Abhi's space..

Choose to be an Optimist

2012-01-23T02:47:00.000+05:30

If there is one most important thing I have learnt in my life, it is indeed the Power of Positive Thinking.

Almost a decade back, my father gave a book to me and forced me to read through every page of it (otherwise I am lazy enough not to read anything) but I must acknowledge that my attitude towards life changed on that particular day. I learnt to live.

But as most of the other things go, it is much difficult to practice Positive Thinking than to preach it. And I have experienced it a number of times in my short life. It is much convenient to choose the option of pessimism over optimism - Human Nature!

Ask it for yourself - What do you choose in your day-to-day life

Do you whine every morning for the work you do at office or do you think of the opportunities to learn new things?

Do you crib about your boss's attitude or do you believe that you control your life?

Do you shout at your subordinates just for the heck of it or do you take time to teach them the right ways?

Do you question your existence from time to time or do you believe the dreams you saw in your school/college days can still be achieved?

... and the list can go on forever..

You got the drift! It is not your fault that you think that ways, this is just how our brain/heart function.

Most of the times, we do not even realize that the choice was there and our subconscious makes the default choice.

Remember the sequence from the Bollywood movie '3 Idiots' where Rancho (Aamir) describes the watchmen incident to Raju (Sharman) and Farhan (Madhavan), and establishes how much we fear and how easily we can fool ourselves out of it (just by saying the words 'Aal izz well', in that case). Well that was not just a stunt in the movie, it actually works.

Clearly the first step is to acknowledge the fact that you always have a choice. Next you have to start recognizing the available choices each time, which believe me - is not going to be as easy as it may sound. 80% of the total problem is inability to identify and recognize the options. But once you know your choices, you know you can choose one and you feel empowered. Believe me, nobody in this will ever let you make decisions unless you yourself are ready to make them.

As Uncle Ben (from Spiderman) would have said "With great power comes great responsibility". While choosing the positive choice would take you places, a conscious negative choice could make things worse. Choose to be an Optimist.

Eventually, when practiced for long, your subconscious also gets trained to make right choices!

Simple funda to make your life beautiful! Just choose to be an Optimist!

"Ever wondered the secret behind smiles of successful people"

Confusion all around!

2011-12-22T12:15:00.002+05:30

Private Post

Yet another leaf in the chaos and uncertainties of Corporate Life

~AbhiTaneja

Another Eurotrip

2011-11-25T01:32:00.001+05:30

Time for another Eurotrip and in last 3 years, what I missed most of all was definitely the company of the most beautiful lady I have ever met. Although it would be difficult to meet up with her this time around but her memories are still pretty much alive. As a matter of fact, for last 2 hours, I am listening to all the most romantic songs, including James Blunt- You are Beautiful, which reminds me of her the most.

I am in Paris from 28 Nov to 1 Dec and in Rome from 1 Dec to 3 Dec.

Clearly much shorter trip than previous one and I dont expect to live that experience anytime in the future as well. Last Eurotrip was an experience of a lifetime!!

Talent-less or Belief-less?

2011-11-02T18:12:00.000+05:30

Yet Another Private post after long time.

Unsuccessful attempt at creating history

2011-10-14T01:00:00.000+05:30

Everybody loves to create a history! .. Right?
More so for good reasons :)

I wanted to, my boss wanted to and there were some others who wanted to! And guess what, this time we thought we even had an idea to make that happen.

The idea obviously had a number of assumptions and to test those hypotheses and assumptions was the first thing, we got on to. We initiated a market research for the purpose and the research findings added to the excitement until this morning, when the world turned upside down. Out of the listed 18 hypothesis, 17 were showing hints of being valid and the overall picture seemed rosy! Everybody was excited! I, for that matter, had even gone to the next level and had started thinking about details on execution of the project!

But that was not what universe wanted :) [ It is damn easy to put all the blame of your failure to universe without feeling bad about it ;) ]

As it turned out, something which we thought was a given information and not an assumption turned out to be incorrect and the whole premise of the new business idea got lost.

Now looking back, it looks silly to have assumed something like that and to have it assumed as a 100% correct information was a blunder.

Anyways, it has reignited the spark of doing something great in the minds of a lot of people and lets hope that most do that.

Lesson of a lifetime- How not to run a business!

2011-09-19T02:58:00.001+05:30

As the cliche goes and as the experience of our lives make us feel on a regular basis- "The life is full of surprises". We like some of these surprises and we hate some of them but no matter what we feel, they always teach us a new lesson in our lives. It is just like the popular paradox that "Information lies in uncertainty"

Disclaimer: I am going to talk about the company I am working with and since a small post like this could have big implications for the company, I will avoid getting into details and would be using pseudonyms at places.

As you guys know that I work for a big giant company and being a giant, it has both its pros and cons. One which can be classified under either is the uncertainty it throws at you. Till a few months back, I was working with the core business of the company and everything was rosy. No matter senior or junior, every individual is given due respect. Almost everybody believe they are contributing to the company and almost everybody take their job seriously. People seem to know what they are doing and they enjoy doing their work. Well, normal day to day cribbing is of course part of any job but overall people seem to like their job. So that was the story till a few months back and then there was a surprise waiting for me - Transferred to one of the new businesses!! Well very clearly I did not like and still do not like it but these last 2 months have been full of observations and have taught me a lot. It has been a brilliant lesson on how not to run a business!

To put it very bluntly, the current business I am working with is in real bad shape. There is clear lack of leadership and lack of clarity in the role business has to fulfill in overall company's strategy. There is lack of clarity in business objectives, in expectations from employees and even the top management looks lost in disarray. Nobody in the company has any clue on why the business was started, why it is still running and what is the line of thought on the business. Agreed that the purpose of the business may not remain constant over the years and may evolve with time but it is important to have a future vision for the business and to map the same with higher objectives of the organisation. Being a product company, you are expected to know atleast answer to following questions-

What is your product?

What is the proposition that you are trying to sell?

Who is your customer (Target Group)?

What is the potential (gap) in the market that you trying to tap?

What is your technological capability for this product / service?

..(many more)..

And most importantly, Why are you doing this business?

The list of these questions would actually be much longer but the most important of all these, is the last question which asks a very basic question on the intent and expectations of the organisation from the business. Unfortunately the current business doesn't have a clear understanding of this intent. People have tried to do various things over the years to build business strategy but in absence of the clarity, this has only harmed the business more. You can draw a parallel to software development- The quality of software would be much better if the development team understands the requirements from the client before developing than to try to match it to the requirements later in the form of patches. Client here is the top management with business team as development team and software is the business itself. Now since the client doesn't understand and can't articulate his/her requirements properly, the business strategy is made in patches and is not efficient eventually.

As a result, it opens up a big box of problems for the business- probably bigger than Pandora's. Till some time back, the focus was limited on the business and so were the investments. Although the business is in focus nowadays, lower confidence in business amongst top management has led to very cautious investments. This is always a catch 22 situation as you cannot develop competencies without investments and investments require long term commitments to the business.

It also suffers a crunch of good human resources and has seen the highest level of attrition against any other business in the organisation. My boss once made a nice comment about a sinking boat in one of his presentations. He asked if it would make more sense to patch a perpetually sinking ship or to build a new one. Picking from there, I think people do have another option, which is to change and board some other ship and when people chose this option it creates further problems with the business as now remaining ones are not sufficient enough to build a new boat. Despite assurances from top management, people will tend to chose changing boat option as they already have lost faith in top management.

A classical case of game theory- Person who leaves improves his payoff; Person who stays loses; If all leave, boat sinks and new boat doesn't get built (Organisational objective fails). If all stay, boat gets built but then others have run far ahead by the time your boat is ready. So to maximise their returns, everybody tries to leave and in doing so, the organisational objective doesn't get met.

Managers are too scared to take any business decisions fearing that any mistake might just fall onto them in future. Whole business has gone into a defensive mode and it is just about passing on blame to others for all the failures than to look into ways to improve and correct the wrongs. We have to realise the fact that at the time of establishing a new business, there has to be some tolerance for the mistakes because if you are not making any mistakes than may be you are not exploiting potential good enough. Moreover, the business being a new business, employees are not even the experts in true sense and they will make certain mistakes in the process.

No offense to the business manager, but I also see a negative approach towards marketing in this place. People see marketing as some kind of magic which can cover for all your inefficiencies and in-capabilities. What these guys fail to understand is that there are some basic requirements any marketing team has- 1) To have a product to sell (Consistency) 2) Strong manufacturing and back-end (Production/Operational capabilities) and 3) Directions on selling strategy (Business Objective).
Unfortunately all the three seem to be missing here!!
It seems like these people are still living in the stone age of marketing - "Production Approach". Just to quote from a discussion with one of the customers recently- The customer had a requirement of higher shelf life of the product than we were offering and the business manager was talking about uselessness of the marketing team if the product could not be sold off within the stipulated life of the product. Customer's comments about consumer preferences were discarded outrightly on account of food safety and blah blah.. I wanted to speak out and clear it up with business manager but obviously you cannot do that in front of a customer. I felt so helpless.
To put it into perspective, we cannot even blame business manager for this naive argument as he has worked throughout his life in a monopolistic business where market is defined by the company itself and marketing has had limited role to play. The problem is that he sees this new business through the same lens.

Interestingly, people currently running the business are skeptic of the business restructuring team, thereby creating a hostile environment in the company. So many times, the business team has been asked not to interact much with the restructuring team and there have been instances of people getting treatments for showing up in related meetings. Well, one thing is absolutely clear - With the current state of affairs, the business is not going anywhere and also, with current state of affairs, there is no rationale to keep the business running. However, there are some brilliant ideas on which we are working at currently and if any of those clicks, it would be a new beginning for this business and it might just redefine the industry as well (Touch wood).

Keeping the fingers crossed. It is either gonna be big or a wrap.

Political Death of a Non-Political Leader

2011-06-13T11:38:00.006+05:30

The post was written long back - 13-Jun-2011 (Published 27-Jul-2011) but somehow I forgot to publish it then and for the same reason, some of the facts and logic may sound uninformed as lots of developments happened post this article.

Disclaimer: I have tried to be neutral on the below topic and not take any sides but otherwise I support Baba Ramdev/Anna Hazare on the case of corruption and black money laundering

Before anything else, let me congratulate Anna Hazare (& civil society) and Baba Ramdev (& his supporters) on believing in Gandhian ideology in 21st century and expecting culprits to take actions against themselves just because someone is on a hunger strike. I don't know if they will be successful or not but I respect them for that and totally support the cause.

While Government's reaction to Anna's anshan was a complete sham, what they did with Baba Ramdev seems worse. Baba's protest started very strong and had put Government in trouble. The impact was likely to be stronger than Anna's protest considering that Anna was a lesser known figure in masses till a few months back while Baba could easily be nominated amongst most influential people in India.

With the public support that Baba had, he probably could have brought a revolution in real sense, which would have atleast impacted the political strength of Congress and their autocratic government. Congress realised it and took a calculated risk to weaken Baba's strength (and popularity.. and following.. and credibility) amongst the masses - first by Lathicharge in Ramlila ground and then by framing him into various tax evasion charges. The Government did a great job at managing the press (most probably by buying them!!) diverting all the attention from multi crores stashed by its ministers in Swiss banks to the number of companies running under the name of Baba's trust - The letter Baba had written to PM and the background searches on Baba's aides.

Didn't the Government knew about the companies of Baba before this incident? Dint they knew the history of Baba's men? Why dint they object to it before? What prompted Lathicharge on peaceful protest in Ramlila ground at midnight? Who takes responsibility of thousands (including women and children) stranded on Delhi roads at 1 o'clock in the night?

All know the answer. All know the reason. But is anybody doing anything about it?

Amidst all this chaos, Government executed their plan well killing Baba's protest efficiently and sending a message to Anna of similar actions against his protests. In the process, what was also killed was Baba's reputation and trust amongst the people.

To put it short-

The start was terrific. Public response was fantastic but then this aint no 1947. Expecting somebody to take action against himself just because someone's gone on a hunger strike sounds a bit outdated. Government probably tried to buy him out - did not work - Baba had to save his reputation. Eventually lost the money, the trust of the followers and the reputation.

Political Death of a Non-Political Leader!

Ek raasta hai zindagi..

2011-05-06T08:47:00.007+05:30

There is an old Shashi Kapoor song-
Ek raasta hai zindagi.. jo tham gaye to kuchh nahin..

B4U music was playing the song this morning.. heard it after a long time and never before I had realised the depth in thoughts behind lyrics of the song! Such a beautiful composition and such a wonderful analogy!!

Just think of life like a highway.. You dont know the end point but what you know is that as much farther you keep on going, the scenery gets better, the climate gets better and it gets more and more enjoyable as you go along. You only have limited time and hence, you try to move faster. From time to time, there are side roads and deviations on the road - You don't know whether it would be a shortcut or a longer one, you also dont know if the journey on that road be more enjoyable or less but still you are faced with a decision to make- whether to take deviation or continue on the same road.

The highway is your life.. the more you slog the more money you can earn (Yes it is about the money most of the times) and more equipped you are to enjoy life.. so you run faster to cover more distance in lesser time..
The deviations are the career choices you make, about which you dont know if those would be right or not but you have to make those decisions.

Most of the times in your life, you strive to do better in your life and you put in efforts to get there. You make sacrifices (of not enjoying the ride in present) believing that better moments would come in the future.

Ye kadam kisi muqaam pe jo tham gaye to kuchh nahin..
Everybody has a different threshold and people set different targets where they would stop on the highway and enjoy the ride. There are small villages on the way where they sing and dance like in Bollywood movies but you skip most of those for the item number by Yana Gupta!! Some settle for Munni some for Sheila while some even for Razia

Nobody knows whats there at the end of the road.. it is the journey that matters not the end.
The fun of life is not in achieving everything but in enjoying and celebrating what you have achieved before you get on to the next milestone!

~~Written in a hurry (in 5 mins).. Needs editing~~
~Sorry if it sounds total arbit! [:P]

Curious Case of 'Stage Fright'

2011-03-21T01:38:00.004+05:30

As I also talked about in a post sometime back, a lot of the stuff I never thought would happen is happening. One learning from this is clearly that never try to plan your life. You will never realise when you took a diversion from the path you chose till you reach yet another landmark, which was not to come your way!

Just to put it on record, although I have made a number of stage appearances for singing as well as public speaking all throughout my life so far (and have a number of certificates and awards to boast of!) but I always had 'stage fright'. At this point of time I cant really explain how I managed nerves at those times but I just did. Be it the assembly news reading or the assembly articles/speeches in school times, the classroom presentations in DAIICT or IIM Calcutta or even the project presentations and knowledge sharing presentations in my first job, I was always nervous performing in front of larger audience thinking about whether I would be able to deliver it upto levels of expectation or not. I may even have messed it up at times. The bottomline is- I was never confident at it but just managed to sail through riding on right amount of practice.

It would probably be too soon to make a declaration that I have overcome that fear but I feel much more confident now and the transformation I have seen in myself over the last year feels amazing. Last few presentations I have made and the kind of articulation/improvisation I have been able to do in those gives me a great satisfaction at personal level. The most important part is the start of the performance- Once the start is on track, there should not be any issues going ahead. I have experienced a different kind of satisfaction after delivering last few presentations and speeches. Recent two meetings where I talked smoothly (with absolutely zero preparation) to external audiences of over 250 and 150 people each, without skipping any beats should support my claims. Not to forget managing the unrest caused by somebody else in one of these meetings - which was also called 'Most uncivilised crowd ever seen' by an uninvolved spectator.

I am sure that if you haven't met me and have known me only through this blog, you would have been carrying a different impression altogether. Same holds true for all those who have sought some advice from me for interviews. It looks so strange that the person who gives gyan to people on public speakings and on how to crack interviews, was not a confident speaker himself! Anyways it was just the same gyan which came to my rescue. Sometimes reading one's own blog helps!! :)

Spoiling the Concepts

2011-03-06T09:30:00.004+05:30

Just like most of the sequel movies have a problem with carrying the legacy of a brilliant concept and a superhit movie, today even the advertisements seem to have fallen into the same trap- Dragging the concept too far.

Two advertisements I am referring to here, in particular, are Vodafone and Idea ads. I have written about the two in my earlier posts as well and I was all praise for the two. Even now I think those were the two brilliant concepts advertisers had come up with but now the new extensions of these seem to drag it too far and end up even spoiling the concept built around the brand.

Vodafone, to start with, brought the brilliant concept of Zoozoos and executed it well to make those imaginary creatures a part of brand identity. It connected so well with the end consumers that I wouldn't be surprised if it fares best amongst all brands in "recall tests". People just loved it. Young girls replaced Barbies and Hannah Montanas with zoozoos. But why did it work so well?

1. Zoozoos were attractive (and not ugly) [Hygiene factor]

2. Zoozoos were cute! [Cute creatures are liked by majority audience- Hygiene factor]

3. Their acts were built around common man theme

4. The communication was simple!! [Most important factor for success of zoozoo campaign]

The whole concept was built around 15-20 second short videos with zoozoos communicating some very simple message - be it consumer responses to e-cards or mobile recharges or be it the festivity of winning something (or being recognised) as in "Man of the Match theme".

Now, if you have seen the current series of zoozoo ads, you would feel the difference. I even doubt if you have noticed the message in the advertisements or even if you have noticed the advertisements at all. There are many problems, as I see, with the current series of ads.

1. The message is too complicated - Hard to understand what is going on

2. Subtitles- Nobody is so interested in your brand / ad that they would go on reading the subtitles!! (I don't understand how come creative agencies with so much of experience came up with the idea of putting subtitles in an ad)

I cant speak of general public on this but I would make an effort of reading subtitles in a short video only in select few cases -

I) If the ad seems too funny and I have a feeling that those subtitles would add to the fun. May be something of Laurel Hardy or Charlie Chaplin sorts!

II) If I am too interested in the brand that I dont wanna miss out on any damn thing about it, in which case, I would expect some meaningful message coming out of those subtitles.

III) If the content is written in a font which is hard to resist- Not so much applicable to subtitles though but something like L-shaped popup banners in middle of cricket matches (Sorry I dont know what it is called and Google is of no rescue this time)

Unfortunately Vodafone ads don't come close to either of these.

3. Common man doesn't relate to it at all and the cuteness is all lost in these overly complex acts.

Similarly for the "Get Idea" campaign-

It started off brilliantly with Abhishek Bachchan series of ads. It was noticed well. There was subtle humour in it and the phrase caught on brilliantly amongst people. The phrase "No idea", per se, is one of the most commonly used phrase and now people have added the "Get Idea" part to associate humour with that, which has definitely brought up a healthy TOM (Top of Mind) recall for the brand. Previous ads of social awareness ("What an Idea" campaign) were also noted well in the people. Amongst the latest campaigns, the "Champions of the World" is a nice campaign to have from a long term point of view, where a few years down the line, Idea can bring all these campaigns together and make a good impactful theme based on its association with legends of the game. As for now, the message "To keep cricket clean" although likely to connect well with Indian public, somehow looks more like a teaser campaign to some better advertisements on the theme (I hope that is the case!). Amidst so many glories is the current fusion of "Get Idea" and "Champions of World" campaigns, which doesn't make a good ad.

Again, it stretches the "Get Idea" theme way too much. I see two major problems with the ads-

1. Unlike other ads in "Get Idea" theme, these ads don't connect with common man. It all looks so superficial while the previous ones cashed in on the "close to realty" factor.

2. "Champions of world" are good cricketers but they might not be good actors. Forget everything else and just listen to the way they say phrases of the central theme -"No Idea" or "Get Idea" and compare it closely to the way Abhishek Bachchan said those words. You will see the difference it makes to the whole advertisement.

