The anthem ....

I proclaim this as the anthem from now on ...with due regards to a dear friend who found it much before me ... but i realised it

"man i see in fight club the smartest and most intelligent men of our generation.an entire generation pumping gas or slaves of white collar jobs.god damn it,i see all this potential squandered.Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes.we work jobs we hate,so we can buy stuff we don't need.We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war. our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. "

ha ha ha ... I see myseld starting a fight club one day ... thats would be my achievement that would be my calling ... here in India

IIM B interview

My first and most important in a series of 5 interviews.

Acads:
X - 91.4
XII - 84.4 ( both CBSE)

Undergrad Major - 3.8/4.0 Manipal
Work-Ex: 29 months Telcom + ERP

CAT %ile:
DI -- 95.xx
Quant -- 94.xx
Verbal -- 97.xx
Aggregate -- 98.73

Any other special thing abt u: Scholarships
Venue -- IIMB
Bangalore
----------------
8 members, I was 4th.
Was called inside at 9am sharp.

PI & P2 .

Case : Mind your language. The divide between english and vernacular languages at school and what the language policy should be to put even govt and govt aided schools at par with private schools.

Decent discussion not great at all ( after analyzing it for over a week ).

I took a stand that English should be introduced early in govt and govt aided schools, govt schools should be provided resources, teacher training programes innovative ways of teaching for make learning English easier to put them at an equal footing.

Vernaculars are also important given the social and cultural connotations in India and should be taught as a second language.

PI :

P1 : So what is your work all about.
Me : Told

P1 : Your CGPA is 3.8 / 88% how did u convert.
M1: Formula given by college.

P1 : where does that put you in your class.
Me :2nd.

P1 :So you passed out in 2005.
Me: 2006 sir.

P1:Three years of exp.
Me: Yes.

P1 ( turned out to be a speacialist in MIS ) hence lot of questions on ERP and open source ERP.

Me:
P1. I think opensource is a threat to ERP apps from paid vendors.
ME: I said they(paid vendors) have been in the market for a long time so they know how the market is. Open source does not have the sort of legacy dependency.
The problem i see in the industry with open source is that people believe that they will not get the same level of mainatance ( etc. etc. )
+ I spoke about the attitude that needs to change towards open source and the attitude within
my company where open source is not encouraged , cited examples where it can be used and still it is not encouraged to be used.

P1. So can XXX follow a Open source model.
Me:
I cited their balance sheet and more than 50% revenues coming from software and software related services said No they cant.

P1. So how does the recession hit XXX.
Me:
Sales + have to work towards bringing down the TCO.

P2. What is TCO.
Me:
IT includes Maintanence + different SLA signed, not aware of the technical definition.

P1 and P2 : Oh so you guys just make big bulky software and try and sell it to people.
Me : Well I smiled and gave a thoughtful look and said, Sir , I understand ERP apps are complex and it takes even people who are computer aware and in the industry a lot of time to understand the same, and ERP implementations take around 6 months to 6 years for implementation (Nestle took 6 years ) , but I think the complexity can also be attributed to the market the ERP functions in there are so many horizontals and verticals in the market that it becomes complicated.

P1. Do you know the Sun model ?

Me : No sir . ( He was referring to the sort of corporate model followed by Sun microsystems )

P1. Is XXX into SaaS

Me :Yes sir.


[P1 somewhere in between what is middleware ?
Me: Interoperability + Standard based interface gave the example of SOAP a WSS ,Gave an example here.]


P2 : Do you know network externalitics ( i dunno if this was analytics or exter ... )

I said no sir.


P2: Hobbies ?
Me : watching plays and reading.

P1 : Really excited ... Have you red Chetan Bhagat.
Me: Wicked smile, Yes sir the first one, 5 point someone.

P2 : Oh why did you smile when he asked you that, is it amusing.
ME : no sir , I didnt relate much to the book since i am not from an IIT 2. I consider it pop fiction, more of a convenient read/ one night read.

P2 :So you dont read books like that ?
No sir , i read them as convenient reads. sidney sheldon, robert ludlum sorts.

P2 : SO what do you read.
Me : I have read transgressional fiction , Fight club , trainspotting, clockwork orange etc. Russian authors : Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn blah blah, P2 cuts me.

P2: Of why russian authors, why not american authors, why not Virginia Wolf.
ME :All excited with Virginia woolf .

P2: Have you read VW ?
ME: No sir, I have watched the movie The hours.

