And Then There Were None ...

My tribute to the best nineteen folks i have worked with till date and the four best spent days of my life here at IIM-A

A cold winter month, a dog-day afternoon

Empty sights galore, silent lies the tune

No mortal awake, the golden sun passes me by

Am I anxious or elated, rather relieved with a sigh !

Standing here today, the 5th of November not forgot

I travel back in time, four days to the dot

And I see – teeming hundreds, thronging the hallowed hall

Three hundred of the bravest, responding to a recruiter’s call

Like Spartans they come, flocking to the Central field

All charged, some steady – a single resume, their naked shield

Closed doors await, a burden of forty minutes to bear

They are for that instant the foci, all that is they care

And the process repeats, but recruiters they all stay the same

The vanquished Spartan his death awaits – he feels it a mockery of the game

When hark, what is this he sees – an offer comes waltzing by

Unexpected, unseen – a windfall from the sky

The jubilation of glory for this one, it pains me to see

I think of the two hundred ninety nine, yet chained – waiting to be free

But then the day wears on, closer the evening draws

I see them all firm and resolute, none yet clutching at the straws

And it strengthens the resolve, like an oak amidst the greens

Of the twenty who lay hidden, working behind the scenes

For tomorrow will be another day, we know it would be great

Unto us the task is set, we carry this burden of fate

So when I wake up, the glaring sun in my eye

One more offer I say to me, I will not give in without a try

Finally this circle of life and death, it draws towards an end

The fourth day sets down, the last mile before the bend

And so it ends for us, victory approacheth nigh

The last Spartan gladly returns, we celebrate Christmas in July

We now know with all delight, that when the sun shall rise

The competition waits on the starting line, while we bag the prize

The heroics of a batch written in gold, adorn the institute shelves

Of 20 silent shrouds – their work done – they say, we did it ourselves

But for us the moments shared, are not too far and few

No person left unplaced, zero the length of the queue

It feels proud, when asked today – how good, the work was done

We started with three hundred, then in the end There Were None …

The 'SIN'ister Sisters

As i break the 'blog silence' in almost 10 months, I realize how wasted has this time been in under utilizing the space here. A feeling that sinks in when one realizes he/she has run dry of expressing their thoughts through a creative outlet !

Perhaps one of the few real reasons for picking up this course on Developing your Creative Self here at IIM-A is, as I have come to realize, that hidden desire to reignite a passion for writing which slumbers on.

And so follows a sojourn about the seven follies, sisters in crime, that I have indulged in my desire to be where I stand today, leaving behind some of the better times. I think Acedia will be my biggest concern.

Greed is good and Greed is right,

It cuts through, reinforces, and proves men’s might

Greed for life and Greed for love,

Greed in all its forms spread over a heathen cove

Is it a sign of status or simply a vice of mood,

This constant eating of delicacies and Gluttony of food

Withheld from the needy, rotund bellies bulge

The sin of excess, a temptation to over-indulge

A most potent cause of unhappiness, a harbinger it seems

The want of deep and dark desires in each of our dreams

My sorrow for another man’s good, insatiable none the same

A desire to deprive him of it, Envy – it be thy name

From invidiousness flows anger, an uncontrolled feeling of revenge

Not always external, our own inner demons it may avenge

Transgressions born of vengeance, the sin of Wrath breeds rage

Soothe it, appease it, and overcome it through the patience of a sage

The devil’s workshop it be, they say is an empty mind

To neglect and refuse joy, the sin of Sloth is unique in its kind

A willful refusal to work, an invitation to laze around

Aren’t we mortals through insufficiency of love truly bound

But for love to linger as an excess unrestrained

Adultery to incest, deviant thoughts no longer chained

Luxuria of sexual depravity they called it in times long ago

The sin of lechery, through Lust is how we know

Ultimately, a destroyer of men, a liberator of them all

It is Pride that finally goes before a fall

The sin of hubris, of the seven most vile

Transforming Lucifer to Satan, it makes mere mortals senile

The WhACkiest Week Ever ...

Its been a rollicking fortnight here at WIMWI (Henceforth referred to as IIMA or only A, under the copyright act and citations rule provided by the Chicago guide lines and blah blah).

For those trying to figure out the content of the text above, don't bother. I know nothing of it either. That is the first step to a good report here at A. Know nothing till Friday evening 11pm. And by 12:30pm of the next Saturday, you can become a master at writing reports, providing recommendations and finalizing action plans that major company CEOs and VPs are still at a loss to do.