When we make a sequel, there are 2 important factors-

1. The novelty factor, enjoyed by first version, is already gone

2. When advertisement campaign was first , creatives had brand communication as topmost priority while in sequels they are burdened with additional responsibility to build creativity into it and the focus is lost to a) the advertisement theme and b) creativity around the theme. Somehow the message, which should be first priority, takes a back seat.

Anyways, I claim no expertise in advertising and above mentioned views are my personal thoughts, you may or may not agree with. Personally, I have been a big fan of advertisements of above two companies and just hoping to see some good advertisements from them.

The Ugly face of reality - Corruption

2011-03-03T00:38:00.004+05:30

Be it sports or the corporate, be it politics or even the education, one thing which is common to all these days is "Corruption".

There was some news going around after I wasted one complete day watching the India-England WC match, which said that Shane 'Octopus' Warne had predicted the result long before the match even started. It could only mean 2 things - 1. Either Octopus gifted its power to Warne before dying or 2. Match was fixed and Shane Warne knew it [which BTW would happen if he himself is involved as well]. Everybody knows and it is irrelevant to comment on the probability of a match ending in a draw but against all odds Mr. Warne had a hunch that it was that one in a billion case and the match is going to end in a tie. Even if you look at the way players played- the field settings, the bowling spots, the batsmen shots and even the high swings in the match - all point to just one thing.

Match fixing is not something new to the cricket and frankly I am not even bothered about that but this match fixing and spot fixing is just another form of the widespread corruption, which is deteorating the value system in the country. People hardly care about its impact on the society and are just focussed on minting money for their own good. Not to offend anybody but the hard truth remains that all of us are responsible for this state of our country (and largely the world).

Hawalas, Cash changing hands, favours for cash are forms which are not new to any of our systems. Still so many deals and hawala cases are pending in various courts. Politicians take money/favours to make changes in policies and obviously cases pertaining to commissions in tenders etc. are often heard of. Corporates are not to ignored either. People try to mint company's money by channeling it to them (through hawala/Cash), without bothering about the ideal corporate approach towards a problem.

All those lectures and classes we hear about "Corporate Governance", "Ethics in Business", "Social Responsibilities" are nothing but sham.

---To be continued--

Feeling sleepy. Will try to complete it tomorrow.

Apologies.

Life mein pehli baar..

2010-12-26T23:44:00.012+05:30

Wow! This is so incredible! Life mein sab kuchh ek baar pehli baar hota hai!

Never in my life I had thought about this. In fact, two such things happened.

1. I participated in a quiz and almost won it

2. I played for some official cricket team, practically captained it and took it till semifinals

To start with, I have hard time rattafy things and that’s why I usually suck at quizzes. I remember last year I wanted to dodge this same quiz last year but had to participate since one of the super-bosses was coming and lemme tell you I had a very hard time trying to finish that one gracefully (read- I had a very hard time saving my ass). Not to forget a passing comment (satire) by Boss when I said “Pass” and he called “Timepass”- cant forget that one! That was really embarrassing.

But, not anymore this time. We (Halla Bol) did not have a great start and Desi Cowboys took the lead in initial few rounds. But then there was the buzzer round and it brought us back in the race. By the second last round, the difference reduced to just 40 points (i.e. 2 right answers) and we were the only 2 teams left in the race. Wow! Amazing feeling. Second last round was print advertisements – Buzzer round- 8 questions. Halla Bol got 4 correct, Desi Cowboys 1 correct. Scoreline read Halla Bol 240, Desi Cowboys 220. Final round – Video Advertisements- Buzzer round- 8 questions- Gotta be tight.

If you really don’t want to spoil the fun of reading this post you would want to skip the italics. Don’t tell me I dint warn you.

So, Final round – Video Advertisements- Buzzer round- 8 questions- Gotta be tight. But wait, I don’t want to win this!! I can’t. You’d call me stupid for this but this is true. I was more afraid of winning this one than losing it and WTF I was leading the chart by 20 points with last 8 questions to go. Well, Desi Cowboys you just have to answer 2 questions correctly. It turns out it was not as simple as that. 2 questions gone, no attempts by Cowboys. It has come down to last 6 questions- either they have to get 2 correct or I have to get 3 wrongs. Cant take any chances – I have to take the initiative here. [:P]. Well as stupid as it sounds, all of it is true. Finally people saw 3 wrongs in next 5 questions and the fate was sealed. They say it right when they say, “You write your own fate” [:)].

So After final round- The score read 1. Desi Cowboys -220, 2. Halla Bol – 210, 3.TMK – 70 and we lost by a thin margin or as put best- almost won it.

Cricket-

Very frankly, going and playing cricket for Jammu branch was not based on cricket skills or something but was rather a mandate set by HR people suggesting that BMs and ABMs have to be in the team. While BM was the captain officially, I practically took charge of everything in the field, right from batting and bowling changes to the field placements and game strategy. It was fun. Although I have never been a great batsman or bowler (or fielder for that matter) but it was an amazing feeling to be in charge of it all and I think I did a fairly good job at it.

Well, unlike other teams who had played together during practice matches, we were seeing each other play for the first time in the match itself. As a result, nobody knew other person’s forte and style- be it batting, bowling or fielding. Infact fielding was the most difficult part. It was very important to save those extra runs by putting right people in right places. More so, when there are 2-3 people to hide in the field. In bowling, as it turns out, we had 6 bowlers on card but only 4 of them could bowl well. Batting was not that big an issue with 3 good batsmen and 2 makeshift batsmen, rest there were people like me to pitch in with a few singles if required. Anyways, why it felt more wonderful was because with a totally new team, it was like figuring out strengths and weaknesses of people with every ball. There were instructions for the bowler and fielding changes with every ball but what stood out for me was the way the whole unit stuck together. It felt like heading a true “TEAM” and the experience was totally beyond the scope of any dictionary.

Guess what, we won the first game and entered the semis for the first time ever. We lost in semis but that’s a totally different story. We could have won but there were 4 things we didn’t do right but let’s not bring those out in public here and lets end it at a positive note. J

In life there are some good experiences some bad but some of them are great because you never expected those in your life. Both the experiences mentioned above qualify for that greatness.

BTW I have a memento for both. Thanks HR guys for that.

The week that was

2010-10-31T20:38:00.004+05:30

It had been a long time since something really happening happened in my life.. but changes are for good.

I was struggling through the earlier part of the last 6 months while getting into the role while the later part was kind of boring with life getting monotonous but the last week or so was sheer brilliant. Not everything was pretty but that was definitely different.

With so many office related activities happening, I did not have any chance of going on tour so then my first tour was planned on 19th Oct.
Got my tickets booked for Jammu on 18th and the time of flight read 1400 hours in place of the usual time 1125 hours. Called up the airline to confirm the flight timings to which they confirmed 1400 hours. Fine. So the next day I went to the office thinking that I would leave the office by around 1200 hours, before I got a call from airlines at 1150 saying that the flight had already departed and I could either reschedule or claim reimbursement. That was weird!

With one day short against the original plan, I had to realign the objectives of my tour. It was interesting to see how different people perceived the process differently and it was further interesting to resolve their issues. It was wonderful meeting people resolving their issues and it felt like I was doing some real job!

The day I was supposed to fly back to Chandigarh, something similar happened as at the time of arrival. This time they called up to inform about early departure of the flight. 1550 flt was scheduled at 1400 hours this time. I called up to confirm the departure time in the morning and well not a big surprise but they themselves were confused about it. Some said 1400 some 1550 while some said it was to fly at 1500 hours. what a chaos that was!

After that it was time for 2 day Bangalore trip. The flight got delayed by 10 mins and the connecting flight had already departed at Mumbai airport. More than 10 people were flying that flight. Then there was one lady who started making an issue about the whole thing, knowing that the best alternate flight is already booked for us.. talking to her I realised she was a Punjabi pop singer-Dolly Guleria and as she told me later in the flight that she was actually going to Bangalore to perform in Vivek Oberoi's wedding! Moreover her residence is less than 100 meters from my residence.

Then there was this fun of meeting old friends- Day1 was for IIMC guys- met Vivek Chatty and Arvind Barny-no planning and total chaos was theme of the evening- went to 3 restaurants before finally having the dinner.

Day 2 was DA-IICT guys- meeting Abhishek Sharma, Saurabh Nandan (Chhotu) and Anand Agarwal- spent for most of the time waiting for Anand while we decided to just chill and relax till Anand arrives. Also met one of the college senior while roaming around in the mall.

Day 3 was again the same set of people but with a difference- this time the venue was chhotu's place. It was amazing and I hope none from my family reads what happened next! (Stupid of me for writing it and then expecting nobody to read it but anyways). It was a full on daru party with Pizza and peanuts and it got as awesome as one can expect. Definitely the most of alcohol I have ever had in one night.

Lucky for me that I could get up in the morning and could catch the flight in time.

To be Continued..

Kuchh yaadein dhundhli si..

2010-07-25T19:17:00.007+05:30

I was browsing through some of the old pics and they served exactly the purpose they are supposed to..

Every image has a story to it.. Kuchh yaadein thi jo dhundhli thi.. kuchh sapne the jo adhoore the.. (Certain blurred memories.. certain incomplete dreams..)

Primarily I was browsing through pics from Denmark visit.. and just going through the Ripley's believe it or not album, I was so touched not because of the pics but for the innumerous memories it brought of the whole Eurotrip and also certain similar incidents from recent past.

1. The dark room pic reminded me of how Avik was terrified and started shouting not to proceed any further and to go back to the entry gate rather. Well i am not boasting that I was not afraid etc etc.. in fact it indeed was pretty scary but nonetheless the way he started shouting, it was indeed an experience! :)

Then further this reminded me of a similar recent incident in Bangalore where it indeed was f**king scary.. went in there with Pooja and forget

about trying to calm her (which I did in case of Avik's incident) I, myself, was so damn scared and those a**h*les kept on increasing the intensity near the exit. Afterwards we tried to make

bakra of Rachit and Shalini but a failed attempt :(

2. It reminded me of the beautiful streams of water in Amsterdam (No connection with the images I saw but that sight was indeed heart touching). On the other hand when I tried recalling other scenic sights, none from Oslo-Bergen or Switzerland came to my mind, although I must admit those were registered as the most beautiful sights to my mind at that time.

3. Third thing I could recall was the incident where Avik slipped on an escalator going up and went up and down rolling on it with the luggage. Avik would not like it but I must tell that was hillarious!

4. was obviously the part which i probably can never forget- The trip to Rovaneimi- all alone! and the Aurora Borealis which looked something like this picture. I so hate myself till date for not having clicked one for myself!

and then it reminded me of how things have turned around in just about a couple of years.. those were the days with no major responsibilities, no pressure (European B-school education was hardly 5% as rigorous as ours in India), with all the free time in the world and extended 3-4 day long weekends.. and NOW!! it is all about handling the current pressure well to minimise the future pressure..6 day a week of office followed by the 7th day of all thinking about the office and the things to get done.. fun element reduced to ZERO and the word vacation even sounds a luxury!

Things do change!

2010-04-29T06:35:00.005+05:30

It is funny how everything is gonna change at the same office!

Something of the sort: Kal jo apne the aaj paraye nazar aate hain..

Till yesterday I was working with the Chandigarh branch of ITC and from today onwards I will be an integral part of the Jammu branch. Both the branches sit at the same location and as would be expected, there is always a tussle between the two with regards to the information sharing, the types of discussions, the typical office politics etc. (aptly put as RG- in common B-school lingo).

My interactions in the office were typcially limited to people from Chandigarh branch with timepass discussions with Jammu junta at times. 80% of my time in the office was spent either at Nikhil Mathur's or Abhinav Tiwari's desk but look at it now. I dont really know how much of that is gonna happen now. Now my work would demand me to interact more with Prince Balwaria than anyone else and for other branch related gupshup with RK and Manan. Nikhil / Abhinav, although in the same office, probably gonna be outsiders now, as were Prince/RK/Manan till yesterday.

Doesn't matter if anyone accepts it or not but no one likes to share most of the branch related talks with someone in competing branch and that too when your boss is so particular about that competition and rather benchmark everything against the branch sitting under the same roof!

Enough chit chat.. now back to sleep

Uncertainty prevails

2010-01-05T23:10:00.005+05:30

Now before I write this one, let me start with a disclaimer:

1. Having not written anything in a while, I have been missing the thrill and fun I get from writing so this post is actually an act of that desperation and hence the quality of post might not really match up to the other posts in this blog.
2. The contents of this post are not 100% true and has flavours of fiction to create some interest of readers

Three years back, I knew I wanted to do an MBA. I had no idea why!, except ofcourse the money.

Two years back, I was in first year of MBA but still had no idea why I was doing it. Nevertheless, I had made up my mind that I was not going to take up a finance job.

One year back, I was almost on the verge of passing out of one of the finest B-schools in India but still had clouds of confusion surrounding the decision on my career field. Finance already being out of the scene, it was primarily between Marketing and Consulting and the final decision was left to the fate.

AND Now, almost a year into my job, I still dont know which field I want to be in. You ask me whether I want to be in SALES or not, I dont know. whether the experience in BRANDing would be any different, I still dont know. whether sales or marketing is the right field for me from a long term point of view, I definitely don't know that.

SO does that mean I havent really progressed from the stage I was in three years back? Well not really. There is indeed a difference.

Three years back I dint know anything about management careers. Two years back I had a fair amount of idea of that but dint really know my level of interest in the fields of management. One year back, I knew what I liked and what I dint but had only a theoretical understanding of the actual job profiles for the fields of management studies. And now when I know the exact work that is done in each of the job profiles (from my personal and from other's experience), I dont really know which one of the all would I like to devote a substantial amount of my life doing.

Worth it!

2009-10-05T03:26:00.004+05:30

I found the post worth copying as well. Worth it!

~njoy

[ Copied without modifications from Femme Fatale ]

There’s a day when you realize it is all worth it.

You awake from the dark, dreary shadows of doubt to realize that this life is beautiful and breathtakingly worth it. All of it.

Every single second. minute. hour. day. week. month. year.

Every single friendship. relationship. goodbye. distance. hello. love.

Every single tear. binge. escape. reaction. suppression. smile. regression.

Every single memory. story. joke. trial. mistake. tribulation. lesson.

It doesn’t come in the form a person, place, or idea. Rather, an elemental eclipse that shakes the soul. An instantaneous shutter that shoots beams of light deep into the pits of the heart. Violet. Navy. Amber. Ivory.

Beams of purpose radiating from the mind. finger tips. ears. stomach. eyes. heart.

A purpose is all you’ve been searching for…and one day it just appears.

The Zoozoo story

2009-06-22T23:46:00.002+05:30

Since the time Vodafone launched their new advertisements featuring Zoozoo, there has been a lot o discussion whether this series of advertisements is going to help Vodafone in any way or not. People have been giving their opinion about this and as expected, some are finicky about the concept. However, I would like to take you a step back and would like you to analyse the competition space in which Vodafone is operating.

Telecom companies in India are competing merely on the positioning and in very few cases, the quality of service (otherwise the services offered and the quality of these services is more or less comparable amongst all the major players including Vodafone, Airtel, Reliance and Idea). In such a scenario, the marketing function boils down to commanding highest mind space in customers and to create an image of the brand which in some way differentiates the brand from the competitor brands (Please remember that each brand might stand for different things despite offering similar services).

An analogy of this phenomenon could be drawn from the well known and well experienced Cola-war. Pepsi and Coca cola spent big fortunes of money for years, trying to sell more of their products where they used a range of concepts ranging from “asking for more” to “associations with cricket” to “synonymous to 5” to “drink of celebration” and many more but were any of these really related to the product? None. The whole concept was just to create an aura around the brand and make any secondary associations to provide some secondary motivations to the public to buy the product.

Now coming back to the telecom story, the current scenario is not pretty much different with each company having equally good infrastructure to provide wide uninterrupted reach and high quality services. Clearly in this market, these telcos have no other option but to take the tested route taken by cola companies. As a result, the Airtel advertisements suggesting uninterrupted connectivity and customizable offers, Aircel advertisements of Pocket Internet, Idea advertisements featuring Abhishek Bachchan and Mumbai Indians, Reliance advertisements featuring Hrithik Roshan and Vodafone’s zoozoos offer the same services to the consumers in different platters.

Basically the concept Vodafone wants you to drive home is the high tech image of Vodafone and by that they would like you to deduce their high capability to provide the services in a more efficient way. Frankly I don’t know how much of that is really getting communicated but Zoozoo have enabled them a higher mind space and higher media coverage for sure. This is a real big transition from the cute Hutch dog and was required for Vodafone to get out of the Hutch frame and create a different place for Vodafone in the minds of the consumer.

How much of this phenomenon will result in higher sales for Vodafone is still questionable but considering the fact that a higher mind space and a distinctive positioning should eventually convert some prospective into customers, I am not very skeptical over the success of these advertisements.

PS: This post was supposed to be posted over a month back but due to various reasons, it could not happen. Although late in terms of timing but I suppose fresh in terms of interpretations and ideas.

Politics: See the big picture

2009-04-20T10:07:00.007+05:30

An alternative title of this post could have been

"The poor state of politics & The politics of poor state"

Dear friends,

Here I am talking about the poor state of politics in the poor state of Uttar Pradesh. I was told that once upon a time UP used to be amongst the envied states for it being rich in resources and hence providing better prospects for business in the area. However, the situation as of now looks just the reverse.

Doesnt matter whether you agree or not but UP is one of the poorest states in the country, has among the worst law and order situation, ranks very high in corruption and strongly infected by regionalism and casteism. Ever since I recall, the state politics has always revolved around caste and nothing else.

Politics = Casteism - Devlopment

Mulayam Singh asking Yadav votes, Mayawati scheduled caste votes and BJP Hindu votes. Congress could not find any places in the voter market with its dubious targetings and always fail to create any impact. All the political parties, no matter whether BJP, Congress, BSP or SP, have always focussed hard on these caste vote banks and barely make any attempts to keep development of the state / nation as their political agenda. Well actually if you belong to UP or have seen UP politics closely, development of the area means building new roads. I remember one of my acquaintances (educationally, socially well-qualified) making a comment around the previous elections, "This time it is almost sure XXXX will win from Agra. See, he has worked really hard. The roads are in good shape. That road from AAAA to BBBB is also new (The road he talked about connects his home to his workplace)". I am not denying the importance of building roads and infrastructure rather I consider it a very important parameter for future growth but this for sure cannot be the only development we talk about.

Think beyond your society, Think National

Another important point to think about in case of elections is about the national stability and overall national growth rather than just focussing over the local ( and is the case, local residential area's growth). I cannot forget the conversation I had with a friend of mine while having a haircut some 6-7 years back. He happened to be a hardcore XXXX fan (probably his family's impact) and so he talked in detail about the local candidate for the XXXX, which happens to be a regional party. My question to him was: "Do you want YYYY (head of party XXXX) to be the prime minister of India? Do you agree with his policies for the state / nation?" and he was so confused since he never thought about that. All he thought (family's influence) was that so and so person from XXXX is standing from Agra and he should win. That's all he knew.

Clearly this person is not a standalone example but the state is more or less same for majority of the voters here.