P2: So why russian ? Do you have friends who also read ?
Me: Sir i read all sorts of books, reading is like another world to me, and russia has produced some of the best literature. I also read Indian authors.
Kiran Desai,Vikram Seth ,Jhumpa lahiri etc.I have also read Herman Hesse. I do have a group of frinds sharing similar interests and i do take suggestions.
[I was basically trying to stress that ii have varied reading habits which i do :D]

P2: So all booker and pulitzer prize winners.
ME: Not exactly , like i really liked "An equal music" by Vikram Seth, the style of writing a more of a prose sorta writing, and teh set up in venice and france.

P1: So do you know of the controversy regarding this book, its based on something ?
Me: No sir.

P1: So have you read Ghosh ?
Me: Amitav Ghosh . no sir. But i tend to read across the board , for instance I am presently reading a non fiction Aids Sutra, a book of 16 short stories by 16 different Indian authors about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India.

P1: P2 : Good you can leave.

I said Thank You and left.

I could have done much better here.I have read a multitude of books , germans , french , Japanese, and many many more Indians from the bhagvath gita to even Rabindranath Tagore. But i think i gave in to my nerves :(.

Anyway

Malgudi Days some trivia and my take on it ...

Most people from my age group cant forget this mesmerizing tale of a small town in the hinterlands of India. I was exposed to R.K.Narayans writings much later than I ideally should have been ( only when I was in 11th, which is very very late) . But then I realise today that I come from another generation ,and a family structure which is much different.

Anyway my first brush with Malgudi was on T.V, Doordarshan in particular, in those days when there was no cable T.V in India. As kids it was just a sequence of stories I never really looked for a larger meaning there. But once in 11th I participated in a book discussion on R.K.Narayans Swami and Freinds. The discussion opened my mind to Narayans writings. Narayan has surely added a treasure to Indian literature with his writings on a small fictional town. It is not just the town that grasps our imagination. It is the whole world that Narayan has created. While looking at Narayans town as fictional helps us to maybe cut off from the reality of it, but his understanding of the Indian psyche cannot be understated.

Narayan captures the idiosyncracies of our lives completely. Be it the fears of young Swami who is afraid to sleep alone in the night or the iron fisted father who wants his child to be strong and take on the world as a man. Be it in the old man who has for 25 years done his job with utmost care and is paranoid about the 12 Rs pension that he commands after that or the dejection of a young man at being unable to clear the inter exam. Not to forget that Narayan does not lose his sense of humour or irony in all this. The hand of irony is used by Narayan to portray the paradox in our culture when a husband who marries his wife against the will of God ( their "jadagams/kundli" dont match , and the wife is doomed to die if they marry and the husband loves her devotedly ), goes back to the foot of god when his wife is on her death bed , only to be told by the "pujari" that he must be disloyal to his wife. The husband returns from the doors of a prostitute, without going in. This signifies the paradox even in the most educated if Indians, the ever lasting fight between tradition and modernity.He touches on how a childs world is not like us adults, it is black or white with fewet shades of grey.

As far as the television series is concerned ,the cartoons that form a part of the malgudi series are inseparable from the series on the whole and so is the song "ta na na ta na na na naa .." .

Now coming to the trivia :

I was always amazed at how all the towns around Manipal were so Malgudi like, maybe it is because they are. The Manglore tiled sloping roofs, moss covered because of the unrelenting rains. Malgudi days was shot at Agumbe just about 60 - 90 kms from Manipal.

The director of Malgudi days Shankar Nag is none other than the husband of Arundhathi Nag, one of the main hands behind setting up Rangashankara the place I frequent to watch plays :) .

Shankar Nag was born in Udupi the district of which Manipal is a part of :).

The urge to get out ... Into the Wild

In all my life I have only wanted to get out of things.
From as long as I remember this urge to get out has been overpowering. I remember the first time I realised this it was now ,more than 8 years ago when I was in class 10th. I am from this rather small non descript school in one corner of Delhi where nothing much happened. Guys would usually gawk at girls who wore shorter skirts and went to the more elite Sardar Patels and DPSs' of Delhi with saliva trickling down their open mouths, much like puppies looking at the forbidden favorite biscuits. Girls would talk about mundane things with nothing much to do in terms of extra curricular. Theater almost non existent and the few Literary activities being dominated by a few who lacked the imagination and the charisma to carry it to any level, but i give them the credit for participating for whatever reasons.

