing we dream of these days are routers, switches and UTP cables. We know that this hard work only could elevate us to newer heights, but where are those emotions?? Where are the smiles visible prominently on that photograph?? Life is now only about responsibilities, deadlines, managerial jargons and financial terminologies. Has our life got as pale as the pages of The Economic Times??

Well whatever it may be, but still this pic is the best till now in SITM. This was the first time we got together, laughed, gagged and crashed on the floor. Smiles were like raining from heaven and the camaraderie was just exhilarating. We were converted into a bunch of school-kids, trying to fight our way for the last sip of the cola. It seemed as the whole world is for our taking and the whole earth is our playground, as we rolled on the dust laden floor. We were as elated as we have never been in our whole lives. It all felt like a dream!! But we all know that life comes in full circles. Today the assignments and deadlines have overshadowed the cheerfulness and gaiety and have buried them deep within our hearts. But soon there will be time when we'll break away from the cocoon, let our hairs loose and again join the flight to Joy-villa; holding hands, singing songs and partying like animals. We are ready to play any ball that life throws at us because we know sooner or later it would be us who will be calling the shots and having a BLAST!!

Current Mood: Sleepy

Current Song: Sweet Isabel (Enrique Iglesias)

Why MBA ???

"The purpose of liberal education is to make you philosophical enough to accept the fact that you will never make much money."

Well...true to its core!! But when I sit for a brainstorming session with what else but my mind on the other side of midnight, it gives me ambiguous answers. The word MBA itself has lots of meaning which spells nothing but ambiguity. It may be Masters in Business Administration in a much generalised terminology but I am sure for many it stands for "Money Baking Art". What can I say....me and my ambiguous mind, which keeps on playing the Devil's Advocate most of the times. Well talking on the perspective of my holy motherland, India's economy is on a verge of meltdown and we are in despair. Everything is rising let it be unemployment or the recession or the number of candidates, trying their lucks in the mighty race for the B-schools. Well as the stats say, the number of MBA aspirants increased from 2,30,000 in 2007-08 to 2,90,000 in 2008-09, and these figures are massive enough to pop out your eye-balls from the sockets.

Well, between all these tussles with my mind, the main question still remains - Why MBA? Returning to Square One, I ponder, what inspires the huge crowd of aspirants towards the holy fields of Business Management. Is it the lucrative salaries or the challenges of beating the deadlines or the attractive profiles they may get, which can leverage their careers to new heights....whatever it may be, but these questions can land even the most prolific Management Gurus into a state of dilemma. Even if we try to poke our grey cells we would be transported to the times when we attended our GDs and PIs, where the same titanic question was asked to us - 'Why MBA?'. Now these days the coaching institute put a lot of effort to flip the pages of Norman Lewis to come up with the choicest of words in order to fabricate the answers of the clueless aspirants, which reflects only flashy jargons and no quality. But gradually the aspirants are learning to deceive the poor interviewers who try to ask this same colossal question.

To show you its practical implication, lets take you to an interview, where the candidate is yet again caught in the fishnet of the interviewer with the same question. The candidate gasps, tries to loosen his neck-tie, rolls his eyes from one corner of the room to other, stacks up all his bullets, aims and fires - "Sir! That's a pretty good question you have asked. Actually, from the day I was born, I wanted to be a business tycoon. In my school days I was the leader of my NCC troop. I have won many scholarships and donated all to the AIDS Foundation. In my college, I have organised many events and attracted many sponsors. In my company I was the apple of the eyes of my colleagues and manager. I was a great team player and my existence in my project was as important as that of the CEO in the company. And soon I'd be starting a new venture to take the country's economy to the level of the superpowers. That's why MBA, Sir.....that's why MBA!" - and the interviewer is impressed.

Now, take a peek into his mind and you will be treated with a completely different scene, and here is where the deceit part comes into the picture - "Well truly speaking I never knew what management or even engineering is all about. Since childhood the only issues that bothered me were the number of wickets I took or the number of goals I scored. I always aspired to become Govinda with semi clad girls drooling all over me. Then suddenly engineering heppened to me and all my dreams went crashing. I landed up with a job in a software company where my existence was as important as that of a coffee-vending machine. As I was fed up with the peanuts I was earning, I started looking for big bucks and that's when my friends suggested to go for MBA and thus MBA happened to me." - and if you go for a survey, this is what every aspirant's heart would speak out. And this will surely be an eye opener for you.