Focus on policies

As I already mentioned above, very often we just look at the local candidate and caste our vote accordingly but what is far more important is to look at the nation-building policies of the Government-in-making. It is crucial to look where the nation is leading with the new Government. See it is more like a corporate, Company's growth ensures employee's growth (Here, Nation's growth ensuring your state's / city's growth). I agree that the growth might not be equal for all the corners of the country but you have to realise the fact that it is practically impossible to make everyone grow at the same pace. Even in a company not everyone gets the same raise!! Having lived in Kolkata for about 2 years, I can say one thing for sure that the idea of everyone growing at the same pace is absolute crap. The result of such a policy is that you grow at the pace of the weakest participant so all the while where Dhirubhai could have built an entire empire, we make sure Tata doesnt get approved land for Nano.

Learn from past

It is a widely acknowledged fact that our politicians make false promises before election only to speak the same after 5 years and hence, learning from the past activities of the parties (while they were in power) gains enormous importance. Not just about the broken committments but it is also important to look at the change (good or bad) they have brought about to the society in those 5 years. For example, talking from the personal observation and various external researches done on UP politics, it is a fact known to everyone but the EC, police and other related concerned departments that the level of corruption rises manyfold under BSP rule while law and order worsens manyfold under SP rule. I dont really want to take political sides here but the way UP situation has worsened during last 2 (rather 3) state Governments, forces me to write a few lines about the same.

Mayawati came into power and all the IAS, IPS started get trasferred to other places, not because she feared there liaisons with regional gangsters/dons/con-men but because that fetched her lakhs and crores of cash. Mulayam Singh took pledge to resolve that in the next election only to let free all his gundas to loot whatever they want. Police was obviously helpless (and probably involved) in all these acts. Ransoms and Hafta-vasooli became a thing commonplace and in open. So again Mayawati promises to resolve the situation and takes the corruption to the next level. Please do not forget the "gifts" she allegedly "demanded" on her birthday. Don't know what she has in store next!!

Understand the value of your vote. Caste your vote for the right candidate. That's all I say.

---------------------------------------------------------

Offline 1 : The case of Gujarat

I don't know how many of you have visited the state of Gujarat but if you have you must have noted the difference. I stayed in Gujarat for over 4 years and I could not feel more secure anywhere else in the world. The law and order situation is great. There is harmony in the people. The corruption level is minimal.

I will quote you a particular instance from there. While I was in police station for the routine enquiry of my passport, DIG of police called me and my friends to talk about the law and order situation in the city. The special reason why we were called was that all of us belonged to UP and Bihar. He discussed in detail about he goes about doing his work, value of honesty, how he could maintain the law and order, the problems in UP and Bihar and actions required to tackle the problem (and also his take on the Godhra & Ahmedabad incidents but thats a different story altogether)

I am telling you very frankly I could not have been more surprised by the fact that despite such a great law and order situation, this guy was worried about how to improve it further and take it to the next level. Kudos to him.

Another instance: The off-campus hostel was about 400 meters from the back gate of the campus and we never hesitated in walking that distance no matter what time of day or night it was. But once a student was robbed off his mobile and wallet while coming back to the hostel. This was one rare incident but clearly everyone was afraid to walk that distance from now on. The matter was reported at the nearest police station and you wont believe the kind of work police did after that. Police patrol teams made frequent patrols in that area and within 5 days the robber was caught - mobile recovered, all cash recovered and all returned to the owner without an delays. No holding back cash, no holding back mobile phone. Incredible show! (especially considering UP's state of affairs)

Offline 2 : My take on certain UPA and NDA policies

First of all, let me acknowledge that the work done by NDA government for tourism is incredible. I realised it only when I was in France and could see the impact made by Incredible India and India Shining campaigns. I was told be a professor in France that these campaigns have repositioned India (for good) in the eyes of European and a lot of new business started flowing in only after this revamped image of India.

Similarly I was deeply influenced by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, started by NDA Government to improve literacy levels in the country. I do not know the statistics of the impact it made but on a conceptual level it appealed well to me.

The bilateral 123 Nuclear agreement signed with US also seems to me as a promising economic booster to the country, however, I really dont know whom to give the credit for that.

Although the Agricultural loan relief and NREGS are probably 2 very successful policies but on a conceptual level I did not like either of these. NREGS, for it provides an incentive to people not to work and even the kind of work which is being done through these is a ridicule in the name of infrastructure development. Had this labour been used in some real productive work, it could have been a great scheme but the kind of work that I have seen people doing under this scheme doesnt fit anywhere around the expectation levels set by the Government. Moreover, providing unemployment benefits is probably the worst thing to have. I support Governments helping BPL but things like unemployment benefits just kills the will to work among people and that's what I hate the most. I know there will be a lot of criticism and hulla over this point but well thats just what I think.

On the other hand, NDA Government could not impress less in selecting the finance minister. Both Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh looked under-qualified to handle the responsibilities when UPA pitches P. Chidambaram and Manmohan Singh for the same post!

Similarly the alliances made with AIADMK and Ram Vilas Paswan were among the very weak points for NDA and well UPA also scored similar due to presence of Communists (who would oppose just anything good) and Lalus and Mulayams.

P.S.1 : No political biases except my belief of higher importances for national parties over regional parties i.e. national politics should rely more on BJP and Congress than any of the regional parties.

P.S.2 : Names of political parties replaced by XXXX, YYYY etc. deliberately and for obvious reasons.

The saga called IIM Calcutta

2009-03-06T23:05:00.007+05:30

When I recall the same time of year from 2 years back, I was so nervous. I did not know whether I would be able to make it to any good B-school or not. I was so nervous. And now after 2 years, here I am a happy man after graduating (almost, officially 27 days left for convocation) from one of the most premier institute in the country. Happy to have survived all those tensions, nervousness, pressures, a hell lotta rigour and hell lotta fun.

The stay at IIM was not just a yet another experience for me- I learnt a lot from these two years of my life. I met people who are damn smart and those who are damn intelligent and those who are damn creative and those who are damn awesome!! Each individual had something or other special (No claims to superhumans though)

I joined IIM and I was awed by the charm of the brand IIM.
then I was confused by the career options staring at me ahead of IIMs
Then a hatred for financial sector high paying highly regarded jobs (yeah people call it investment banking) followed
I tried to find peace with career options but it grew more and more confusing
Alongside came the most rigourous (and unmentionable) time at IIM (Ref. 'Joker in a pack') and against all the odds, I liked that (and yet was scared of that)
Not long before I started hating yet another of IIM-C tradition (If you have been following this blog for about a year and a half, you know about it)
I was so filled with pessimism. Everything looked so bad.
Started questioning why at all do an MBA?!
The dilemma on career choice further strengthened with summer placements approaching.
Sunil Handa and Mahesh Murthy added more to that by clearing air on doors to entrepreneurship.
Typical suggestiong to go after money first and find out if the field interests me or not rather than going after liking only to find the love was temporary
ignored all those suggestions and did only what i wanted to
Had a big mess-up fight with superior during Summer Internship, which destroyed any chances for PPO if any
At the same time, experienced the true power of power and got addicted to it.
A changed outlook and a changed perspective to things after experiencing that power.
Found love in some of the Term IV courses and the career choice dilemma just disappeared.
Student Exchange Program (STEP) - probably one of the best things that happenend during last 2 years
Amazing 90 days Eurotrip experience
got more emotionally active than ever before and realised the great potential of emotions - also ended up becoming a better "group" guy
learnt a lot from my roommate in France (in the terms that he happened to be just opposite my type and ended up doing certain things much better than me) and discovered the power of randomness
Got a passion to get things done no matter what - and eventually ended up being the only person from IIM Calcutta to travel beyond Arctic circle ;)
Re-invented my happy-go-lucky character after a long time

I was awed
I hated it
I sweated out
I loved it
I admired it
I reinvented myself
I survived it
I IIM Calcutta

This post would not be complete without due credits to people who made this experience worth while -

first, obviously my parents for their amazing support in all I did

second, Bhavesh Manglani - who provided guidance and help at all points of time, as a senior and as a friend

third, all my friends from 43/13, 44/14 and 45/15 batch

fourth, my colleagues at Johnson and Johnson where I interned

fifth, Avik Sarkar- my roommate in France - learnt a lot from him

sixth, friends and colleagues at ESC-Toulouse - shared some good memories with some of them

and not to forget, all my foes and non-well wishers, who tried to make things worse for me all the time, giving me an opportunity to realise and reanalyse my potential and improve

Thank you everyone.

Thanks a lot.

~AbhiTaneja

My crushes

2009-02-14T14:06:00.004+05:30

On the ocassion of V-day, I took out some time (out of my busy and hectic schedule these days) to think back about the crushes I have ever had in my life.. No matter how small, how insignificant, how insane..this is just a small step to recall those instances and pay my due respect to those beautiful days (and beautiful girls) [:P]

