Aparajito - Unvanquished

Aparajito is the 2nd masterpiece after Pather Panchali in the Apu Trilogy of Satyajit Ray. I watched it yesterday after coming back from a perfect little trip to Bidar with friends.

Harihar, Sarbojaya and Apu move to Benares after Durga's death. They are making ends meet nicely, living off Harihar's earnings as a Kashi ghat priest (or panda) and one-off vaidya. Apu is happy with his new friends and experiences the vast mix of intrigues in Benares, all centered around religion, with wide eyes... On the ghats:- the kathas of the pandas and the morning exercise of the the mallkhamb body-builder, in the temple:- the sandhya aarti and the monkeys, and... Diwali.

Again, Ray chooses to juxtapose happiness with sadness like in Pather Panchali. Harihar falls seriously sick while shopping for Diwali. While outside there are firecrackers and kids shouting, one knows seeing Harihar lying on the bed and his tired smiles that not all is going to be well. He talks to Apu about his friend, Shambhu who teaches him English, and to Sarbojaya about a new baadi he wants to move into. Several days later, he dies, and the remaining family moves in with Apu's grandfather in his village.

Apu goes to the village school, does well, goes to Kolkata for higher studies, and while he is learning and growing up, Sarbojaya pines for her child in the village. Filial love does persist in him too, but the expanse of the new world draws him. Apu's is a mind full of curiosity, be it child-like when running around exploring the village, or adoloscent when fathoming eclipses and siphons. Sarbojaya can't give up her possessive love but willingly gives up everything for Apu, including her life. Losing everyone he ever loved, everything his childhood was founded on still doesn't dilute his will to learn, to educate himself. What's more, he knows that not only was Ma's death because his schooling took him away, but also it was her last sacrifice. He goes back to Kolkata for his examinations postponing Ma's last rites.

Both movies have managed to bring out some things bottled up in me. Apur Sansar will finish my cathartic tri-sojourn, following Ray's camera and mind.

Aparajito - Images

A few scenes from Aparajito that moved me:

The first appearance of Apu. Twinkling eyes full of life and... kutuhool. A child assimilates grief much faster than a grown up; after all, he has lots of growing up to do and there's only so much childhood left.




Harihar with a cup of sweetened milk that Sarbojaya has kept aside for him. It takes little to bring him to a smile. He is a blessed spirit with optimism written large on his face.


Apu sees the train rushing by his grandfather's home, and shouts out to Sarbojaya "Ma! Rail gaadi!". It brings back to him Didi's memory, and Baba's. Mother and child at the door watch on as the train whistles along.

Aami School-e Jaabo. Tomaar poisa nahi, Ma?

I can Learn. Loaded with books by his headmaster at school, and yet wanting more.


Apu knows he hurt Ma when he came away in a hurry without looking back at her standing on the doorway. He comes back from the railway station, and too grown up to show his emotions, just says "I missed the train", but with a grin.


Awaiting Apu. Sarbojaya prepares all this for the festival hoping Apu will come, but instead comes his postcard... He has holidays but exams are coming up soon. The mother understands, but the mother can't.

Unvanquished, I go back. Apu going back to Kolkata for exams. He has no family left, he has the guilt of not being there for Ma when she was dying, but he moves on.

Pro-fessors

Just back from an odd party at the ISB after the final exams. It was supposed to be big, wild, with lots of music, lots of food and lots of fun. The fun fizzled before it could begin, as many decided to head out uptown in seach of costlier booze and hep'er crowd at BNC. While downing the vodka's, I made a little mistake that I'll have to fix asap... and fix the loose tongue too.

Anyways, can't begin to describe the time here. Up and down giant wheel? Round and round merry-go-round? Naah, one of those supernova rides that tear you away from earth a couple hundred meters in seconds and let you free fall. It's fast, it's quick, it's speedy enough to be almost painless. The more pessimistic may think, it's the jhatka death as against the slit-and-bleed halaal of the IIM's. Reminds me of a blog post, by Govindraj Ethiraj comparing ISB with IIM's, something that all of us have been cautious about. After all, it's like comparing Kashmiri Apples to... Sw would know what to compare to(!), dissimilar attributes but equivalent utility.