Welcome to the world of WAC - Written Analysis and Communication - a course taught only in A, and which, as the seniors (henceforth referred to as 'tucchhas') and profs both agree, is what makes us Rated-A.

After a warm welcome to the institute by the tucchhas, in a style that only the best 250 of the country can manage to pull off, the entire last week (or rather it was only just this last week that went by - time sure flies fast) has been a grind. From getting a flavor of "Maniac" (MANAC or Managerial Accounting - now re-christened as FRA or Financial Reporting and Accounting to prevent the use of Maniac) to absorbing Wordworth Poetry and Kabir Dohe in a single class of Statistics, I have realized why they call this place the Mecca.

The professors operate at a level their own. Eccentricity is the name of the game and cold calling is only a glance away. While i am sure to flunk FRA and Stats (i have already screwed my 1st quiz and messed up a 14 mark question out of 40) and Economics is all graphed out with demand curves, I seem to have found a glimmer of hope in Managerial Computing (MC) and a HR based course on Individual Dynamics (ID). Atleast two places i can use my core competencies - Excel reports and Global farts. MC however might be the only place on earth where one is required to write Excel functions in the exam rather than a practical based test.

Which leaves me with the most dreaded course on campus. I met a few alumni of the 1988 batch and they were still terrorized to learn that WAC yet existed. A subject that had made their lives miserable and would do so for 20 more batches to follow.

Now WAC is nothing but discussing a case in class - a group of 80 odd students - listening to them fight over trivialities of the case, providing their thoughts, view points, analysis, ideas, solutions. All we need to do is condense a 3 hour class room discussion into a 1000 word report, in the given style, format, header, footer, spacing, font etc etc. I mean how tough would it be to do that right?

Well for most of us it took up the entire of yesterday night. While I managed to doze off by 2:30am, some of the unfortunate ones managed to look at their beds only at 2:30pm today afternoon.

But the fun part is not as much making the report, as the time when we actually end up submitting it. For decades, there has been a ritual termed as the "WAC Run" that happens in the campus on the first submission Saturday of term 1. In those days of yore, when a single printer existed in the library, imagine the chaos when students were rushing to get prints of a 10 page report, all at the same time in the morning - late and dazed.

At this point in time, it was the seniors who used to be up before us, flogging the paths on both sides with cameras in hand, and snapping away at the lost souls who were dashing to submit the reports before the given deadline.

With technology now offering printers in each dorm (unfortunately half of which did not work today, and we had to visit other dorms), the Run has become more or less non-existent. But hats off to tucchhas of Dorm 10 who came up with innovative ideas to maintain the spirit of things. They had all reports confiscated from the fucchhas early morning, and gave them back only 8 minutes from time. A brisk walk from D10 to the class room would require 7minutes. I needn't say more, do I. The flurry, the rush, the tensed faces. Tucchhas in D14 went a step ahead and locked out the juniors in their own rooms till the last minutes. One of them got scarred enough and tried jumping balconies to get out.

All in all it was brilliant experience - especially when you are on the other side.
But once the surprise quizzes and report submissions were behind us, we had a sumptuous lunch and went out for a movie. Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na is an excellent Romantic Comedy, one of those types i liked watching after a long time and one which i recommend for a one time watch. Our drive to just chill out was so high that despite not getting tickets in the first hall, some of which were going as high as 400 buks (and this is not even in black), we tried our luck at another.

And if that was not enough, the dorm tucchhas treated us to a late night dinner with some Hyderabadi Biryani. When we did come back to the campus, there was a "Ramp" party going on to celebrate the first WAC submission. Yet again, the name originates from the dance party that used to happen near the Harvard Steps before we had an auditorium. Unfortunately when you have 300 'boys' dancing on the floor, it is not quite a dance party you want to be in.

So i decided to round off my day (and night) with an hour of the National Sport of Frisbee in the LKP lawns. The game is definitely hard and not easy to play. If ever the laws of motion dynamics and random entropy were to be tested, this was it. But none-the-less after a strenuous display (where i kept standing at one end of the field, playing the passing game), i just crashed out in my room - but not before writing all these memoirs down.

Surely and by far the Whackiest Week ever here at the Theater of Dreams !