Counting these things make no sense but still just for the sake of it..the count is 19 so far (with no success [:P])

~~~~~~~~~~~~Further details are private~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~Usual Private post disclaimers apply~~~~~~~~~

Send in you requests to read the further part of the story, however, screening would be pretty strict in this case [;)]

~AbhiTaneja

Slumdog and the controversies! - My take

2009-01-29T17:10:00.007+05:30

~~Incomplete and Unedited as of now~~

~~Would be updated very soon~~

Slumdog Millionaire has already bagged so many awards internationally and has been acclaimed in every corner of the world but like any other success this one also comes with its share of controversies!

1. Use of the word Slumdog

The controversy came up due to the use of word 'Slumdog' and is pretty much justified. Why should a demeaning word like Slumdog be used to refer to people from a particular strata of society, even if they belong to the poor class living in slums (that doesn't make them dogs!). A translation in Hindi would be like "Gali ka kutta" and you dont say that to anyone you meet from lower strata of society. This is not at all acceptable in India and I believe most (if not all) foreign cultures won't bear any such derogatory remarks. Just because someone is unfortunate to live in those conditions, doesn't mean you call him names.

As far as the description of life of a slum-dweller is concerned, I think the movie tries to project it in true light but the word "Slumdog" is uncalled for.

2. India shining or India whining

The biggest controversy of all. Does the movie reflect a true image of India? Definitely not but is the movie even attempting to do that? - Well I don't know. Yesterday itself I heard some of the sharpest minds in the country debating over the issue and discussing if this should agitate us or not! As in any controversy, the opinion was divided. Some commented, "India is my family and if anyone projects it in poor light, I cannot bear that" while others contested if the movie is even supposed to project a picture of the country at all. "All it projects is the life of a slum-dweller in India. It has nothing to do with the country image as such" I think both the groups had some valid points. The movie is not supposed to proejct the image of the country and neither does it try to do that but on the other hand, the big assumption of people in the world being rational is not true as well. You project slums of Brazil in City of God and people believe that is all Brazil is. Similar being the case with movies like Hotel Rwanda and Blood Diamond.

3. Not the best Indian movie

Going to Oscar, does it mean it is the best Indian movie ever? Personally I dont see a connection but for many this is not the case. There have been hues and cries over this issue (Same comments were heard a few years back when Lagaan was nominated under foreign film category in Oscars). The arguments they propose goes like- no movie ever has gone to Oscars (with counted exceptions), not many have won any big academy prizes, none has been acclaimed so much by International audience, which this movie has got! My question to these people would be - So what exactly do you want? since none of the movies (including good ones) have received much appreciation internationally, should we just stop making movies or should we put a ban on them to appreciate any decent or good Indian movie?!!

People must not forget two things about movies and nominations - 1) Movie watching is a personal experience. Others might not like a movie the same way as you like it. And 2) Movies compete with contemporary movies (across countries but from the same year) to make it to the nomination list and not across years!

Times change - Things change - Movie viewing experience changes - Movie topics change - Audience choice changes!

So it would be unfair to compare lets say Sholay or DDLJ or Deewar with Slumdog millionaire.

And by the way, why is all that jazz about comparing it with older Indian movies? SM is not an Indian movie at all. It is a movie on India (and with Indian actors) by British for Americans.

4. Not the best of Rehman's work

The first reaction I heard to Rehman winning academy award was not a "wow!" but a "why?". The very first comment was - "why give him award for the work which is not so brilliant as his previous masterpieces were? Why didnt he get anything for RDB or Saathiya?" Again the same arguments as above apply.

Apart from the above arguments, one more thing people should focus on here (in case of music) is that appreciating music is very different from appreciating movies. People might take long enough time to appreciate a different genre of music. For an instance, my father doesnt like Rehman music at all and I hate the "ooooonnnnnn" of Reshamiya more than anything in the world! Indian music genre is very different from popular European and American genres and hence, Indians not getting much appreciation for music there is pretty much understandable. How many of you like or have even heard any Japanese song?

5. Had it been the same if an Indian director made this movie?

Well frankly, a fair enough question and I don't think an Indian director would have been able to create such a big hype around the movie. Some of the other Indian movies which have made it to big awards could at best attract a niche audience segment. Meera Nair connected well with foreign audience while Hrishikesh Mukherjee had a huge fan following in India but none of them could match the SM hype. (Please note that I am not comparing HM's or MN's movies with SM, I am just commenting about the global buzz around the movie). This buzz, however, can be justified by the fact that the movie has an international angle to it - as already said, movie on India by British for American and also the fact that he projected only what the international audience wants to see in a movie on a developing country!

6. Role of Marketing in today's cine-world

7. What is Oscars all about?

and many more..

~to be updated very soon

Virus attack!

2009-01-19T04:40:00.004+05:30

Last few days have been really miserable when I had to create a hell lot number of files after an unknown virus attacked my system! [:(] The virus deleted all the files created within last 20 days. It was like my Hard disk time travelled to 20 days back and hence a huge chunk of very crucial data was lost.

To give you an idea of what I lost in all this - The data includes my resumes (with campus lateral placements currently going on), various documents related to the points on the resume, more than 5 project related documents, a number of composed (but not sent) mails, a number of eurotrip related blog posts etc. etc.

So for most of these docments, I had no choice but to rework and create them again. Not an easy thing to do as most of the supporting documents are not there as well !!

Anyways if you have any idea about the virus, do leave a comment or write to me at abhi[dot]taneja[at]gmail[dot]com

You are beautiful!

2009-01-11T12:00:00.006+05:30

This post is my dedication to one of the most beautiful girl I have ever met. She is Nina Flink from Finland and I met her in Toulouse, France on exchange program. She also happened to have come on exchange to the same University and had opted for the same module as I had.

Please do not try to read anything between the lines - there is nothing in there. She is amazingly beautiful and incredibly cute. She is intelligent and has a great sense of humour. She used to be one of the primary motivation to attend the classes there! [:P]

You can check her pics at link

Here is my dedication to her:

And a beautiful song from 1960s (Lyrics with English translation below)

"You're Beautiful"

My life is brilliant.

My love is pure.

I saw an angel.

Of that I'm sure.

She smiled at me on the subway.

She was with another man.

But I won't lose no sleep on that,

'Cause I've got a plan.

You're beautiful. You're beautiful.

You're beautiful, it's true.

I saw your face in a crowded place,

And I don't know what to do,

'Cause I'll never be with you.

Yeah, she caught my eye,

As we walked on by.

She could see from my face that I was Flying high,

And I don't think that I'll see her again,

But we shared a moment that will last till the end.

You're beautiful. You're beautiful.

You're beautiful, it's true.

I saw your face in a crowded place,

And I don't know what to do,

'Cause I'll never be with you.

You're beautiful. You're beautiful.

You're beautiful, it's true.

There must be an angel with a smile on her face,

When she thought up that I should be with you.

But it's time to face the truth,

I will never be with you.

"Ye Chand Sa Roshan Chehra" (Kashmir ki Kali -1964)

ye chaand sa roshan chehara, zulfon ka rang sunehra

(This glowing face like the moon, the gliding locks)

ye jheel si neeli aankhein, koi raaz hai in mein gehra

(These eyes blue like a lake, Within them lies a deep secret)

tareef karun kya us ki, jisne tumhein banaya

(what praise can I offer to the one who created you)

ek cheez qayamat bhi hai logon se suna karte the

(There is such a thing as qayamat, I used to hear from people)

tumhein dekh ke maine mana wo theek kaha karte the

(Upon seeing you, I admitted they used to speak the truth)

hai chal mein teri zalim kuchh aisi ada ka jadoo

(There is, in your mannerism, o merciless, the wizardy of such wrath)

sau baar sambhala dil ko per hoke raha bekabu

(I protected my heart a hundred times, but it was insitently irrepressible)

tareef karun kya uski jisne tumhein banaya

(What praise can I offer to the one who created you)

ye chaand sa roshan chehara, zulfon ka rang sunahra

(This glowing face like the moon, the gliding locks)

ye jheel si neeli aankhein, koi raaz hai in mein gehra

(These eyes blue like a lake, Within them lies a deep secret)

tareef karun kya us ki, jisne tumhein banaya

(what praise can I offer to the one who created you)

har subah kiran ki lali hai rang tere gaalon ka

(The rosiness of morning rays, is the colour of your cheeks)

har shaam ki chadar kali saya hai tere balon ka

(The black veil in every evening is te shadow of your hair)

tu balkhati ek nadiya har mauj teri angdayi

(You are an ever flowing river, every wave is your yawn)

jo in maujon mein dooba usne hi duniya paayi

(The one who drowns in these waves, is the only one who attained joys of the world)

tareef karun kya uski jisne tumhein banaya

(What praise can I offer for the one who created you)

ye chaand sa roshan chehara, zulfon ka rang sunahra

(This glowing face like the moon, the gliding locks)

ye jheel si neeli aankhein, koi raaz hai in mein gehra

(These eyes blue like a lake, Within them lies a deep secret)

tareef karun kya us ki, jisne tumhein banaya

(what praise can I offer to the one who created you)

main khoj mein hoon manzil ki aur manzil paas hai mere

(I am in search of destination and the destination is close to me)

mukhde se hata do anchal ho jayein duur andhere

(Move the veil from your face, for the darkness to wither)

mana ki ye jalwe kar denge mujhe deewana

(I admit that your splendour shall drive me into a frenzy)

jee bhar ke zara main dekhun andaz tera mastana

(Let me appreciate to my heart's content, your intoxicating vanity)

tareef karun kya uski jisne tumhein banaya

(What praise can I offer to the one who created you)

ye chaand sa roshan chehara, zulfon ka rang sunahra

(This glowing face like the moon, the gliding locks)

ye jheel si neeli aankhein, koi raaz hai in mein gehra

(These eyes blue like a lake, Within them lies a deep secret)

tareef karun kya us ki, jisne tumhein banaya

(what praise can I offer to the one who created you)

PS: I used Green to highlight her name because I think she liked green best and also looked best in it. [:)]

EuroTrip Index

2009-01-11T11:56:00.002+05:30

Hello Dear Readers,

Although already very late but I am going to write about some of the incidents which happened during the 3 months stay in Europe. Following is a short list (Not really that short but likely to grow more) of such incidents. The posts would be made in back dates (on the other blog) - the dates when the incident really happened and I would be updating the hyperlinks in this post.

Paris -The Arrival

Sarkar falling of the escalator in Paris

Amsterdam Trip

Sarkar and the wine bottle cork

Sarkar running off before the show

Missed Train # 1

The difference was in the air - Women commoditised

Nice Trip

The beautiful beaches!

Bordeaux Trip

A dead city but a nice beach at Arcachon

Austria Trip

The Ice Caves

The Turku Junta

2 hrs to tour

Budapest Strassbourg Italy Trip

The train to Milan - Reserved to a non-existent seat

2 Euros at Milan station

The time crunch to tour

Rome Spain Portugal Trip

That beautiful girl (on the way Toulouse-Barcelona)

The Aquarium

Give up in Madrid

Scandi Trip

Shopping at the last moment, literally!

Beghar in Paris!

Missed train

Lalla @ Paris

The inefficient ticketing system

IIM A junta Bergen Fjord trip

The snow games at Myrdal

The inefficient ticketing system again!

The Burger King at Oslo

The chaos at Stockholm - 1 (before reservation)

The chaos at Stockholm - 2 (just the time to board cruise)

Meeting with 3 IIMA and Rajat Gupta and Rajatdeep at Helsinki

The Soumolina island

Rovaniemi - Snow all around, -10°C Santa ki zabardasti Got frozen, almost!

Aurora Borealis

Paris Trip

Planning is such a bullshit - Swiss and Belgium

Planning is such a bullshit - Eiffel top

Swiss Trip

The Reservation drama - It always happen in France

Phir se dhokha!

Kapil Barve

Luzern trip and the amazing Lion monument

The Indian couple (Hotel businessman) on the way to Engelberg

The notice at Mt. Titlis

Fell in thigh height Ice @ -16°C at 3300m altitude!

Fell again but this time on hard ground and the chased by a dog!

Meeting with Gaurav and Sushi in Interlaken

Atul Sethi

Free night travel for the first time!

Germany Trip

The sweeper at Frankfurt

Berlin (Tourist office, tours and S-Bahn)

Almost missed another train!

IIMA and IIML junta @ HHL Leipzig

Who says trains in Europe are not delayed?

Prague Trip

The search for hostels

Night life! :P

The Punjabi shopkeeper

ABSINTHE: 2 Litres of Beer, 1 shot of Vodka and 1 shot of Absinthe

The bartender The drunk guy and the free shot of Vodka

Toulouse

Flink Nina

IIMA junta

Sarkar and ek chhoti si love story

Sarkar and beer

PGP Office and the fines!

Aniket - new Indian friend in Toulouse

Yainik and his gang!

~AbhiTaneja

New Year

2009-01-01T10:33:00.004+05:30

This dawn of the new year has arrived with a special message. A message to Never give up. A desire to succeed. A passion for winning. And an inspiration to bring more to life!

So lets start off this year with some outstanding music from the past. The music that stands for Inspiration, Success, Life, Love and a lot more. Lets cherish the past and get ready for the future.

Inspiration

Success

Life

And finally The Love

Let the New Year bring in more success, happiness, love and life to all our lives. Amen!

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T20:01:00.006+05:30

AbhiTaneja wishes a very Happy New Year to all the readers!

Response to a Fan

2008-12-31T04:39:00.006+05:30

Hi, dear Abhishek !!
This to inform you that I have just finished reading all the posts on your blog.... I had sort of became hooked to it during the last few days, but now having completed reading all the posts I feel a bit relived.
hmm.....

My favourite one was Sunil Handa one, but I also liked the couple of posts about 'the zoo' , but didn't actually understand which/what place were you referring as 'the zoo' ??

also thanks for your 'real' insights on IIM-C , from an insider’s point of view.....

You promised in 2007 that more posts on the 'good old days' will follow, which I fail to find !!

One question I will like to ask you, as you have aroused my curiosity, about the post on 'confusion' posted in jan, 2008. You told that you were in confusion between abhi@DA-IICT v/s abhi@IIM-C.... so did you manage to find any solutions for that confusion? I am asking you that, because many people here may be facing same problem after just entering the college , so your experience may come useful to many people...

congrats for your job in Johnson & Johnson ... but you posted ,more than one time earlier, that u didn't want to do the 'zombie' job instead you are determined to become an entrepreneur, what happened suddenly ?

also I want to know the procedure for reading all that private posts ;~)

P.S. : I found your thoughts on Google very true and have some similar experiences with Google, also I have an explanation of your post topping Google search of "duniya ka naara", if you want to know
and thanks for your amazing tips for preparing for cat/gd/pi on your blog
sorry for writing such silly things in your scrapbook(can't resist it), but such outburst occurs when u read too much from a single author in too short time, you get sort of linked to him/her and he/she captures your thought process for a small amount of time.. I would b highly delighted even if u read all this silly outburst, and b highly obliged if you have time to answer even some of my querries/questions !!

------------Another one after a few days-----------

Hey, it's great that you are in France... it should be a wonderful place, but at the same time it's not Britain(whose language, food, structure r all somewhat expected, ) ....... hope you enjoy a great time there !!

About your surprise, well I told you that I used to read very much since I was a kid I was hooked to reading, it was similar effect in your case because..
1) Your use of language was really good ;~)
2) Your thoughts and insights were original as well as different (non-stereotype ! , I liked your idea about TAJ MAHAL in particular, but I don’t think "people we elect" are going to implant such fantastic ideas :~9)
3) You projected/marketed your thoughts well enough
4) "Tips on preparation for cat" acted as an initializer

I am very much pleased to know that u r going to answer all my queries/concerns/thoughts/suggestions;...time doesn't matter

First of all, Thanks for all the appreciation and apologies for taking so much time to respond to it. It is my pleasure to know that you liked some of the posts in this blog and again the expression of surprise that you read more than 100 posts within 2 days!! That is simply incredible!

Now answer to your queries-

Regarding missing posts: Well, it happens a lot of times that you commit yourself to certain posts but then do not find enough time/motivation to complete that. That is particularly strong when you write about past incidents from your own life- You got to feel nostalgic to do justice to the post. But now since you have pointed it out, I will try and complete those posts next time I go nostalgic. :)

Private posts: Sorry buddy but certain posts need discretion. There are certain matters related to one's private life or certain posts related to politics at work places / study places / peer groups etc. which can only be shared with appropriate audience otherwise things might get blown off out of proportion and hence, whether or not to allow someone to read those posts has to be decided case-on-case basis.

Zombie job and enterpreneurship: As you have already gone through the entrepreneurship posts, you know that I was always very motivated with doing something of my own. The spirit still lies intact and I am still game for something challenging. As far as it goes about jobs, probably you mistook every job for "Zombie" job. The Zombie job was a phrase used in particular for Investment banking jobs and I am still very much against those. On the other hand, marketing and consulting jobs are very much different from the investment banking jobs and it would be absolutely inappropriate to treat all these in the same category. Also, I must mention it to avoid any ambiguity that my hatred for finance jobs should not be considered as hatred for the field of finance. I have a lot of respect for the field of finance as such and it is just the finance jobs that I hate - that again more due to the work-life imbalance point of view. Again I would like to repeat what I also mentioned in concerned posts- This is very much a personal disliking - Do not hate it because I hate it - Just make an informed decision.

So as far as venturing out all by myself is concerned, I would surely do that but as of now I am just playing safe and building up strategy to get in there when the time is right.

And lets face it, it takes a lot of guts to sacrifice the security and foray into a territory yet unknown to you. Probably I am scared to take that risk now!

Regarding abhi@DAIICT v/s abhi@IIMC - You know there is this particular thing God has gifted to all the living beings - an automatic ability to adapt. Let me tell you my friend, this ability is nothing but a true gift! It makes things so easier for us humans. [:)]

Well things have changed on that front as well. I hated it initially and that was the time when that particular post came out but it was not very long before I realise strengths of both the lifestyles. And the thing after that was not really difficult - I just had to adopt the positives (better said - the way I wanted it) from both and come up with a lifestyle of my own. You will come across such issues many a time in your life and believe me all you need is a strong will power. You can transform it in any way you want - just got to have will to do that.

On the same lines, I would also like to point out the difference I feel about the IIMs now as compared to the time of posts on 'Why not to join IIMs'. Well, frankly, even as on date I do not feel very great about IIMs but it is not that bad as well. It is just a totally different lifestyle than what I was living and it was probably that change, for which I wasn't really ready then. Now when I look at my friends who joined B-schools last year, yelling at the system and the lifestyle I find it amusing as I was doing the same last year and no longer have that strong reaction! One possible way of explaining this is the cliche - Everything changes with time. Another possible explanation as I mentioned earlier as well is that probably I was not prepared well to experience that huge change when I joined almost 2 years back. Yet another possible explanation could be that I identified my interests here and that totally changed my perception.

"The Zoo" - Thanks for refreshing my memories of "The Zoo" [:)]. While I was working, I used to stay with my friends - Nitesh Luthra, Prashant Tholia and Gaurav Jain and we used to call our place as a zoo. It doesnt take any rocket science to guess why that was so! [:P] Still if you do not get it why it was so, just go through "Awesome Pathetic" once again.

Eurotrip- To tell you frankly, that was an amazing experience. I travelled to 15 countries in 3 months and had many incredible experiences during that. More on this in Eurotrip post.

And finally thanks again for your comments and appreciation.

P.S.1: I was so moved by you passion that I decided to create a full post to answer your queries. I could have rather answered your queries by sending you a personal mail but I like your spirit and please consider this post as my gesture to show appreciation to that!

P.S.2: It feels good to be back!

I am back

2008-12-26T00:25:00.004+05:30

Hello Readers,

Bonjour!

First of all, apologies for not updating the blog for so long.

And now the good news: I am back in India and will be putting up some posts very soon.

You should expect a post on

1. A general post on the life in France

2. Highlights of Eurotrip (on the Eurotrip blog)

3. Sunil Handa is visiting the campus again so you should expect another one of enlightenment posts! (Run a Google Search on Sunil Handa to understand what that meant)

4. Long due response to one of the fan's queries

5. And a dedication to a very beautiful girl (Reading between the lines wont help in this case)

Merci

Au revoir!

AbhiTaneja

Eurotrip has started

2008-09-24T23:27:00.005+05:30

Update 2:
Hello Dear Readers,
I have created a new blog for the Eurotrip related posts. The address is : http://abhitaneja-eurotrip.blogspot.com
I would start posting some interesting incidents over there soon.

Eurotrip update:
After the last update I have visited Austria, Hungary and Italy and was planning for the scandi trip this weekend. However, the scandi trip has got postponed again (3rd time postponed now). As of now, I myself dont know which country I would be in tomorrow morning. :)

Till sometime back my GTalk status said:
"1 month = 4 Weekends = 5 Countries = 13 cities! A perfect Eurotrip it is! :)"

****************************************************************************
Update 1:
Too busy traveling.. hardly finding any time to update the blog! Having too much fun..

The classes schedule here is so well designed for people to make these trips over the weekend. Well the weekend here could be anything from 3 days to 13 days!
Visited Toulouse, Paris, Amsterdam, Nice, Cannes, Bordeaux, Arcachon so far.
Leaving tomorrow for Austria and Hungary.

Next update on Monday or Tuesday
****************************************************************************

Shed your fears

2008-08-07T13:17:00.001+05:30

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves; Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presense automatically liberates others.

By Marianne Williamson

Rock On!

2008-07-29T16:22:00.000+05:30

Yet another brilliant song!
[Song from Movie: Rock On(2008)]

Rock On! - Hai ye waqt ka ishara..

Farhan Akhtar ventures into the domain of acting and singing as well with the movie and frankly, he is not that bad a singer as I had thought of [:)]