The exams, 4 of them in 2 days flat left me with a mix of humility and reassurance. There are some big dreams that I will have to give up, but there are somethings that I've ended up picking up quite well, things that are of an analytical sort, that require thinking through. ISB's education's big asset is the constellation of internationally acclaimed professors.

Accounting: Fun to know that Enron was all about accounting for (or not accounting for stock options); Worldcom beefed up liabilities accounts (line costs) in its books, Coca Cola Japan's used channel stuffing to meet revenue targets, Microsoft used Unearned Revenues to smooth Net Income, W. T. Grant's accrued huge sundry debtors while keeping revenue's and income still high. All this... all accounting shenanigans as Prof. Mark Finn termed them.

Marketing: I disliked it the most to begin with, then feared it the most as 6/6/6 (Today is the day of Satan) came close; finally liked it quite a bit just before the exam today, when I could see all the P's and C's line up nicely in front of my mind with their name tags on. After my messy attempt at the exam though... I am not too sure. Next term, it's going to get more clear, concrete, credible, comprehensive and I can't think of a suitable 5th C, when Prof Jagmohan Raju takes us through Marketing Decision Making (or Mark - 2).

Economics: One of the sharpest minds ISB must have had the fortune to have on campus, Prof. Rakesh Vohra taught us the game theory and strategic thinking for 2 weeks after Prof. Amit Bubna had set the foundations right. Most of us are still to catch up with the whirlwind that his lectures and the exam paper were. We knew there's lot of knowledge he has given us, and many kept regurgitating and chewing the cud, but before the assimilation could start came the paper. It did me in. I liked to think, and still do, that analytical thinking is my forte... Haah says the inner voice whenever I think of those 2 hours grappling with 4 innocuous questions that required lots of that and little else; no formulas, no models, just maximize the goddamn profit and/or consumer surplus'es... and I kept thinking How?

Statistics: You'd have found by now by the prev posts I liked Stats the best... have already written some about it. There are many here who would concur with me on that one. No one could have taken them CA's amongst us and made them like Stats, other than the two teachers from Wharton, energetic-to-the-point-of-dramatic Prof. Robert Stine and british-cool-humourous Prof. Richard Waterman who also runs AnaBus.

It's gone by real quick... have the term 2 course material lying besides me on the table - still smelling fresh from the cyclostyle - or whatever they've used to churn out the white elephantine Comp Strat and Decision Models books. Time will soon come when I open the Comp Strat big book to its first case, maybe next Sunday... till then let me watch a couple good movies, read a little and write a bit more poetry maybe. Going on a bike ride to Bidar coming weekend. Will be good fun.

That Song!

I’m empty, I’m dark
I’m black, I’m blank
There’s mirth here, and life
A sphere and… expanse


I walk in, there’s light
I walk out, there’s none
Look within, there’s love
And without, it’s gone.


Won’t be what I am
Can’t be, what I’m not
This schizophrenic
Will die twice, or rot.


Like a circle, periodic
Like a taut line, stretched long
On the grass lies, my body
While I wander… That Song!

Order the Chaos

Above is the Marketing Process model used by the Marketing Management course at ISB, and in almost every other college too. Much of the talk and thought in this subject can get quite haphazard, as our group found out during all the previous case studies. K kept telling us... 'Guys we need structure!', and we kept nudging those poor numbers, coaxing them to mate amongst themselves using whatever mathematical operator they deemed fit and churn out for us a magical strategy. We were reminded today, rather straight, by Prof. Raju that it makes sense to internalize this one meaningful diagram and structure all Marketing Strategy / Thinking (or Marketing Globe if you prefer) around this model. Right then... you Pregnant Path of Practice and Perception... (4P's iudn) in you go!