Anyway while I was in 10th I realized this is the last place I wanted to be in. I wanted more opportunities and the sadist , radical in me would cry out and I would openly proclaim to my paremts that they had already ruined my life. Between these hysterical breakdowns and the other mundane things I did I decided to study my ass off and get the percentage that would take me to those "elite institutions" ,in my small mind these places were the promised land I was looking for. Then came the day of when I was to get my results and what I got was a 91.4% . Little did I know at that time that this was not enough. With this I did not get through DPS RK Puram , or even Sardar Patel. I did get through DPS Mathura Road but alas it was deemed that these schools were too far and not worth the effort of travelling half way across the city. and hence I shall stay put where I was.

And then began the journey through 11th and 12th , when I lost all my zest for school, and in a style that is typical to me I lost the zest to do engineering midway and started exploring other options from mass com to journalism. Another thing worth mentioning here was that I had by large cut away from school hardly turning up more than thrice a week to show my face and maintain the minimum attendance criterion. In another turn of event so typical to me , I ended up an engineer.

Three and a half years in a small town called Manipal and while I was there I again just wanted to get out.Now I have been in Bangalore for more than three years now and again I just want to get out. I have now more or less given up, I relaise that people like me will never belong. We can never make friends and live "happy" lives. We are like the nomads, only much more unhappy. Not because we dont get a chance to be happy but somewhere deep within us we dont know how to be happy. We dont understand the importance of it. We need to find a reason and no matter what the reason it is never good enough.

It's not the people or the places which were not good enough, the reason lies much deeper somewhere in my psyche. The problem is not them but me.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I have been reading this small but extremely lovely book by the name of "The Little Prince" ( thanks to Malay Sir ). The book seems to be a most refreshing change from the sort of heavy stuff I am used to reading and by no means, any less profound.

To start with the layout and the content. The book is a rather simply written book with an inventive approach towards writing with really simple pictures with a childlike hand drawn quality to them. The pictures are descriptive of what is said in the book.

Now coming too what the book really is about. Its about everything , its about you and me and the world. Its about how we grow up and forget the smaller things. Its about how we are "tamed" and responsible for everything we put our time into. Its about how sometimes we let people enter our lives and hurt us and how they do the same with us. But all this is put in a wonderfully simple way with the beautiful use of a little prince who owns three volcanoes , two active and one extinct, and a flower and lives on a planet as small as a house.

The flower signifies much, as do the small planets the prince visits , to me it signifies our own small worlds where we live conceited lives, rule, pass judgments and make life miserable for ourselves. The flower signifies anyone or anything we become familiar with, fall in love with, spend our time on. A flower is but a flower, much like the billions of people on earth who are all more or less just people, but why do some people become more important to us than others, why do we find the idiosyncracies of our loved ones so difficult to get over with, when they are probably no special. Maybe because for us these people have become unique over the years by virtue of the amount of time we have put on them.

I had a ball reading this one. All in all i wish to meet the fox. Or probably the fox is already around and I just need to want to meet it and make friends with it enough.

Sound of silence - Simon and garfunkel

Hello darkness, my old friend,
Ive come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of
A neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one deared
Disturb the sound of silence.

Fools said i,you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the signs said, the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whisperd in the sounds of silence.

more of my wierd dreams

The last few days to say the least have been depressing for me for several reasons, none of which i shall disclose here. But its strange that i have the wierdest thoughts when i go into depression or maybe not so much ...

One day before going to sleep i was conjuring up what i would write in my own suicide letter ( not that I was going to do IT ) but i was just contemplating what to write in it , would I write that I think I am a huge failure with no sense of achievement ?

Would I write that I didnt have the courage or rather didnt care enough to get through each day as it is ?

I really didnt come to much of a conclusion.

This other day I was thinking about how cool it would be if life could just fast forward to the day i will die. Like for the people who died in Mumbai it was just a few seconds it took. They were alive this moment and dead the next , but thats how death comes i guess in a flash.

Head down

The last time I posted was when there were blasts happening in India left right and center. I had made a simple maybe a too simplistic post about how most of us do not understand or care about the blasts , of innocent people being blown up to pieces by ruthless sons of bastards. But today sadly so it has probably turned a reality for a lot more given what has transpired in Mumbai.

What I am so surprised about is how some people have such black and white views. Simi Garewal saying that no one attacked America because America gave the right signals. I stand staunchly oppose the American wars. I think the world pays and pays heavily so for the inhuman crimes the US of A indulges itself in.

I agree the right signals need to be sent out, I dont think America though gave out the right signals in any which way.

Sadly I am not so decided about my own views. I think India has some really complex problems not very different from Pakistan, Bangaladesh , Iraq ,Iran ,Palestine ,Israel probably the whole of Africa and loads of other countries around the world. Sadly speaking i see a soul in all of us. We have colour we have life we smile and cry from the heart ,we have a soul.