Javed Akhtar once again proved his expertise in writing songs..A song well written.. true to the spirit of the theme..The perfect mix of energy and fun in the music and proper justice to the song by Farhan Akhtar and here we have a treat for our ears, minds and souls.

Beautiful lyrics..Apt music..Well sung
Incredible song!

Dil kya kehta hai mera..
Kya main bataoon
Tum ye samjhoge shaayad..
Main pagal hoon

Dil kya kehta hai mera..
Kya main bataoon
Tum ye samjhoge shaayad..
Main pagal hoon

Dil karta hai TV tower pe..
Main chad jaoon
Chilla chilla ke main ye..
Sabse kehdoon

Rock on!!
Hai ye waqt ka ishaara..
Rock on!!
Har lamha pukaara..
Rock on!!
Yuheen dekhta hai kya tu..
Rock on!!
Zindagi millegi na dubaara…

Dil karta hai sadkon par zor se gaoon..
Sab apne apne ghar ki khidki kholen..
Phir main aise josheelay geet sunaoon..
Mere geeton ko sunke sab ye bolen..

Rock on!!
Hai ye waqt ka ishaara..
Rock on!!
Har lamha pukaara..
Rock on!!
Yuheen dekhta hai kya tu..
Rock on!!
Zindagi millegi na dubaara…

Jaise jeene ko dil chahe.. jee waise tu
Meri toh hai bas ye raaye ki..
Apne jitne bhi armaan hain poore karle tu

Rock on!!
Hai ye waqt ka ishaara..
Rock on!!
Har lamha pukaara..
Rock on!!
Yuheen dekhta hai kya tu..
Rock on!!
Zindagi millegi na dubaara…

Rock on!!
Hai ye waqt ka ishaara..
Rock on!!
Har lamha pukaara..
Rock on!!
Yuheen dekhta hai kya tu..
Rock on!!
Zindagi millegi na dubaara…

Disappointment strikes yet again!

2008-07-28T14:24:00.003+05:30

Well the disappointment strikes yet again..
After enjoying a Google Rank of 3 for over 3 months, today I was shocked to see the Google Rank Button showing a 0 for this space..Not that I care about that but still it looks gud to have higher page rank..

Anyways it doesnt matter..
Abhi's space remains Abhi's space
I remain I

100 Billion Dollars

2008-07-25T22:44:00.005+05:30

What would you do if you have 100bn Dollars?
"I will buy a loaf of bread"
Surprised? or does it look stupid?
Well it is not if you are in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe Govt. has recently introduced a Z$100bn note in response to surprising 2,200,000% inflation. It must be noted over here that Zimbabwe had introduced a Z$10mn note early this year and then Z$50mn three months after that.
Although the number 100billion in itself looks huge but the amount is meagerly enough to buy a loaf of bread or to travel a few kilometers. As per a statement quoted on BBC News, the amount is less than one fifth of what is required to meet daily expenses.

Amongst so many surprises, it really is not very surprising to note that the worth of Z$100bn is just a few US Dollars!

Well actually all this reminds me of the "MoneyKumar" comic strip released by Reserve Bank of India to spread basic awareness about the money market dynamics and how adjusting various factors could impact economy in positive or negative manner. Zimbabwe once used to be one of the richest states in Africa but the condition today is terrible (with inflation figure in 7 digits).
I dont know why it happened and why their monetary and fiscal regulatory bodies could not handle it. I will try to explore that and then may be another post will be dedicated to the unbelievable stunt by Zimbabwaen economy.

Note: News link at BBC

Century Scored

2008-07-22T18:10:00.005+05:30

It is said that the most difficult time to bat is when you are at 99. Every batsmen strive to get that extra run. Even the feeling of scoring that single off the next ball is enough to keep you on the toes. The Feeling, The Excitement, The Pleasure on reaching the third digit number is unexplainable - You have got to feel it.

Well with that background, I feel extremely delighted to announce that
THIS IS 100th POST ON THIS BLOG

It has been a long time and frankly I never realised that I could reach the 100 post mark so fast. I strated this blog in April or May of 2005 but became active only in April of 2007. Last 14 months have seen me writing all kind of arbit stuff over here.. At times I made some sense.. at times it was all senseless.

Just to take you through the timeline once:
April 2005:
Created login and posted a "Coming Soon" post

September 2005:
First Post - An interesting article "God and Me"

April 2007:
First self written Post - written out of sheer frustration on 20th April while waiting for CAT results

April 2007:
Used this space to vent out my frustration

May 2007:
Moved on to better topics (with Zoo and Awesome Pathetic being my favourites) :P

July 2007:
"June mein hum Joka aaye" - IIM Calcutta, MBA added to the topics

August 2007:
was nostalgic for various unknown reasons!!

September 2007:
Arbitgiri, Gyaan started pouring in on the blog. Movies, Cricket and a lot more.

October 2007 - December 2007:
Movies got into mainstream.
Foundation of Cinema Garage.
Major aesthetic changes. [:-)]

Wrote the all time hit post "Enlightenment by Prof. Sunil Handa"

January 2008:
New Year arrived and Gyaan poured in like anything

February - June 2008:
Busy with Summer Internship.. could not write anything despite of having a lot to write

July 2008:
Marked the comeback with this being the 7th post and another 2 on hold!

Wow! These numbers looks really good
14 months
100 Posts (including 15 Private posts)
5600+ Page views
2800+ visitors
260+ hours of Total Page viewing!

Approx. pageviews per day = 5620/420 = 13.38
Average Pageviews per post = 5620/88 = 63.86

And as you might be aware of- I never publicised the link through any channels! Whooa.. wondering what would have been the case had I promoted it ever.. :)

Thanks to all the readers for visiting Abhi's Space.

Congrats to me

2008-07-09T12:00:00.006+05:30

I am surprised!

I was just browsing through the navigation of visitors on this blog and to my surprise there were repeated visits with Google search on "Sunil Handa", "Mahesh Murthy" and "Duniya ka naara". Apparently the post on Sunil Handa's visit to IIM Calcutta also happens to be the most popular post on the blog. While I was still wondering about the reasons and all, a Google search on "Sunil Handa" revealed the secret.
Try it yourself. Go to www.google.co.in. Type Sunil Handa (with quotes or without quotes) and hit Search button.
Do a similar exercise for "Duniya ka naara" and "Mahesh Murthy" and see the results.
Abhi's Space is the FIRST result on Google Web Search for Sunil Handa and Duniya ka naara while it appeared on second page for search string Mahesh Murthy. (See attached screenshots)

Not to forget the FIRST page(and first result) appearances for various search strings on Google Blog Search, which apparently looks insignificant compared to this current finding. Other prominent visits through Google search come from search strings related to CAT GD-PI preparation (where again Google Web search honours me by keeping the blog on first page)

SS1: Web Search result for "Sunil Handa"

SS2: Google Web search result for "Duniya ka naara"

SS3: Google Web search result for "Mahesh Murthy"

Of these three, the fact that Abhi's Space is first result on searching Duniya ka naara excites me most. Reason: With a large number of websites dedicated to Bollywood movies (including professional websites for Music reviews, Music downloads, Movie reviews etc. and not to forget Youtube), it was beyond my imagination to have thought of a result ranking above them. Realty is larger than Imagination here. I am impressed!

Sports diary- Sunday Jun 6,2008

2008-07-07T15:58:00.000+05:30

Green is not always Grass..It can be clay!

OK I know that is a stupid statement but this is what can be said after the 4hr 25min long battle between the two greats of present time - Roger Federer (Champion on Grass & ATP Rank 1) v/s Rafael Nadal (Champion on Clay ATP Rank2). There was hardly anything more to expect of the Wimbledon final when the stage was set for match between the two champions but then the match showed why exactly was this an ideal stage for the Wimbledon final.
With both these players on the court, it was never easy to chose a winner. People supported one over other for sheer favouritism and then there were people like me, who had to take a random pick to chose the player to support. Most of the choices were made randomly.
Looking at the relatively poor show by Feddie in first two sets, I decided to be on Rafa's side for this match and finally he proved me right.

After having lost first two sets, it was getting really tough for Feddie to make a comeback but then he is known to be a fighter and it seems rain interruption also helped him get his rhythm back. Feddie came back strongly after the rains and it was a tough fight between the two legends. Feddie appeared to be in good touch but Nadal showed good resistance and the third set went into a tie-breaker. Feddie came back strongly and won the tie-breaker at 5. Fourth set was no different- Feddie broke Rafa's service in the very next game after Rafa broke his and this set also moved into a tie-breaker. Feddie again clinched the tie-breaker making the game to move into fifth set. The scores were- 4-6 4-6 7-6 7-6.
The game doesnt get better than this- The two players were neck to neck in the fifth set, with no one able to break other person's serve. All they needed was to break other's serve once and save his next one. There were no signs of either of two giving up before Rafa broke Feddie in 15th game of 5th set indicating some prospects of game ending soon.

Anyways I am bored of writing this stuff.. I dont know why the hell I am writing this but anyways, the game was definitely interesting and deserved a post on My Space (but this boring! I did not anticipate that)

Also not to forget, Ferrari drivers disappointed in British GP while Indian cricketers repeated the history by failing in the final after putting a good show in league matches.

Thodi Game-Theory Thoda Magic (2008)

2008-07-04T04:31:00.005+05:30

Oh My Goodness!
Now what the hell is this?

Even after having seen one of these movies, I had no clue that these were two different movies altogether. I saw the name different at two places and neglected that for a possible typo but after having seen the movie and when I could not find any of the songs, I was confused. A basic search on Google revealed something that made me jump out of my chair!!

Jun 27, 2008 - Two new movies were released.
One from Yash Raj Films - Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic (TPTM)
and the other one from director Anand Rai - Thodi Life Thoda Magic (TLTM)

Should I call this a case of game theory in practice?
Consider the scenario: Two directors have decided upon the name of their movies as TPTM and TLTM and conflict regarding who came up with the name could not be resolved. Now the next issue in context is obviously the advertisements, promotions and the release date of the movie.

YRF being the bigger banner could get a larger share in the media and the other group did not contest it much (Not a dominant strategy for unknown banner to spend high on advertisements). So the more important factor here comes out to be release date.

Consider the case when Movie 1 comes before Movie 2. The name of these movies is so much similar that the second movie would be lost in the identity of the first one. If the first one is a success, it could draw some public or alternatively could lose market since people might confuse it for the first one, which they have already seen. On the other hand, if the first one is a flop, then there would be hardly any public knowing about the second one and it would pay for the sins of other one. So the payoff matrix if we see comes out to be negative if you move late, positive if you move first and unpredictable if you move along.
As a result, both the players would try to move before the other player but since it is like a game of simultaneous move where all the information is shared between the two players, second player would know as soon as first player tries to release it. This would lead to a further early move from the second player.

Clearly the dominant strategy for both the players comes when they move along, i.e. release the movie together, which is exactly what they did to avoid heavy negative payoffs involved with late release.

How much did it pay for each of the players and what is the effect of others performance on each movie would be known only by the end of this week or may be by the next week but in any case, it is really confusing and misguiding for the moviegoers. Moviegoers will have tough time in deciding which of the magic they want to see - Life or Love is the choice!

Yash Raj Films & 7 unanimous "Yes"

2008-07-04T04:09:00.007+05:30

Will Yash Raj cast Saif Ali Khan in their next film?
Yes

Will Yash Raj cast Rani Mukherjee in their next film?
Yes

Will next Yash Raj Films(YRF) movie be on the same theme (+-5%)?
Yes

Will next YRF movie have a semi-nude/sex scene or an item song with Saif in it?
Yes

Will next YRF movie again project Saif as a rich person?
Yes

Will Saif Ali Khan use same outfit in the next movie?
Yes

Will next YRF movie still be a hit?
Yes

They proved me wrong

2008-07-03T20:45:00.004+05:30

Just a few days back, I thought it was almost over. I was almost free but then they again proved me wrong!

I do not know in detail about a lot of companies but I feel there are not many companies as poorly managed as Lenovo India - a company where people at senior levels back off their words without any signs of shame - where ethics is just another fancy word to be used in some of the company meetings for junior staff - where the idea of selling is just to get the client hooked once and then he may regret that for years. Now I am writing all this based on my experience with the company. The company may object to this content on grounds of defaming them but this is all what I can say after having seen their attitude in last few days/weeks.

The laptop delivery (for IIM Bulk deal) scheduled in third week of June has not yet been made and there are hardly any signs suggesting that to happen in next few days. Regarding the status of shipment, one could draw an analogy to Indian Railways. Every day it got delayed by further two days and the current date I have been informed is still six days away. Mind you the original mutually agreed date of delivery has passed 12 days back! Also to note that the order was placed 40 days (~6weeks back)

I dont remember having been in so much pressure and tension in a while. Although last few days at summer internship were also trying but still these few days have been much more pain. And the worst part is that there is nothing much I can do!

Anyways this post has helped me vent out some of that frustration and hopefully I can manage to read the case for tomorrow's class now.

but Pappu cant dance saala!

2008-07-03T20:05:00.002+05:30

Before I start - This post is NOT about the song from the movie "Jaane tu ya jaane na"
I would classify this post as a very strange and stupid post.
Stupid - for I am making a fool of myself by making this public
Strange - coz I am doing it knowingly

Anyways who the hell cares! [:)]

The post is about my stupidity and related to the fact that you have already guessed by now - I do not know how to dance [:-P]. It was the Freshers party at the campus and I was dancing to the tunes of JBS (making full use of crowd to remain unnoticed). Just happened to get into a girls group. They knew me and I knew them so no issues as such but then I cant dance properly. I can dance only when there is enough crowd to make my stupid dance go unnoticed. Anyways we started to dance and the girl was feeling kind of embarrassed (Predictable!). It was not difficult to make that out by looking at her face. I commented, "I do not know how to dance" and the response was prompt, "Yeah you really dont know that" [:D]. Her friend (who was dancing with her earlier) came and asked me to stop hitting on her [:O] Now that was strange as I had no intentions like that at all [:)]. Anyways I parted from the group but could not resist laughing at it and mentioning it over here. It has already been a week since then but I just cant let this incident go off my mind. [:P]
(This is just an excerpt from the incident but enough to make fun of myself [:-P])

BTW on a serious note...was I hitting on her? [:D] No way! I cannot spare(or rather waste) either of the two things a girl would demand - Time and money.
O man! that incident was so much fun.

No offensive replies plz. Offensive comments would be deleted [;)]
Name of both the girls not disclosed knowingly as they might not feel comfortable with that. People to keep that in mind before writing comments, if any.
And yeah! sorry for so many smileys but that incident was so much fun that could not resist adding smileys to it. Sometimes some situations could get so funny [:)]

Arbit ramblings

2008-06-29T17:27:00.003+05:30

People get frustrated irritated agitated in high pressure high workload but today I am really frustrated and irritated coz I have nothing to do at all.

So these are some ARBIT RAMBLINGS OUT OF FRUTRATION AND IRRITATION OF HAVING NO WORK AT ALL.

I was extremely busy till a day back when I was dealing with Lenovo with regards to laptop bulk deal, was highly involved in IT (something which cannot be mentioned on public forum for certain protocol issues) and had a part of my attention focussed on another thing (which again cannot be mentioned but for personal reasons) and here I am today- total Vella- nothing to do at all.
Company dealing not yet over completely but kind of over - The $1 billion deal is almost through.
IT(second point mentioned above) is over and efforts in that (third point mentioned above) seem futile.

O man! I was so addicted to high workload high pressure - something to keep me busy all the time and here I am feeling totally lost today!

So what should I do now??
Probably could have called someone but these f**king Airtel guys have barred outgoing calls on my phone.
I have been trying to watch movies to keep myself engaged but that again seems useless as none of the 5 movies I tried watching since this morning could run for more than 10 mins.
Party - Not really in a mood for that. No booze today.

I think just hanging around in the city might just be a good idea so the search for someone to go out with begins now..

Apologies

2008-06-19T14:50:00.004+05:30

My sincere apology to all the readers for not having updated blog for so long.
I have had enough content to write and frankly, happenings in my life have been more than interesting in past 2 months but due to insufficient connectivity, busy schedules and my laziness, I could not update you on any of those. Those staying with me all this time have seen all that and would probably agree with me.

Anyways, I would be active in a few days time now. I will try to put censored versions of all those happenings and other arbit stuff.

Thanks for your patience etc etc

Congratulations!

2008-05-02T14:37:00.003+05:30

Hearty congratulations to all those who made it to IIMs this time.

Looking forward to meet IIM Cal Junta soon.

Jashn - e - Bahara

2008-02-22T02:35:00.003+05:30

Beautiful Song from the movie Jodha Akbar:
Good lyrics, Good music and Well sung

Kehne ko Jashn-e-bahara hai
Ishq yeh dekhke hairaan hai
Kehne ko Jashn-e-bahara hai
Ishq yeh dekhke hairaan hai

Phool se khusboo khafa khafa hai gulshan mein
Chupa hai koi ranj fiza ki chilman mein
Sare sehmein nazare hain
Soye soye vaqt ke dhare hain
Aur dil mein koi khoye si baatein hain

Ooooo hooooo…

Kehne ko Jashn-e-bahara hai
Ishq yeh dekhke hairaan hai

Phool se khusboo khafa khafa hai gulshan mein
Chupa hai koi ranj fiza ki chilman mein

Kaise kahen kya hai sitam
Sochte hai ab yeh hum
Koi kaise kahen woh hai ya nahi humare

Karte to hai saath safar
Faasle hain phir bhi magar
Jaise milte nahi kisi dariya ke do kinare

Pass hain phir bhi paas nahi
Humko yeh gum raas nahi
Seeshe ki ek diware hai jaise darmiya

Sare sehmein nazare hain
Soye soye vaqt ke dhare hain
Aur dil mein koi khoye si baatein hain

Oooo hoooo..

Kehne ko Jashn-e-bahara hai
Ishq yeh dekhke hairaan hai

Phool se khusboo khafa khafa hai gulshan mein
Chupa hai koi ranj fiza ki chilman mein

Hum ne jo tha nagma suna
Dil ne tha usko chuna
Yeh dastaan humein vaqt ne kaise sunai

Hum jo agar hai gumgee
Woh bhi udhar khush to nahi
Mulakato mein hai jaise ghul si gai tanhai

Milke bhi hum milte nahi
Khilke bhi gul khilte nahi
Aankhon mein hai baharein dil mein khiza

Sare sehmein nazare hain
Soye soye vaqt ke dhare hain
Aur dil mein koi khoye si baatein hain

oooo hoo

Kehne ko Jashan-e-bahara hai
Ishq yeh dekhke hairaan hai

Phool se khusboo khafa khafa hai gulshan mein
Chupa hai koi ranj fiza ki chilman mein

Irony - YouTube incident

2008-02-09T14:33:00.000+05:30

~~Private Post~~

If you are eager to read, leave me a message.

IIMC - XLRI meet

2008-02-03T14:05:00.000+05:30

~~Private Post~~

If you are eager to read, leave me a message.

Preparation for GD/PI - Tips (2)

2008-01-26T20:07:00.000+05:30

This post was supposed to be out about two weeks back but the extremely hectic and busy schedule forced me to postpone it to this date.

Step 3: Content
So after you are thorough with Steps 1 and 2(as described in first post of this series), you are almost ready for the personals part of the interview and now need to focus on building content for the talks.

At this point, I would like you to think over it for a moment - What is it that you "must" know? What is it that you "should" know? and What is it that you "may/may not" know to talk sensible in a discussion or an interview?

Clearly there are no defined rules for preparing for content. Nobody knows what is it that you will be asked in an interview so the scope of topics is unbounded and limitless. If we can classify the topics in above three categories, we can save sometime by not doing things which are less important. We can prioritise must dos over should dos.

Again the classification also has no defined rules. Only a general set of guidelines. For an example, there are a few things that are more likely to be asked in an interview like your work experience, some recent happenings in the related industry, some theory related to what you have done etc. Similarly topics from your UG which may not be directly related to your field of work or topics from your desired field of specialisation may be asked and then you have topics which are remotely related to you or are highly technical to the field of your UG etc., which are not very likely to be asked. Based on my experience and observations, I can prescribe you an order of readings, which I strongly suggest you to change to adopt to your particular case. I suggest you follow 3-1-4-5-6-2 or 3-1-4-5-2-6 (where 1=Newspaper, 2=Magazine, 3= Work-ex related, 4=Academics, 5=Interview experiences, 6=PG articles)

1. Read Newspapers properly
Spend atleast 2 hours daily to those 20 odd yellow pages. I can tell you those will come really handy in GDs and PIs. You may go through Economic Times or Business Standard for this purpose. Business Line and Financial Express would be a bit too much for new readers so you may avoid those at this stage. Business page of TOI is good as well but not sufficient at all. Do not waste much time on Sports page. You may like to refer to editorials to gain new perspectives on the topics of discussion, which may be useful for Group Discussions but otherwise the knowledge gain there is very limited.
Note that this is a daily activity and above given order for this activity is just to represent its importance.

2. Magazines
Scan through a few magazines of your choice(General/Business) to get an idea of what's going around in the world. Dont spend too much time on magazines. The purpose is to be aware of national/global happenings.

3. Work Experience
Arguably one of the most important component of your Personal Interview. Since you are already doing the job, I'll assume you know how to do it but for the purpose of interview, you are expected to know the theory behind those things as well. Also, in case of large teams working on a project, you can't get away by saying that others in my team were looking up this issue and I was not involved(unless very domain specific issues are there). Now since you are aspiring to be a management student, you must have been thinking about the practical applications and new innovative uses of the project you are doing. If not then start thinking as you are expected to be knowing that if you are genuinely motivated to get into B-school.

4. Academics
If I say, preparing academics is a nightmare for people in jobs, it would not be an overstatement. It must be noted down that preparing academics well is must for a fresher(a person with no prior work experience) and the importance of knowing academics well goes down with the number of years of experience. Although it must not be taken as a sacrosanct statement for there have been instances where candidates with 6-7 years of experience had their interviews totally based on their academic courses.
While preparing for academics you may like to prepare well for 1-2 interesting(*interesting in managerial language is generally interpreted as something of practical use and yet not very popular in people) courses and the courses related to your field of experience. To take an example, a person with IT experience in 'development' should know the concepts of structured programming and object oriented programming well. You know which courses can be related to your field of work, so give high importance to those. In that sense, acads and work experience are not mutually exclusive.
Another very important point to note over here is that interviewer's perception of your field of work may not exactly match the actual work you do. To save your face in such cases, it would be good if you can get some basic understanding of fields of those possible wrong interpretations. To give an example, I worked as mobile solutions developer but during many interviews, interviewer interpreted mobile solutions as embedded programming. They are different.