Backlog Backpack Flashback

Each tiny moment that goes by reminds me of the growing backlog. Oh yeah, there is that Accounting assignment to Finn'ish, Economics game theories to Vohra'ciously ingest and digest, and the Sales Case study, CLV/EVC and Brands valuation to guzzle by the Jag before tomorrow. Almost done but only almost... the exams are not so far away. Exams in ISB are never too far away. It's like the tight loop short racetrack of Monaco - Monte Carlo. Every 5 weeks we get the Loews hairpin-Portier corner combo in the term exams, and frequently tackle other bothersome manoeuvres too. Oh well, Kimi crashed out of the race today around 60th lap; sad as hell. What about our Lap 1 here in ISB?


What have I been up to? Managed to find time out to start teaching guitar to a little kid in campus. I have to balance teaching the important stuff with the fun stuff, cause kids lose interest quite easily. He learns real quick too - finished the easy-first-for-all 'papa kahte hain', moved on to 'chura liya', and can pick up tunes himself. Doing that over months on his own, though, has spoilt his technique. When I first saw him play, he was using the guitar as an Ektara, using just the left middle finger to fret every note jumping back and forth on one string. He's improved considerably now. My goal, I'll get him to Section C one day before he leaves (in July) and we'll play a song together after class.


In other news, I have decided to take a break in July and go catch up with the Bangalore Rectens. This term break though is going to be a 'reflecting' period, although I doubt I will be able to do much of that, considering there are several good people staying back and who knows we may end up going someplace close by or just alco-hauling our tired brains back to life. How I want to go biking and trekking for a whole weekend some place! Maybe I will... all of the 720 kms, what?


A couple quips in the previous class from Richard Waterman, the prof for Statistics (SMMD) part II who hails from Wharton:

- I abandoned the search for truth long time ago,
all I need now is a statistical approximation to reality.

- It's the most difficult to find a signal in stocks' financial data,
cause any signal is immediately traded away.

- It's easy to memorize how to use p-value... remember:
"When p is low, the null must go". And, don't remember:
"When p is low, with null I go".
Well, I shouldn't have told you the second one, should I?

What also came to my mind is something that mattered to me oh-so-much and still does, but I do not blame myself so much. Ek wo d-day tha, ek ye d-day hai. Will the veneer weather the heat from within and cold from outside well?

Patterns...

Had us in splits, did Prof Bob Stine... "We are genetically programmed to see patterns in random data. The gene that couldn't distinguish between bushes with a stealthy tiger and just bushes walked into the bushes... and never came back."

 

He of course went on to make statistical sense about how after the linear regression finishes relating the dependent (response) variable to the independent (predictor), what's left (the residual plot) may still have a pattern that only a human eye can discern, which then signals that the time's come for a data transformation. Greek? Not quite... when Bob teaches. Bye Bob! There's at least one guy in our section that you've really transformed... not me, S.

Morning after

The night is finally done and over with. The morning's here! 

 

Figuratively...

 

The mid-term exams were a sail through for a select few, a torture for some and a mixed bag for most of us. SMMD (Stats) thankfully failed to live up to the dreaded bug-bear repo it had gotten itself, despite 'Hypothesis', 'Confidence Interval' and 'Scatterplot' figuring in routine ISB jokes. The fear of the unknown... of the region beyond +- two standard errors, had gripped the junta hard enough to forget them the agony of the Monopoly and perfect competition. Many of us ended up burning ourselves out mastering alpha, beta, sigma, mu, s, z, t, p, and other 'statistically significant' letters 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. That left MGEC (Economics) untouched till the night before the last, when we realized there's more to it than SS=DD and MR=MC. ISB made a killing by the photostats of the Krepps Eco problems. ~ 300 students, 100 copies each at 1 buck a copy, with the demand for them probs almost inelastic. Others and I realized a li'l late that doing due diligence towards Bob Stine (Stats) had left Amit's (Eco) concepts high and dry feet above the hair standing on end in desperation on our heads.