Well, this is a dark truth that anybody may come face-to-face with, but MBA is lot more that that. India is in a stage of slowdown and the country does need a lot of bright minds to kick-start the economy once again and drive it towards the dream of being a superpower. Each and every sector needs the shoulders of the talented management prodigies to grow in a big way. And this is when the premier Indian B-schools come into play, which puts a lot of blood and sweat to transform these rather clueless aspirants into bright managers and leaders, infusing the principles of Business Management into their veins and showing them the right path towards the nation's glory. So I'd like to thank these prestigious B-schools to let us know the real answer for the colossal question - "Why MBA?".

To Bhilai, With Love

So here I am again, saturated of playing Counter Strike, watching the tits and bits of random movies and abusing my roomie, in front of my entertainment lifeline: my lappy. The Blogger is in front of me with all the hues and shades, gazing at me with sheer expectation that I'd blot it with my scribbles and well, I'll oblige!! So was brainstorming about the matter to write and felt that it's been quite some time I have written something about my holy motherland: Bhilai. Throughout the day I was feeling a bit nostalgic about the days I spent in Bhilai with my parents and once I realised that a tear rolled down my cheek. Shit! I wasn't crying, or was I. Whatever. So I thought to share with you some snippets about Bhilai that haven't changed since I left 3 years ago. And however funny these facts may seem, they are really close to my heart.

Some things that'll never change in Bhilai:

1. With due respects, only here you'll find the uncles talking on their mobile phones on top of their voices as to showcase that, well, 'they've got a mobile set!!', as if the Telecom Revolution has just arrived in Bhilai.

2. In the era of Levi's and Pepe's, only here you'll find every roadside romeo wearing the 'Latesht Ishtreet Phashion' with all the 'Kadhais and Bunaais' on the Jeans and quotes like 'Urbaan Fasheon : Lavi's Geans'.

3. The only way to woo a girl over here is, decorate your 100 CC bike with all the bling-blings, wear silver coloured sunglasses, wrap a 'gamchha' around your neck and go for a ride honking the weird horns. And guess what, the girl is impressed!!

4. Only here you will find hangout places like Civic Center, which remainscrowded each day as it is generally in Kumbh ka Mela and only after staying here for some time you'll realise that 9 out of 10 people know you very well.

5. Only here you'll go out on Valentine's Day, with an expectation to find a girl with whom you'll fall in love, only to realise that the hang-out places are filled with boys, and no species of womankind visible anywhere.

6. Here only two professions are known to the bholi-bhali junta - Engineers and Doctors, and with reference to Engineering only two institutes are known to them, the IIT and the BIT (Bhilai Institute of Technology).

7. The only sector that is growing at a steady pace in Bhilai is the Coaching Class Sector, which is not affected by any recession or the lack of demand and supply, and is now a $ 50 billion market with a growth rate of 157 % annually.

8. Only here you'll find everything from Mama Bhanja ki chaat, Srinath ki pav bhaji, Sharukh ka egg-roll and Deleshious Kulfi and for that all you need is a 50 rupees note in your pocket. And if you have 100 bucks in your pocket you'll feel like buying the whole shop.

9. Only here you'll make true friends in school and as you realise that you've reached college, you'll find the same ol' guys sitting next to you pulling your leg and turning you crazy. And that's the sweetest thing you'll ever encounter. Ah! getting nostalgic again.

10. Only here you'll find life free of tensions, no jamming of roads, no hustle-bustle of crowd, no loneliness, no polluted lungs and minds and relationships that are bound to last forever.

Being out of my hometown for a while, I've realised that may be I've left it physically but my heart is still over there. It doesn't matter, in whichever metro city you are living in, the slow-paced life of Bhilai can beat its fast-life any day!! So as I close my 'An Ode to Bhilai' Chapter, I feel I should take a quick nap now as its already 4 Am and I've to wake up at 7.30 AM. Good Nite Blog!!