Basically, in academics the target is to do certain related courses well and a basic understanding of a lot of courses.
A special tip for people with B.Tech./B.E. in communications or related field(Electronics/Electricals/ICT) - Prepare well for course on Radio Frequency and Radio waves. You will find a lot of interviewers obsessed with obsessed with RF,AM/FM etc.

5. Read previous year Interview experiences
A lot of people write their interview experience on their personal blog and PagalGuy. Go through those to discover all that I have written. [:-)]

6. Read articles on PG
In case you still have sometime left, just go through articles on PG. They generally have some articles on recent world happenings to make candidates more acquainted to the topics and intricacies involved. This might help in Group Discussions/Personal Interviews.

Step 4: Practice
The Last and very important step is to practice.
Any speech, no matter how short or long, without modulations is boring and ineffective. Relate it to listening to a song or a movie. A speech with proper modulations engages audience and force them to listen to you. It is not the decibel level that gets you a chance in Group Discussion, it is the modulation level. If you speak flat then rest assured, somebody will cut it off in between and others will support him/her. Make it interesting for others to listen to and you will emerge as a leader of the group. Similarly, in an interview, it is equally important to keep the interviewer interested in you and your talk.

I'll try to put on another post in this series, covering Do(s) and Dont(s) for GD/PI. Keep checking Abhi's space.

A happening time for sports

2008-01-26T05:00:00.001+05:30

Cricket

They say Cricket anishchittaon ka khel hai(Cricket is a game of uncertainity). It proved itself correct when the on-field drama got dragged off-field after Sydney test. The umpires were asked to leave the series in between and different umpires were called for rest of the series. Steve Bucknor described it as an unfortunate event and was disappointed for being sent back for just making 2 errors when there were 11 appeals. (Mind you, he gave 12 wrong decisions in the Sydney test – all against Indians).

Umpires consult Ricky Ponting for giving a decision.

Third Umpire gives wrong decision(obviously in favour of Australia)- The batsman(Andrew Symonds) is clearly out of crease and the third umpire presses Green Button.

Then India surprised the Aussies on their favourite ground, Adellaide with an impressive win.

India announced its cricket team for upcoming triangular series, with Australia and Sri Lanka, with no Saurav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid in the side. BCCI said the captain was given the team he wanted. Mahendra Singh Dhoni cites fielding to be the reason for dropping out Saurav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid! (I never knew Rahul Dravid was a poor fielder). I am not particularly a fan of Saurav Ganguly but when he plays well, you cant help but appreciate him and I can claim without a hesitancy that Saurav has performed reasonably well since he made his comeback. He has proved himself time to time and showing him the way out when he is gaining back his form doesn't make any sense to me. Similarly for Rahul Dravid. He gave up captaincy even though he was doing pretty good, then he lost his form completely. The player who is synonymous for wall was finding it difficult even to keep his wicket. You drop him at that point of time, it looks fair but just when the person gets back his form, you ask him to leave- doesn't make sense at all.

Sreesanth makes a comeback. Before leaving for the tour makes a media statement, "Aussies should be worried I am coming", I remember last time Zaheer Khan did similar thing in World Cup (before final) and had to pay a heavy price as it took him about a year to gain back his form and place in the team.

Kumble again proving his utility with bat as well by scoring 87 in the first innings of 4^th test match against Australia. Sachin gets another century in the series and reaching 150+ this time.

Tennis

Australian Open Mens Semifinal 1: Tsongo surprised everyone by defeating World number 2 Rafael Nadal in straight sets. Tsongo is just 22 years old and in playing his first grand slam tournament.

But Djokovik had bigger surprises in mind.. He thrashed world number 1 "Roger Federer" in straight sets!! Something I don't recall for happening in near past.

Lets see what happens in Womens final, which is scheduled to start in a few hours, while the mens final promises some high quality Tennis and huge excitementson Sunday.

Add to that, IIM-C team is going to XLRI next week for sports meet.

So overall, a happening period for sports this is.

m-Publish

2008-01-19T23:03:00.001+05:30

published this post from mobile.

x------x------x------x------x------x------x------x------x------x------x------x
As it always happens in exam days - the time when usually everybody is found studying - except a few (including me), who can still be found wasting time somewhere or other. So here is what I wasted my time with today - was listening to songs on mobile(I like Sony Ericsson headphones so much that I, sometimes, listen to songs on mobile despite of that dummy 14" screen being still there) - having worked with mobiles for so long(worked as developer for mobile solutions for about a year), i felt like doing something with mobile - "but what?" was the question- so just started browsing- happened to make a Google search on my name (donno why i did tht!) - found this pic of mine - so just downloaded it (wasted a few bucks(GPRS charges) for nothing, although had this image on my laptop so could have transferred it for free) - anyways now I have the pic so what do I do now - waste another buck or two by posting it on blog- and then created this blog and posted it from my mobile - actually making the 14" more dummy (except that this editing could not have been done without qwerty keys).

Google Sucks!!

2008-01-13T15:46:00.000+05:30

Breaking News:
Google lost yet another of its fan a few moments back.

Google Search ruled the search engines for quite sometime. MSN, Yahoo!, Altavista, Ask etc. tried giving some competition but by now Google had become synonymous to Search Engine. Then Google launched Gmail, e-mail service with 1GB - something no body had thought of at that time. Yahoo and Rediff lost their share. As a reaction to this, Yahoo raised mailbox sizes to 100 MB and Rediff made it 1GB. Note that Hotmail was still offering 2MB mailboxes at this time. Gmail added another funda of ever increasing mailbox sizes and in very short time, it reached 2GB mark(As on date Gmail provides more than 6GB space in mailboxes). Then came Google News - collection of news articles from various news portals compiled under appropriate headings. Sites like Rediff, Yahoo and Indiatimes again lost some visitors. Then they bought Blogger and Picassa, promoted Orkut - All three of which being very popular and addictive services. They launched Google reader - yet another RSS reader with the provision of sharing the links with friends. Google Docs and Spreadsheet have as well started getting accepted by people and not to forget Google Earth, which became the craze of people sometime back. Other popular services include Google Videos, YouTube, Google Labs, Google Book Search etc. So overall Google seems to have done a very impressive work.

But there is something which I observed a few moments back and disliked it from bottom of my heart. While I was just browsing through my Orkut profile, I happened to click at the Orkut interface of my blog and what I found there was surprise!! All the posts that I have and I had deleted are still there. The posts I deleted more than months back are there in completion. The videos I even removed from YouTube are still there. The images I uploaded to my Blogger account with some particular post are still there. The next thing I did was to check the Google Reader for my blog and no surprises..each of those posts were there as well!!

Would anybody tell me what the hell is going on!!!
Why is Google spying into our lives!!
Even if I were to believe Google that these things are just to direct appropriate ads to me, I do not see a reason why Google should be keeping the data that even I have deleted. And this gives me a feeling that no matter whether you enable or disable saving and archiving of data/ search queries/results clicked/ chat records/.. , they always save it. If you enable, they provide you a view of that and if you disable, things happen against your wish and you dont get to know that.

Recently I remember reading an article on some research going on in the field of bio-medical field, do I interpret it as Google making virtual models of our personality in the cyber-world, who can predict with reasonable accuracy, the next thing we are going to do.
I know this might sound overtly skeptic at the moment but Doesn't it pose a threat on our identity??

And above all, is there any reason why this should not be considered as breaching into my privacy!

Preparation for GD/PI - Tips (1)

2008-01-10T16:04:00.000+05:30

STEP 1: GETTING TO KNOW YOURSELF

You have taken the first step but the winner is one who walks till the last step.

Are you a winner?

What makes a winner?
It is simple. A winner is one who has a good aptitude (and can adopt according to situations), who has a firm determination, who has a good luck and very importantly he/she has access to more resources than others.

People might ridicule but this is what is the fact of life. You need to be more resourceful to succeed in this world. Talent takes you till certain points..from there it is you and your chances. (These chances come from luck and resourcefulness, so do not undermine this important aspect)

Anyways that was just a passing thought...might be useful for many of you but the real motive of this post is to help you with some GD/PI prep tips.
First, I claim no expertise in this but having gone through a number of GD/PI (s), I can talk a bit from my experience.

Personal Interview:
Why do they take personal interviews?
First and foremost it is important to understand the basic purpose of an interview. Interviews are conducted to get to know you - this is what you must have heard a number of times - but this is actually only half part of the story. Interviews are conducted to get to know you and to see how well does the person matches with the requirements of the organisation (in this case IIMs) and to see the potential benefits that the organisation would have if the person is selected. IIMs conduct GD/PI also to check whether the person can sustain the academic pressure and rigour of a B-School.
And believe me, expectation levels are very high. All of you are expected to be achievers and these things will get more clear to you when you join any of the top 3 B-schools in the country (IIM- A,C,B).

IIMs expect a person to be academically oriented with very strong extra-curricular achievements and having held significant Positions of Responsibilities. In simpler language that should sound like scoring 90% in Boards, CPI equivalent to 80% in Graduation(preferably from IIT), a few international publications, Played a few sports at national level, Won a few competitions at national level, President of your college council and played Captain atleast a few times.

If that scares you, it is fine. But that is just a set of expectations and nothing can be done about it but what can be done about is to get to know yourself well. Believe me, all of us have done something or else in life which can makes us stand out in the crowd. We generally ignore those things thinking those to be trivial but any achievement that you have had till now could turn things in your favour(You never know). The idea is to get as close to those expectations level as we can get.

Examples of a few trivial (as you thought) yet important achievements:

You stood among top Three in class in your school in classes 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.. (So what!!) -- Consistently stood among Top Three for Nine consecutive years (Now what do you think)
You initiated some club in your college (Yeah thats fine..I did it coz I liked doing it) -- Founder Member, xyz club @ xyz college (Why not take some credit for things you have done)
...
..

The above two examples are just two symbolic examples..there can be many more cases like this and with variety of types.
My suggestion - Collect all your certificates first..compile a list..Send over the list to a few knowledgeable people and let them decide which all points should and should not be there.

STEP 2: GETTING TO KNOW YOUR REASONS FOR DOING MBA

Now this is very important. I don't know how many people would actually be knowing why do they want to do an MBA. I can say this without any disclaimers that majority of the people out there preparing for GD/PI (s) would say MONEY!! If that is your reason, it is fine but what would you like to do?
You people are gonna be managers and if you are so short-sighted, I have my doubts on a lot of things.
Get in touch with some of your friends, your seniors, your acquaintances who are doing MBA/who have done MBA and get to know the profiles on offer. Then, do some proper study to get an unbiased view of that. Evaluate all the options and decide which one you would like to go for. "Why?" would follow by itself.
You will be asked this question in almost all the forms and in almost all the interviews. This answer believe me is very important for you to get through Interview Process.

Draft your answer and again get in touch with knowledgeable people to review those answers. 5-6 revisions should make if an ok-types answer.

The next step is to Prepare Content - To be posted in Next Post -Tips (2).

New Rules of Cricket

2008-01-10T01:04:00.000+05:30

After watching the second Test Match in Sydney, some rules have to be incorporated by ICC to give the other teams a perfect clarification. Anyways a New Year should have its new set of official rules.
If you might not have realised till now, the match was the first Test Match been played this year(2008).

1). Ricky Ponting:

THE TRULY GENUINE CRICKETER OF THE CRICKET ERA AND WHOSE INTEGRITY SHOULD NOT BE DOUBTED

should be considered as the FOURTH UMPIRE. As per the new rules, FOURTH UMPIRE decision is final and will over ride any decisions taken by any other umpires. ON-FIELD umpires can seek the assistance of RICKY PONTING even if he is not on the field. This rule is to be made, so that every team should understand the importance of the FOURTH UMPIRE.

2). While AUSTRALIAN TEAM is bowling, If the ball flies anywhere close to the AUSTRALIAN FIELDER(WITHIN 5 metre distance), the batsman is to be considered OUT irrelevant of whether the catch was taken cleanly or grassed. Any decision for further clarification should be seeked from the FOURTH UMPIRE. This is made to ensure that the cricket is played with SPORTIVE SPIRIT by all the teams.

3). While BATTING, AUSTRALIAN players will wait for the ON-FIELD UMPIRE decisions only (even if the catch goes to the FIFTH SLIP as the ball might not have touched the bat). Each AUSTRALIAN batsman has to be out FOUR TIMES (minimum) before he can return to the pavilion. In case of THE CRICKETER WITH INTEGRITY, this can be higher.

4). UMPIRES should consider a huge bonus if an AUSTRALIAN player scores a century. Any wrong decisions can be ignored as they will be paid huge bonus and will receive the backing of the AUSTRALIAN team and board.

5). All AUSTRALIAN players are eligible to keep commenting about all players on the field and the OPPONENT TEAM should never comment as they will be spoiling the spirit of the AUSTRALIAN team. Any comments made in any other language are to be considered as RACIALISM only.

6). MATCH REFREE decisions will be taken purely on the AUSTRALIAN TEAM advices only. Player views from the other teams decisions will not be considered for hearing. MATCH REFREES are to be given huge bonus if this rule is implemented.

7) . NO VISITING TEAM should plan to win in AUSTRALIA. This is to ensure that the sportive spirit of CRICKET is maintained.

8). THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE:
If any bowler gets RICKY PONTING - “THE UNDISPUTED CRICKETER WITH INTEGTIRY IN THE GAME OF CRICKET” - more than twice in a series, he will be banned for the REST OF THE SERIES. This is to ensure that the best batsman/Captain will be played to break records and create history in the game of CRICKET.

These rules will clarify better to the all teams VISITING AUSTRALIA.

My VisualDNA

2008-01-09T23:40:00.000+05:30

My Visual DNA:

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

The Personality Analysis can be read at this link.
The summary goes like:
Mood: Dreamer
Fun: Conqueror
Habits: Junkie Monkey (???)
Love: Home Soul

Analysis of My Wishes by Visual DNA: (Also available at link)
I'd like to see when Adam met Eve and it all hung out. Ideally, I'd wake up early on a ranch where the horses run free in the fields and the mountain air is pure, and later, when the fancy takes me, stroll out to the best golf-course in the world, which I'd own; If I thought about it, I really need somewhere U can go and laugh at everything, and no one will think I'm in the slightest bit mad, and sometimes I wish I could be super-fit and be first to reach the finish-line in the 100m sprint. I'd like to make any plant flourish in any landscape, however derelict and however poisoned it may be, and it would be amazing to see planet earth from somewhere else, hanging in the stars maybe. Pet? I'm not sure I want to live with one at all. Finally, I'd like to have a party just for two, just on our own, and maybe I'd invite along a friend I haven't yet met.

Interesting Indeed!

Again, the same time of year

2008-01-08T19:34:00.000+05:30

It is again the same time of the year when some cannot express their happiness while some cannot express their discontent. Everybody is tense..no matter happy or sad.
Yes it is the CAT results again!!

First of all hearty congratulations to all those who cleared the first hurdle. Now if you think that tough times are over, sympathies for you are there as well. Getting through CAT is the easiest and it only gets tough from here. You had 7-8 months to prepare for CAT, you will have less than 2 months to prepare for GD/PI. You had a course outline for CAT, sky is the limit for GK. You improved your quanty skills in a few months, now improve your verbal skills in a few days!

My purpose is not to scare you out of this GD/PI process but to prevent you from getting smug. It is not uncommon that people kill their chances by thinking, "i have 6 calls..i am not that bad a person..kahin na kahin to ho hi jayega". What you need to realise is that those 5 or 6(or whatever) calls you have, they are independent of each other, each of which requires a decent amount of effort to be put in. You have got a really good opportunity with this and I do not want you to let go this opportunity like that.

Now our friends who could not make it through this time:
I do not sympathize with you because you do not need any sympathies. You have got another opportunity to think whether or not you want to do an MBA. It is not that MBA is good for all. Some people are just meant for MBA some are not. Try to find out what you want to do exactly in life and then see if MBA happens to be in line. All those who got calls, do not have that option to think now. You are lucky at least in that aspect. I am not saying these for the sake of saying. I actually mean it. This might sound like yet another consoling message but believe me it is not. The very fact that you have not lost anything at all makes the word consoling more than redundant.
It is that time of the year...that time of your life, when you set your goals right..when you know what you want to do. Just know it and do it.
Never ever do an act coz someone else is doing it. Do it coz you want to do it, even when no one else is willing to do that.

Confused!!

2008-01-05T01:42:00.000+05:30

These days I am going through a different kind of dilemma..A dilemma related to the lifestyle..I don't know which one is better and that is the root cause of this dilemma!

The Person I used to be:
I was never a Maggu(bookworm) but I was always sincere about my studies. I knew what I had to do and had a sense of dedication towards completing it... Everything else was secondary. Not exactly but I was a kind of timetable guy(those whose life is a timetable and they can tell you what they would be doing at certain time in future)... I liked all what I read and did not understand what some of my friends meant when they said all those studies were waste of time. Those people tried looking in reason to do those things and could not find it.. Frankly I never attempted. I was blinded by the passion of computers and IT. I loved all of those stuff. And I had a good academic record.

The Person I became:
I started looking for reasons to do each and every act I had to do...did not find good enough reasons for most of these things..lost interest.. started getting confused from time to time!.. started criticising systems and pedagogies.. started believing that all of this is useless and I must only do whatever I want to do.. started looking down upon students who loved these studies.. attributed all of this to the education I have had till now(It enabled me to think and this system is making me stop thinking).. My rationale changed to: The only way to survive in a B-School is to stop thinking.. My friend circles got smaller in size and closely bound(as against loosely bound large friend circles along with some close friends earlier).. I stopped studying.. did not have anything else to do as such so got into watching movies and devised a thousand ways to kill time.. never bothered to read cases or do any kind of home work before classes.. the funda became- only time to study is a day before exam(or rather a few hours before exam).. became over-confident(Ohh..this thing..yeah it is very simple..it can be done like this..it will hardly take anytime.. will look for it whenever required).. And obviously academic records suffered!

When I was what I was, people used to say they were much more happier than me..they did not have to read as often as I used to.. Now I ask- is it fun?..Perhaps not!

Having seen both the sides of the coin.. now I am confused!! Though it might not look like so from the post and the post may look biased towards what I was but to be true I am confused! This appears to me a vicious cycle which never ends. As far as the factor of happiness goes, I think it is all in mind and it is our mental state which makes us happy or sad.. I had no issues studying then and was happy; Now even if I am not studying I am happy for not reading. There was always a positive frame of mind and I appreciated things a lot; Now I have a destructive frame of mind and find happiness in ridiculing others and trying to dominate others. Earlier it was helping others that used to bring a sense of satisfaction; Now it is getting people to help me with ease. The funda used to be- Why not do it when you can do it!; Now it is- Why should I do it if I can get it done!.

I do not comment on which one is correct and which one is not. If I ask my parents, it is first; If I ask my colleagues, it is second. No matter whether you agree or not, actually, both of these are correct. And that is where the confusion is- Which Abhishek is better: Abhishek @ DA-IICT and before or Abhishek @ IIM-C??

Having lived more than two terms as Abhishek of now, I think it is time to get back to the original mode now. Let's see how things turn around in days to come.

Happy New Year

2007-12-31T02:00:00.001+05:30

AbhiTaneja wishes all the readers of this blog a very

Happy New Year

Kyon Duniya ka Naara Jame Raho

2007-12-30T09:50:00.000+05:30

[Song from Movie 'Taare Zameen Par' (Dec'07)]

What a beautiful song!! Actually captures the lifestyle and the blind race to succeed among people..and at the same time we have individuals who do not get into this blind race and live the life the way they wish..These people dream! They do not care about the society, about others and are often regarded crazy. They fail to understand -
Kyon Duniya Ka Naara Jame Raho

Kas Ke Joota Kas Ke Belt
Khoons Ke Andar Apni Shirt
Manzil Ko Chali Sawaari
Kandho Pe Zimmedari

Haath Mein File Man Mein Dum
Meelon Meel Chalenge Hum
Har Mushkil Se Takrayenge
Tas Se Mas Na Honge Hum

Duniya Ka Naara Jame Raho
Manzil Ka Ishaara Jame Raho
Duniya Ka Naara Jame Raho
Manzil Ka Ishaara Jame Raho

Ye Sote Bhee Hain Attention
Aage Rehne Ki Hai Tension
Mehnat Inko Pyari Hai
Ekdum Aagyakari Hain

Ye Omlet Par Hi Jeete Hain
Ye Tonic Saare Peete Hain
Waqt Pe Sote Waqt Pe Khate
Taan Ke Seena Padhte Jate

Duniya Ka Naara Jame Raho...

Yahaan Alag Andaz Hai
Jaise Chhidta Koi Saaz Hai
Har Kaam Ko Taala Karte Hain
Ye Sapne Paala Karte Hain

Ye Hardum Socha Karte Hain
Ye Khud Se Poocha Karte Hain

Kyon Duniya Ka Naara Jame Raho
Kyon Manzil Ka Ishaara Jame Raho
Kyon Duniya Ka Naara Jame Raho
Kyon Manzil Ka Ishaara Jame Raho

Ye Waqt Ke Kabhi Ghulam Nahin
Inhain Kisi Baat Ka Dhyan Nahin
Titli Se Milne Jaate Hain
Ye Pedon Se Batiyate Hain

Ye Hawa Batora Karte Hain
Barish Ki Boondein Padhate Hai
Aur Aasmaan Ke Canvas Pe
Ye Kalakariyan Karte Hain

Kyon Duniya Ka Naara Jame Raho
Kyon Manzil Ka Ishaara Jame Raho
Kyon Duniya Ka Naara Jame Raho
Kyon Manzil Ka Ishaara Jame Raho

My first Advertisement - eaZyKILL

2007-12-20T13:24:00.000+05:30

Now this is exciting. This is the first time I have tried my hands on anything creative like this. I think I have been able to come up with a decent ad. I simply love it!!

Watch it for yourself and leave your comments on how you find it.

Life after MBA

2007-12-18T01:02:00.000+05:30

Good video on Life After MBA:
A look at Banking/Marketing/Consulting/Non-Profit

Another Bubble- Good Video

2007-12-07T13:01:00.000+05:30

Aaja Nachle: Only Madhuri Nothing else

2007-12-06T03:32:00.000+05:30

Ever seen a movie which you feel is not a great movie but when you exit the theatre you certainly feel good about it. Aaja Nachle is one of those.

The movie marks comeback of arguably one of the best actress in Bollywood, Madhuri Dixit. She makes a comeback after 5 years and undoubtedly the movie will benefit from the fact that she is still a crowd puller. Not even Shahrukh Khan or Salman Khan or Aamir Khan have so much of fan falling, forget about actresses.

The movie is about a girl, Diya (obviously Madhuri), who runs away with a US photographer after falling in love with him in just a couple of days only to realize later that the person did not love her truly. By that time she was already pregnant. They divorced and Diya started training people in dance(in US) to make living. Her Guru was dying and she flew back to India to see him but before she reached he had already passed away. Now she comes to know that local people are going to demolish Ajanta Theatre (an Open Air Theatre) to build a shopping mall at that place. [Ajanta Theatre is the place where she learned dance and hence carries emotional importance to her]

She comes to rescue that and took up a challenge with local MP. Either she performs with local people within 60 days (i.e. get people support within 60 days) or the Ajanta becomes history. She stages a show to get people to the place and there asks for their support. Everyone ridiculed and left. Local ex-MP even goes to the extent of trying to destroy it the very next day. Diya shows the politician a political motive in saving the heritage and gets his support. With a few people in her team, she starts getting support of local public as they get enthusiast to participate in the drama- Laila Majnu. She takes screening tests of all the interested people and builds her team. The team works with dedication towards making the event a success till the time the constructor who had the contracts for building the mall played trick by bribing ex-MP (who was playing an important part in the play). The contractor also manages to do some negative publicity of Diya through his wife (who was a good childhood friend of Diya). The wife’s conscience scolds her after she does the act and she decides to join the play as well. D-day comes. They do the play and do it well. In the meantime Laila and Majnu had already got into real life love as well. The event is a success and Ajanta remains. Diya returns to US and movie ends.

Nothing in movie as such but the play towards the end of the movie is good. Songs are good and obviously Madhuri rocks. The Laila Majnu play is a musical play and engages viewer well (atleast engaged me very well). It runs for about 20 minutes and includes 3 of the songs in the movie but never looked like dragging or something and in fact, director manages to make movie run faster during those 20 minutes. The movie drags during the mid part of the movie and viewer almost loses interest (if any) at all but with no choice sits through. The director tried to explain each and everything no matter how trivial it is and that sometimes looked irritating.

Overall as I said, the movie has no content to boast of but still manages to give a happy ending feeling to the viewer and viewer comes out of theatre happy and smiling.

Overall I rate Aaja Nachle 1.5 on scale of 5

Brownie points include:

Madhuri Dixit!!

Good songs and Beautiful dance sequences (Again Madhuri!!)

Laila Majnu play is good but not worth 150 bucks at all

Brownie turned black for:

Slow pace and drags

Unnecessarily complicating the relationship dynamics (Many relationships did not make any impact on movie in general)

Under-cooked story and Under-utilized actors

Recommendation: Watch it only for Madhuri (She rocks!). No point looking for story etc.

We call him Third Umpire!

2007-12-03T01:57:00.000+05:30

Now this is something that never happened before and I think would not be repeated again atleast in this decade or may be century [:P]

Watch and tell if he is out or not-out.

Goal missed the 'time-goal'

2007-12-02T17:31:00.000+05:30

Dhan dhana dhan GOAL

If I have to speak it in a line, it is a remake of Chak de India!, released this year. Chak de India was based on a hockey player who created a World Cup winning team out of a losing team after being accused of match-fixing and _________. Goal is about a football player who made a losing team win the league championship, after himself having skipped the final game in 1985 due to threats.

The concept is good but another movie of the same kind in a year!! Definitely not a good idea and the second mover had to lose for sure.

The Story: The movie is about Southall Football ground, which was to lose its existence if the management fails to pay 3million pounds in 11 months. Players from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh origin play for this club and this club is an identity for them. They now have only one chance to get this amount and that is by winning the league championship. But it is not that simple. They do not have a coach, the team is good for nothing- physically and mentally, the manager died of heart attack. And here steps up our hero- The Captain- Shaan Ali (Arshad Warsi). He approached a veteran player of the club,Tony Singh(Boman Irani), and somehow convinced him to coach the team. One of the player mortgaged his garage to raise funds for the player kits, team bus etc. The coach worked hard on the team and brought them in shape. He also brought in a player from other club- Sunny(John Abraham).

Same as in Chak de, they start with losing first game due to no coordination among team members and then coach inspires them to play for team and forget about personal grievances. The team finally turns into a team, which nobody can beat. But with two matches to go in the championship, Sunny signs up with another club. The team manages to end the second last game in a draw but needs to win the final match to win the league championship. Sunny comes to know the story about his father and his dedication to the Southall club and he joins back Southall in the final match. He played in spite of having line fracture in nose. The opponent team targets his nose but he, being the hero of the movie, doesn’t really bother and inspired by his father’s dedication, he keeps on playing and takes the team to victory.

Southall wins and the stadium and club are saved.

As far as performances are concerned, Arshad Warsi is just fine, John doesn’t look very natural and Boman Irani is unnecessarily loud. Other actors put up an average show in overall. Director did a fine job but Producer needs to be blamed for late timing of movie release. Had this movie released before Chak de India!, it could have been a different story altogether.

Overall the movie scored 2.5 out of 5.

Why to watch?

If you have missed Chak de India!, then the movie is definitely worth watching

Inspiring movie

Why not to watch?

Remake of Chak de India!

Anout average acting performances

A lot of inconsistencies and movie drags at times

Recommendation: Your wish [:)]

No Smoking - A miracle or a fluke!

2007-12-02T15:53:00.000+05:30

NO SMOKING (2007)

Genuinely speaking, I did not expect a Bollywood movie to be of that class. Deeply impressed by the concept and the way abstractness is handled in the movie. HATS OFF!! -

A miracle indeed.

The movie switches on and off dreams so beautifully that sometimes you just can guess it being real or illusion. The movie runs in good pace and the surprise factor is created beautifully as well. The acting department has certain glitches at places but still it manages to score above average in that. The characters had their roles to play and none of the character looked under developed. Although the director failed to show the emotions properly at places (As for example, the scenes with Ram, Shyam, Balram could not depict what the director really wanted to). And more importantly, I failed to understand the purpose of keeping the names as K and J..may be trying to imitate James Bond (I am K..only K) or may be trying to portray the ego (which was clear from the actions and hence did not make any impact).

The Story: Mr. K(John Abraham) is deeply into smoking and feels ashamed even about the idea of leaving it. His wife( also secretary) (Ayesha Takia) decides to leave him and it was then that he decides to quit smoking. He is referred to ‘Baba Bangali’ by his friend and then the real drama begins. Beyond this point the movie runs into illusions and imaginations. Mr. K is put to agree to condition that he will do whatever being asked to do. What happens next: watch it for yourself!!

The movie does preach of downsides of smoking but does that in a style. It talks about the cost one incurs on cigarettes etc.. It talks about the impact it has on friends and families. It talks about the diseases it spreads. It talks about the impact on health and expenses due to that. It talks about it all but in such a style that it never looks like some preaching. Well Done!

Phoonk de!

Ratings:

Overall No Smoking gets 4.5 out of 5

Why to watch? (I hope you dont need a reason after reading the plot above)

- If you want to quit smoking

- Good concept

- Well executed

- Decent acting

Why not to watch?

- If you do not want to quit smoking [:)]

The saga called "Placements"

2007-11-22T02:36:00.000+05:30

~~Private Post~~

If you are eager to read, leave me a message.

Big guns fail to deliver again: OSO, Saawariya take a hit

2007-11-14T22:29:00.000+05:30

Nothing new with this but I fail to understand why are these producers/ directors considered top shots.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who brought a new dimension to Indian Cinema with Amitabh Bachchan-Rani Mukherjee starer Black and revived memories of old Devdas with his version of Devdas, failed miserbaly to deliver this time.
Farah Khan, made a dream debut with entertainment movie "Main Hoon Na" but seems like she used up all the masala in her first movie. Om Shanti Om, is terribly tasteless.

Saawariya: (Rating at the end)
Following the tested funda of narrator, movie starts with Gulabji(Rani Mukherjee) telling the story of true love although she sells false love every night(being a call-girl by profession). The movie is about Raj,a singer (who God or may be SLB knows does what to survive-had a job of singer at bar which he left for Sakina) and Sakina, who still lives in ancient era and waited for over a year for a person she had met for a few hours. Don't get surprised, there are a lot more elements like this in the movie. The movie marks a debut for two new Kapoors in the industry, Ranbir Kapoor, grandson on Raj Kapoor and son of Rishi Kapoor, played Raj while Sonam Kapoor, daughter of Anil Kapoor, played Sakina. Sonam is beautiful but failed miserably to make an impact with her acting. Ranbir looks cute (Handsome or not..subjective!) and I would advise him to take some inspiration from Shahid, who started of in a similar fashion with Ishq vishq and then made a image makeover with his subsequent movies and definitely avoid becoming another Sonu Nigam(wrt acting). In such a role, it is difficult to comment on acting skills, although he looked pretty natural in most of the frames.
OK. So the story goes as: Sakina goes daily to a small bridge in the area to see if her love, Imaam (played by Salman Khan), is back to take her. On one such night, Raj met her and fell in love with her (I thought this was a thing of past!) She also felt good in his company and and made friends with him. The next night, she tells him about Imaam. (I dont understand this as well. She tells a stranger about her love life in second meeting itself!!). Our hero is hurt but after listening to the complete story makes a ridicule of the girl for she fell in love with Mr. Imaam in just a meeting or two, who then left her without even telling about his whereabouts and when, if at all, he will come back?!. She asks Raj to help her find Imaam and the ship(movie) sinks further.
Finally when she is all set to get along with Raj forgetting Imaam, Imaam reappears. She goes to Imaam. He proposes, she accepts and movie ends.!
Add further to this 'jhelao' story line the fact that no 10 mins of movie go without a song. Too much of trying audience patience!!

Om Shanti Om:(Rating at the end)
Rishi Kapoor did wonders with Karz 30 years back but the concept of something from this and something from that killed this movie. Farah Khan gave an impression from her debut that probably she knew the recipe of making a good masala entertainer but this time she disappointed as this time, it was all disproportionate. OSO features a story line which probably is a mixture made from a dozen movies or so.
SRK is a junior artist, so is his mother(Kiron Kher) and so was his late father. He had ambitions to become a star and his friend suggested him change his name from Om Prakash Makhija to Om Kapoor, making ridicule of 'Makhija' (as Makhi-ja). [ I do not understand why is not there any protests against this and in fact, even not being Makhija, felt it as like a ridicule on an ethnic group.] He is also in love with a star ShantiPriya(Deepika Padukone), who is secretly married to the producer "Mukesh Mehra", played by Arjun Rampal. Mukesh Mehra was planning his next movie as the biggest movie ever and had the sets ready for the movie but since ShantiPriya tells her that she is pregnant with her child, he planned to get rid of her. She took her to show the sets of this new movie titled Om Shanti Om and set the sets on fire and locked her in. Om saw it all. He tries to save her life but lost his life as well. He takes a re-birth as child of one of the most successful heroes in the industry and goes on to become a hero himself. During shooting of a movie, he starts getting memories of his past life back. He also happened to visit the sets of Om Shanti Om and that brought back all the memories from his past life. He decided to take revenge from Mukesh Mehra and found Sandy who looked exactly like ShantiPriya. He planned some mind games for Mukesh and succeeded significantly till Mukesh finds out that this girl was alive and not a ghost or something. Om threatened Mukesh but Mukesh had realisation that nobody will believe the incarnation story of Om Kapoor and the ghost of ShantiPriya appears and killed Mukesh Mehra at exactly the same spot where whe was buried. The movie ends!
There were still a few good points in the movie like the dressing sense, styles, sets, language etc looked contemporary to correct periods. SRK showed that he can act as well (Yes you read it right..he acted well this time and showed some diversity in his acting this time).

He died in the movie and that suggests the movie should make good business but I have a feeling that his lucky charm might not work this time.

Rating:
OSO gets 1.5 stars

Why to watch?:
Consistency in styles as per time
SRK finally acted!

Why not to watch?:
No entertainment with no storyline
You watch almost the same twice (Post-interval =Pre-interval after 30 years)
Read the above post, if you haven't

Saawariya gets 1 star
Why to watch?:
Melodious songs
Cute Hero, Beautiful Heroine

Why not to watch?:
No storyline at all
Melodious songs! (The frequency makes it very frustrating)
Drags are there
Rani Mukherjee and Salman Khan both wasted!!

So overall a poor week for Bollywood and for cinema lovers. Do not bother your pockets for any.

BTW my placements start tomorrow morning 7:30 a.m. and I have been writing this for now over 2 hours since 10:00 p.m. Definitely a stupid time to do this but anyways this is who I am! :)

Green Park turns Blue!

2007-11-12T01:56:00.000+05:30

Today Kanpur's Green Park hosted 3rd ODI of ongoing India-Pakistan series but the Park was not the same as it has always been. The Green Park was found Blue today.
Not very difficult to understand the reasons with Bahujan Samaj Party being the ruling party and with a colour theme of Blue.
This I would say is very cheap ( as in cheap mentality) and is something that bothers citizens like me a lot. This is how the tax I pay is being spent!! What a pity!
They have rules prohibiting election campaigning in election days..what about these days? Aint it a simple case of Office of Profit? Why doesnt IT department asks about finances for this expense? If it is public money and is coming from share of Sports, is it really what it is meant for?

Anyways the bottomline is that I am reconsidering whether or not should I pay taxes!!

Here is a professional news item: (No point rewriting)

Kanpur Green Park stadium painted BSP blue

Kanpur's Green Park stadium, the venue for the third India-Pakistan One-Day International, has been virtually given a blue hue - clearly resembling the official colour of Uttar Pradesh's ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
No wonder everyone seems to attribute it to the proposed visit of Chief Minister Mayawati, who is to give away the prizes at the end of the match Sunday.
The painting began shortly after Mayawati consented to being chief guest at the event.
What followed was incredible. Officials from the chief minister's secretariat personally monitored the large-scale renovation by the state government to give the place a face-lift.
It started with refurbishing of the VVIP pavilion and the special enclosure for the chief minister but later large parts of the giant stadium were also painted entirely in blue.
The manner in which the colour has been used shows that care has been taken to ensure that right from her entry into the venue, Mayawati gets a total 'blue view'.
All entry gates are draped or painted in blue and all chairs in different enclosures visible from the VVIP pavilion have also been painted the same colour.
Even road-dividers in the city have been painted blue.
No one is however willing to divulge as to how much money has been pumped into re-doing the stadium, which otherwise has often suffered gross neglect.
Unofficial reports estimated the expenditure to be around several million rupees.
The chief minister is scheduled to spend just about 30 minutes at the felicitation function.
Top aides of Mayawati have made at least 17 trips from Lucknow to Kanpur to personally supervise the face-lift of the VVIP pavilion.
Unprecedented security arrangements have been made in and around the venue, particularly between the police lines where Mayawati's helicopter would land, and the Green Park stadium.

Negative Pygmalion

2007-11-11T02:32:00.000+05:30

~~Private Post~~

If you are eager to read, leave me a message.

Think!!

2007-10-30T03:38:00.001+05:30

Have you ever realised how loosely this word is being used in today's environment? I think you should do this. I think you should not do that. I think this might have happened. I think you think. So what were you thinking? What do you think about it? And for that matter IBM claims its pads to be thinking(ThinkPad) as well.
How much do we actually think? and how much do we claim it?
Anyways that was just a passing thought. I saw this funny (or rather sarcastic) Fedex advertisement a few back, where this MBA guy has just joined the company and a lady comes to him on the first day to get something done. She takes him to a terminal and says that he needs to do some admin-staff work but it is all very simple. The guy resists back saying. "I am an MBA" and the lady looks a bit worried commenting, "Ohh! you have an MBA, in that case I have to show you how to do it.".
The message is loud and clear- "FedEx.com makes shipping so fast and easy- even an MBA can do it"

I think this is not something to laugh at but is a warning to act before it gets too late.

Dil Dosti etc.- A sensible movie

2007-10-25T23:45:00.000+05:30

It is evident from my posts that I generally dont write many movie reviews but again like it happened as with Blood Diamond, I am deeply touched by the simplicity, by the screenplay and more importantly by the message conveyed by the movie. This time it is 'Dil Dosti etc.'.

I dont know how many would have even heard the name of this movie or even if heard how many would have seen. Further, even if seen, I doubt how many would have seen the value in the movie.

Introduction: The movie is simply about Politics and Sex! That's what those who have seen will tell you. My perspective is different. I believe the movie is about the values and the mindset of different economic castes.
The upper class believes in freelancing and living-in while the middle class believes strongly in values like trust, bond, love, relationship. However, I do not comment anything on what is correct and what is not. Neither did the movie. I neither comment on which one is better. Nor did the movie. It just brings out these aspects in a very touchy and emotional setup. The movie also seems to be following my line of thought that nothing is wrong and it is the perspective which makes it right or wrong. The story teller tells it as a high class individual but more from a middle class perspective. (which ensures it doesnt touches any of those extremes)

About the Story: There is not much in the story as such. The story revolves around two individuals: One from a very rich family in Delhi, who has only one ambition in life - SEX and other from a middle class (or may be lower middle class--The whole point being not a rich/upper class) family from Bihar who wants to become student council president and may be join politics. Thanks to the ragging in campus, these two get into a friendship and the rich guy ends up helping the other in election campaigning. The middle class person tried preaching his values to the high class dude and ended up challenging him to have Sex thrice in a day before the elections. With self-respect at stake, both sincerely get set to their missions.
In the meantime, the middle class guy also finds a love(as likely to be used by upper class people) in a high class babe who aspires to be a model in recent future. The conflicts in their thinking are apparent as well.
Finally, the movie ends with guy from Delhi having sex with Bihari's girlfriend(third sex on the day of election), which meant nothing to the two high class people but meant his life to the middle class guy from Bihar. The poor guy had even lost the meaning and excitement of having won the election.

Plus: Smooth Story telling, No major breaks as such, Songs much into the story line of the movie, No explicit content (Plus from middle class point of view, although may be minus from upper class point of view [:P]), Good screen play, Decent pace, No preachings, Overall Well executed

Minus: Nothing much into story, No well recognised stars(although acted well), Somewhere between a commercial and an arts movie.

Recommendation: Recommended for people who like to watch movies that make some sense, that give some message. If you liked 'Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi', you are quite likely to like this movie as well.
Additional Remarks: Not many movies impress me enough to write a review for.

Will luck ever start favouring me?

2007-10-07T16:58:00.000+05:30

I dont know why is it so but it has been always like this. The luck factor, which goes in favour of so many at so many times, doesn't seem to have a very good relation with me. If it happens just once or twice, it is fine but why the h*ll always!
The last time I remember I rode high on luck was more than 3 years back when I survived after an accident with oil tanker on National Highway 2. Since then, it has been a long run of bad luck. I thought it might end sometime soon but that has not happened yet.
I dont know how to vent this frustration out coz even venting out frustration has had some serious implications on me at times!
Avoiding to write the circumstances that led me to write this, I conclude it wishing the situation to improve soon but again that would be really very optimistic of me.

Sample CV -- Must Read!

2007-10-06T14:28:00.001+05:30

PS: I dint write it but really liked this creative piece of work. By putting it on my blog, I do not intend to claim any ownerships, hurt any feelings. Please to inform if anyone considers it to be breaching IPR in any sense.

________________________________________________________________________________

C. V. Manoranjan J. (007/99)
stud_iimc@hotmale.com

Academic

Wrote mid term, end term and two class tests, qualified for the 75% attendance requirement to take the end term in H.R.M class
90% attendance record in Finacc tutes (for two tutors)
Consistent academic performance in 3rd, 5th and 7th std (half-yearly)
Second highest grade in the ProdMan re-exam
Bid for a course under one of the leading profs in Asia
Appeared for IIT-JEE, CET etc
Top ranked in the lower third of my branch in Engineering
IEPH mid-term section topper

Other achievements

Recruited by Goldman Sachs during the Placement Con
Received conduct cert of “fair” after high school
Won paper dance (solo) contest in Intaglio’2001, 1st prize in Govinda party

Sports

Head, ~~Gaali team~~ Creative Verbalization and Support squad, XL-IIMCmeet 2001
Scored the solitary ~~goal~~ basket, in the WH vs NH basketball match duringWW
Co-passenger with Steve Waugh on Jet 2W409, 20th May 1996

Dramatics

Supporting artist in NH skit for WW parade. Selected from among 100 students to play a prominent mythological character.
Part of the laugh track for Hum Paanch
Have been part of shows like Movers & Shakers
Featured twice in a row on MTV Bakra

Music

Lead tambourine player, Baro-C & JBS
Member, organizing team, badla party
Second prize, solo singing, Informalz
Lead singer, anthem, Baro-C nite

Publications

Largest number of entries in paper contests
Authored numerous articles on BlueBoard, Courseweb and IPMSG
Provided key creative inputs for the oath for Stats tutor Sec C
Have had my letters published in agony aunt columns on Cosmo, Femina and Grihashobha

Leadership initiatives

Coordinator, east wing dunking squad, mahamishti
Contested elections for Wing-rep
Chief fetcher for Lehman Brothers and Murugappa Group, Final Placements2002
Chief client, LANsquad
Associate under secretary, FOSLA, W400s IIMC chapter

Interests

Reading habits: Telegraph etc, India today last page
Musical tastes: classic rock n’ roll such as Jimmy Hendricks, Bob Dillon etc.
Skiing, whitewater rafting, mountaineering and skinny dipping

Consultancy experience

Provided ad hoc management consultancy to a leading retailer on the Joka campus
All other projects under contracts of non-disclosure

My first Consulting assignment

2007-10-04T03:35:00.000+05:30

I really appreciate the fact that generally I know in advance my priorities. Same was the case when I had applied for clubs @ IIM-C.
I did not want to get into organising things, building Knowledge Management(loosely used for Database updations), etc. and wanted to do some real work. I stated this clearly to the club-recruiters at the time of interviews and was probably the reason that no club had accepted my applications till INCA found me worthy.

Day before yesterday, I went to the organisation "Sundarika Bartika" where I (as a part of team of 4) would be providing consultancy services (another fancy name for helping organisations expand/grow/ solve their problems). It was around 40 K.m.s from the campus and frankly the drive to that place was really painful, with potholes of different shapes and sizes covering around 40% of the road. But the excitement of being involved with something big (not organisationwise but rolewise) was enough to keep me focussed.
We were received pretty nicely. Although we were on time, the founder of the organisation was waiting for us. The treatment we received there cannot be explained in words. We were treated as experts in every field, especially the one that was discussed and I must confess that I had no clue of the topic under discussion for more than half of the discussion. At times, he talked of certain personalities and expected us to know all about them, when both of us were sitting wondering whether we have heard the name or not. I remember 'rephrasing his words and telling that as answer to him' had to be done a number of times.

I must also confess that although it was good to have such a recognition and respect, I felt guilty at times. A person who is running an organisation for past 25 years is treating me as if I am his boss!! Sounds good but is intimidating at times.

Anyways I think it qualifies well as an experience to cherish and I am proud of having made correct decision of being choosy w.r.t. joining clubs

Since the time I visited the organisation, I only have one question bothering me...Do I really deserve so much respect? Lets see, time will surely provide an answer.

Blood Diamonds

2007-10-04T03:07:00.000+05:30

It is not a new movie but I had not seen it then.
I had heard a lot about it but watching it was really a different experience.

"Sierra Leone,1999
Civil war rages for control of the diamond fields.
Thousands have died and Millions have become refugees.
None of whom has ever seen a diamond."

The people are innocent. They have never seen a diamond. To them, it is just another white piece of stone but they are still being killed for it. Children are doped and trained to take lives...to help fighting in struggle for motherland!! (something which is already yours!) All foreigners are our enemies!!(Is there any rational at all!)
And all this just to make some money..OK a lot of money.. but is it still worth the cause!! On one hand we claim of distributive effect of money (poor benefits from rich getting richer) and this is what rich do to get more richer!!

Greed is such a vice that it can make any rational human being do such pathetic acts.

I appreciate the director/producer's effort to bring up the issue to public..and I agree to my friend's words, "Movies are biggest source of learning after Reading".

The closing message of the movie was not just a mere consolation but also a warning. This needs to be stopped..at least for the sake of humanity.

"In January 2003, forty nations signed "The Kimberley Process"--an effort to stem the flow of conflict diamonds.
But illegal diamonds still find their way to market.
It is up to the consumer to insist that a diamond is conflict-free.
Sierra Leone is at peace.
But there are still 200,000 child soldiers in Africa"

Stop smuggling Blood Diamonds.
Stop selling Blood Diamonds.
Stop buying Blood Diamonds.

I suggest Ban the company even if a single case in this regard is reported..The world wont be any different without the Diamonds but the presence of diamonds is making such a big difference!!

Enlightenment by Prof. Sunil Handa

2007-10-01T21:48:00.000+05:30

Prof. Sunil Handa(SH) from IIM-Ahmedabad visited IIM-Calcutta recently and I had an opportunity to attend one of his sessions. Considering the fact that I am myself a bit oriented to start something of my own, I liked the session. One may argue that most of the points these people (entrepreneurs) talk about are just the same .. hmm.. may be.. but there is a lot to make a difference. One good point may change your outlook drastically and something similar happened to me after this session.

On Exit options:
The session started with example of one of his student from IIM-Ahmedabad who had started a company of his own but had recently decided to sell it off!! Prof. claimed that this guy sold his soul.
As per SH, there is no exit option for an entrepreneur and he outrightly rejected the idea of selling a venture after say 5 years of establishing it. I had been fascinated by the idea of creating and selling off a business before restructuring period (I believe after some 5-6 years, processes etc. in a business need to be restructured coz by this time others also find it worthy to get into it..so selling off at this point would mean avoiding the restructuring cost and efforts, which can be further used in setting up something else, plus you get a healthy deal for current business at such a time). Although SH was of different opinion and he commented that
1.) One tends to get an emotional bonding with the current business,
2.) Rarely do people start a second venture as they get too old by the time they plan to sell off first one
3.) Even is one gets past the emotional bonding and timing factor, one tends to lose good people. You may plan to switch over your business (coz that is your business) but the employees may not be ready to take that risk and would be resistant to change.

This made me think of the establish-and-sell philosophy again, especially the third point which is most crucial as what i think. Anyways, I need to evaluate that well.

On VCs:
"So, what would you do once you sell off your venture?"
"I would start a new one" is a typical answer. How many do you think do that? Hardly anyone, SH claimed. The factors include the social pressures and the family responsibilities. Add to it reduced appetite for risk as you grow old.
"If you quit your own child(company), you will end up being only an uncle(Venture Capitalist), where you will just guide and help and wish other's children(ventures you fund) do well. Most of their(VC's) days go in praying for other's ventures to get successful"

On Diluting Equity:
"If you wish to start a business, do you need a lot of money or you may as well get it from Venture Capitalists?"
If you think you may start a business by borrowing money from VCs, you probably need to relook at the mathematics of doing so. If you succeed, you will end up paying hefty premiums and if you fail, you may still end up paying more than the Principal amount!! Then how does it make any economic sense..
Those who still might be thinking of it being useful, I suggest reading the post on session by Mahesh Murthy.

Assertiveness, Struggle, No shy factor:
"When I used to travel in Public roadways buses, I used to end up traveling most of the times standing. Then I realised this is not how it gonna work and I learnt the art of finding and making space to sit. I started asking people to shift even if there was no place and most of the times ended up getting some place to sit.- That was my first lesson into entrepreneurship" I learned to be assertive. I struggled and I was no longer shy of asking for place.
This is what is required to establish a business. If you think everything will just go right, it wont.. you need to make it right.

Impact of Contacts in Initial Phase:
Another way of getting initial success is a shortcut- to use your contacts. But as soon as you use contacts to get any favour, you lose the race. Nothing comes for free in this world!! If you ask for a favour today, you'll be asked to repay in some form or other tomorrow and it wont end there. Since you got a favour in initial days of struggle, you would feel indebted for long and you would have to make compromises at some point due to these favours/contacts/people/..

Struggle in Initial Phase:
So the alternate way is to struggle!! People, if given option, would love to skip this part but this is most important phase one goes through and this is the phase that basically lays the foundation for rest of the career.
There was a bird, which was trying to come out of the egg-shell. She was fluttering her wings and trying desperately to break the shell. A man walking beside saw this and out of his genuine concern and care, broke the egg-shell with a knife. The man was happy as he thought he had done a good job, helping the bird out of the shell. The bird, on the other hand, could never fly in her life coz her wings were just not strong enough to fly.
It is not difficult to understand why the bird could never fly!! So you decide by yourself whether you want to break the shell yourself or do you want an external support!!

Upto-date Info of Related and Unrelated streams:
It is not uncommon in people to stop reading/analysing once they get success. However, SH suggested that one should always keep the habit of reading and be knowledgeable about things related directly or indirectly or not even related to his/her business. This is helpful when one needs to adopt methodologies/techniques/benefits from outside the business. He took an example of his own venture which in no way related to plastic industry, and he could make a benefit of a few lakhs using that. I dont remember the example exactly and it would not be appropriate to quote it wrong but it was something on the lines that huge amount of excise and tax could be saved by purchasing a machinery in parts due to differential tax rates for plastic and other material.
The essence of the point was that one must keep himself up-to date on different topics, regardless of whether they are directly influencing your business or not. Who knows when they come handy!!

On Consultants:
To keep it short, I just quote his words,"Consultants are people who wont tell you anything unless asked, even if they know something is going wrong!!"
Without having any first hand knowledge of this, I think it is difficult for me to make up any perception based on this point.

On Ethics:
Everyone claims ethics in business are very important but no one spells it so clearly!! Everyone talks of setting an example in front of juniors but no one says how exactly it makes a difference. He took example of a manufacturer trying to save some tax amount by manipulating accounts and stealthily selling some of the goods. The same person ends up pursuing his employees so that the news is not leaked publicly and in case that happens..Brand Image tarnishes!!
Precisely why people do not feel proud in saying that they work in Reliance!!

Skills One must Learn at IIMs:
Leadership skills
Negotiating skills
Delegating skills

On Partnership:
Reiterating what MM said, SH also said it is better to have partners for the moral and support and better to start in smaller teams. A larger team is bound to fail. Although, he discarded that the two partners need to be good friends from college days and things like that. According to him, a better team would have people with only some understanding of each other. More understanding may result in you taking other for granted, which might not be the case always. But still, more the understanding between partners the better it is.
Idea or partner?
An idea is worth nothing unless implemented, said MM.
Unless you have a good partner, it is difficult to succeed in a venture, said SH.
Clearly both of them had an emphasis of a good partner first, someone who is equally, if not more, passionate about the venture.
Moreover, SH made a claim that no one would be working on their first idea for long, no matter how attractive it may seem to them in starting. It is only the third or fourth idea that people end up doing!

Not to forget,
Irrespective of what you may think, the partnership doesnt last forever and which sometimes may be an emotionally testing times but that is how it is!!

To end with a globe statement, you need 'Midas touch' to succeed in a business more than anything else.

"To get an extraordinary person is difficult but to make ordinary people extraordinary is simple.": Some great philosopher.

And we won!!

2007-09-27T16:54:00.000+05:30

There could not have been a better end to it.
India's first match with Scotland is washed out and India plays Pakistan in league match in a battle to survive. India Survives after the bowl out.
Next India meets New Zealand and not to surprise of many, India lost to NZ.
India meets England, again a battle of survival. India persists.
Still struggling to survive, India meets hosts South Africa. Brings out a surprise for all sending Proteans packing bags.

India meets its second order arch-rivals, Australia in Semifinals. People doubtful over India's chances but as it has been a tradition, players come up with exceptional performance to see India through to Finals.

So India to meet its first order arch-rival Pakistan in finals!!

On the other hand..
Pakistan stumbled against minnow Scotland but eventually got past them.
Meeting India next where they could bring match to competitive situation after having lost almost all the extablished batsmen but could not score the last run in 4 deliveries.and eventually lost to India in Bowlout.
This probably provoked Pakis and they scored impressive wins over likes of Sri Lanka and Australia.
Bangladesh could not stand the Paki passion and New Zealand also had to go back packing their bags in Semifinals.
And now they meet India again!!

Impressive performance by both the teams, especially after dismal show at ODI Cricket WC in WI. (Note that both the teams were ousted in the Group stages itself, where India had to pay price of losing to Bangladesh while Pakistan and Coach Woolmer had to pay heavily for losing to Scotland)
Final match, obviously, had to be exciting/nail biting/thrilling/.... (non-ending list of adjectives) and it was like that.
The closing moments of match say it aloud:
Pakistan needs 13 runs from 6 balls.
India needs 1 wicket or restrict Pak to at max 11 runs in 6 balls.
Masbiah Ul Haq-most successful Pakistani batsman in series on strike
Mohd. Asif on non-strikers end. A single would mean that he comes on strike.
India has already used up all the senior bowlers till now.
Dhoni has 2 options: Harbhajan Singh and Joginder Sharma.
Spinner in last over against a settled batsman could be a risky business so Dhoni calls Jogi.
Jogi gets the ball. One of the most unexperienced bowler in the team gets to bowl the last over!!
First ball: Huge Wide. 12 off 6 required.
Dhoni goes and talks to the bowler.
19.1 Masbiah misses it completely. 12 off 5.
19.2 Jogi tries to hit the deck hard but wasted. A mistimed shot goes over the fence for max. 6 off 4.
Pakistan celebrated. Similar to what they did during first league match against India.
Jogi feels the pressure.
19.4 Jogi bowls a normal ball. Masbiah is desparately looking for boundary as he does not want to expose Asif at this time. He moves across towards Off and collects the ball from outside off stump to play it around Leg Gully area. He mistimes. Sreesanth is standing there and it is a CATCH!! Masbiah walks back and India has won the first World Twenty20 championship!!

After 1983, India again gets to be called World Champions!!

Losing and Gaining motivation

2007-09-22T23:39:00.000+05:30

Another session on entrepreneurship and another time I lose motivation to do the 'zombie thing' (as Sunil Handa puts it). I started hating "the zombie" jobs as soon as I came to the campus but the hate grew stronger when I attended Mahesh Murthy's talk. Today it just grew more stronger.

With the declining motivation to these, the motivation to set out on my own strengthens a lot.
Lets see what future has in store for me.

A detailed analysis from Sunil Handa's talk to follow soon.

India faces Australia after a long time..

2007-09-22T05:23:00.000+05:30

The Second Semifinal of International Twenty20 World Cup, India v/s Australia, has all the ingredients to be an exciting match. India has put up an interesting show at World Cup so far. The team that arrived as underdogs has now become one of the favourites, and the fact that they sent one of the favourites in the tournament back packing their bags. On the other hand, the world champions started on a lower note losing to minnows but came back strongly to reach the Semis.

Importantly, it must be noted that India would be facing Australia after a long period of around 11 months (328 days). (FYI: Last time the two teams played was on 29 October 2006 when Australia chased a target of 250 with 26 balls remaining and 6 wickets in hand at Mohali.) Also, it has been observed that in each match they play against each other, one of the two teams substantially outperform their normal performances whether it be India stopping successful wins record of Australia or Australia thrashed India in the ODI World Cup 2003 finals.

Lets see what is in store for today!!

My 22nd Birthday

2007-09-21T15:54:00.000+05:30

I had planned to write this long back but due to academic and other rigours, could not find any time to do so. Anyways, it is not that late as well.

7th September 2007:
It was just 3 days to the first end term examinations, 1 day to the Statistics Terminal Quiz and 2 days to another Statistics quiz. It happened to be just a few hours after Financial Accounting Quiz, a few hours after the Master CV Verification deadline. Add to it the excitement of 'about-to-complete-Term-I' feeling.

I never knew the potential of this combination.

Junta frustrated and excited at the same point of time and adding to the excitement was chance to hit the butts of a batchmate. The poor guy dint realise how hard it was going to be. People from other hostels were the first ones to reach the B-Top/ Mess Top. Thankfully, Statistics tutors had arranged for a tutorial at the same time, which reduced the number of people substantially. The number still was not that small and more importantly, it was some serious hard hitting by the frustrated Junta.

Check out these pics and I dont need to say anything else:

Sidey getting a feel of the same!!

The game had just begun!!

Oooh..Someone Help!!

So Brutal of them!! :(

CHECK this Video: Cake Wasted!!

Come on!! It would have been better if we ate it!!

After the celebration- Me with Sideys

After the celebration- Me with Wingey (Anand)

And they say Cricket is dead!!

2007-09-20T03:55:00.000+05:30

After a dismal show at WC, people said the cricket fever in India has died down. Various agencies etc. confirmed the same with their reports on advertisements during matches and disappearing Indian Cricketers from the advertisements. They accused coach Greg Chappell. They accused Rahul Dravid. They accused Sachin Tendulkar. They accused Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni and who not.
And now, the same people seem to be worshipping these players again!!

India and Records!! Ain't it synonymous??

2007-09-20T02:50:00.000+05:30

Did you know:
India holds the record of having maximum number of records in Cricket!!

With legendary players like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Ravi Shastri, Saurav Ganguly ... belonging to India, it is no surprise that India holds maximum number of records in International Cricket. In fact, Sachin Tendulkar has always been envied of holding so many records in the International Cricket. Asking someone Maximum number of runs in any form of International Cricket(excluding Twenty20 coz he opted out of the format) is a no-brainer. Even players like Ajit Agarkar who find it difficult to get a permanent berth in the Indian Cricket Team have had taste of International Records. For those who are unaware, he holds the record for fastest 50 wickets in ODI.

And now today, Yuvraj Singh managed to raise the count further by two. He scored 50 off just 12 balls and hit six 6s in an over. In his innings of 58 runs, he faced just 16 deliveries of which 10(3x4,7x6) went out of the boundary(even out of the ground for that matter), which included six consecutive sixes of Broad's 4th over(19th over if Indian innings). With this he not only surpassed Mascranahes's record of 5 consecutive sixes, he has also equalled the record of 6 sixes in an over in any form of International Cricket, with Herschelle Gibbs.

Watch the exciting over yourself..

India Pakistan Twenty20 match

2007-09-20T00:56:00.001+05:30

Needless to say the level of excitements when there is an India-Pakistan Cricket match. Although people compare it with Aus-Eng rivalry but I believe that doesnt stand anywhere closer.

Both the teams put in their best to win the match and actually they put in significantly more than that. It doesnt matter much if India loses in a final, what matters more is winning over Pakistan. Same holds true for Pakistan as well.

India Pakistan Twenty20 World Cup League match of Group D was no different. India, after a poor start(losing quick wickets in initial overs to Mohd. Asif), came back strongly to score a competitive score of 141/9 in the 20 overs. The score, if not a very high score was comfortably a competitve score, given the humid climate but obviously Pakistan was not to give up easily. Despite of losing some quick wickets and an ever rising Required Run Rate, Pakistan maintained a decent chance of winning till around 17th over of the innings. When it looked like that Pakistan has almost lost the match(after their last recognised batsmen, Shahid Afridi, got out), one of the least known names in the International cricket, Masbeih Ul Haq, came to their rescue. He made Pakistan reach a situation where they needed just 11 of the last over.
Having already hit about 30 in 8 odd balls, this looked like an easy target.
The last over:
The second ball of the over goes for a 4. 7 required in 4
19.3 2Runs
19.4 It goes for a 4 and the scores are level. Just 1 run required of 2 balls.
19.5 Sreesanth bowls a bouncer. Masbiah is unable to connect. Dhoni collects the ball and charges to the batsman.
Last Ball: 1 run required. MS Dhoni brings fielders inside the circle. S. Sreesanth hits a bouncing delivery. The batsman mistimes it and the ball goes to the fielder at Point. Batsmen run. Fielder is alert. He fields it quickly and Sreesanth is ready at the Bowlers end for a throw. Fielder throws it towards the bowlers end and the batsman is found short of his crease. It is a TIE!!

Second time in the history of Twenty20 Internationals and obviously first time in Twenty20 World Cup. For the sake of ignorant ones, a Twenty20 tie match is decided by Bowl-out, in which 5 nominated bowlers from each team are asked to bowl and hit the stumps. The team that hits more number of times wins.

So, The match moves on to a Bowl Out now and guess what, MS Dhoni has surprise for most of the people. Unlike Pakistan, which nominates its 5 main strike bowlers, India decided to chose Sehwag and Uthappa over Ajit Agarkar(the most experienced bowler in Indian team) and RP Singh(strike bowler, known for his line and length). And in fact, nomination of Uthappa came as a big surprise since people have not seen him bowl anytime and nomination of Sehwag was a surprise since he did not have a chance to bowl in the match.

Anyways,
Pakistan won the Bowl-out toss and asks India to bowl first.

Sehwag takes on the first ball. He is smiling. He looks casual as always. When audience is tense with Indian chance to stay in the tournament totally dependent on the bowl out and the bowl out being largely dependent on Sehwag. He bowls a straight slow ball and it hits the stupmps. India scores.
Pakistan tossed the ball towards _____, he came he bowls and he misses by a huge margin. India 1-0.
Harbhajan Singh is the next man..will he or wont he?..And he hits!! India 2.
Umar Gul takes up the ball for Pakistan. He comes with a realtively smaller run up and bowls an almost wide ball!! Surprise all around!! Anyways India is up 2-0.
Pakistanis are tense now..One could notice the pressure Asif was facing.
Without anybody realising that it is India's turn to bowl 3rd time, Robin Uthappa comes and hits the stumps..India gets a huge lead of 3 to 0.
Pakistan needs to hit this time for sure to possibly take it to a draw in bowl-out and Shahid Afridi is the next man!!
And he misses!! INDIA WON THE MATCH

What a match it turned out to be!! Excitements all around.
Watch the videos for the Last over and the Bowl-out.

Last Over

Bowl Out