 

The exams proved what Murphy had begged the world to remember. An intuitive and solvable SMMD paper was followed by a Nani-yaad MGEC paper... which even with open books, notes, assignments, printouts, photostats and scribbled bits of loose paper, seemed impossible. I took credit in managing a couple sums. But... the final verdict was by the pessimists 'We don't need such hard exams... even Kellogg's and Wharton have easier ones!' Let's spare us some pain teachers, shall we?

 

and Literally...

 

Post the mid-term, I spent the night first at the SFA (Spouses) party... dance, drinks, biryani, then at S's exercising my rusty fingers on six dulled strings, then on the rocks near the Founders Class Lounge, where my music had its first audience at ISB, then at R's... tea and singing, then at A's watching half an hour each of three movies with a mix of half-asleep and wide-awake junta. It dawned on us eventually that the day had, well... dawned. A beautiful morning it was at Hyderabad. All of us set out for a walk, but sleep caught up on all, but me. Back home in a while, Back stroke in the pool, Backfill in the Dining Hall, and back again, finally all set to catch up on that mystery woman in my head for straight eight hours. 

 

K had a bad mishap with a dunking gone awry, but it's better now, till maybe later when we find out the extent of the damage - a head injury you see. We found K back from Apollo smarter already. Seriously, I was reminded of what could have gone wrong. Let's play safe now, shall we? Final verdict by the sane among the crowd... "Drunk and Dunk... Strict No No".

 

Good night world, I say, at 8 a.m. Let's sleep now... Shall I?

Not Board Well

It doesn't bode well for the Graduate Students' Board that the students be either cynical or over-zealous about the election procedure. A sane balanced voter mind, dispassionately weighing promise and popularity, substance and flair, will elect a sound responsible GSB President. Then some say there is indifference in balance, and lethargy in laissez faire. I foresee a washout now, a close fight then, and frequently something in between.

Ham honge kamyab, ham honge kamyab,
ham honge kamyab... but who'll win?
Man mein hai wish-wash, poora hai wish-wash,
ham honge kamyab... but who'll win?

The good, the bad and the wiggly

Talking about 360 degree feedback, or what I call a 'two pie' feedback - from 2π, where you are fed various proportions of Apple Pie Vs. Humble Pie by people who have been above you, under you or besides you... professionally that is.

So, ISB has this nice credit course called the Leadership Development Program which required us to have gotten a 2π feedback from 10; I struggled to coax 7 to fill in the online questionnaire. Now, many of us have slumbered through several soft-skills workshops at work and returned back to our forte, soft-ware complaining about the soft-headedness of the instructor. Our cynicism was therefore pardonable, as we approached the Group room where the instructor of the day was awaiting the 6 of us - a real hetero study-group we are... yes, as K observed of DD, really forthright... really straight.

Cutting the puns and cutting to the point, I got some good feedbacks... I got credibility, adaptability, responsibility and other sundry abilities. I got a few bad ones too. I can't break convention, lack structure, orgainzation and receptivity. Aah yes, I also forget quite a bit...

But what do I do with these not-so-straight ones:
- A tendency to move at so fast a pace that others find it difficult to keep up... to monopolize conversation at times. His points are very good, focussed and relevant; but his personality may result in quiter people not speaking up.
- There are times when he may not deal well with team inefficiency... simply because his productivity is so high.

Both look like biquadratic equations plotted on graph - wiggly snakes with inflections. I sure did manage to decode who exactly must have written them. Come to think of it, I actually know what they mean too. Thanks B... I'll fix it.

I've to work on three development areas: Time-management, Positive Mental Attitude and I forget the third... :-)

MKTG = FAFF?

There sure is a lot of real stuff in this subject, Marketing Management. We learnt about the Customer Lifetime Value today, and creating/capturing/sustaining customer value. There is break-even volume, 4P, 5C, 6M...

However, there is a general growing feeling that Marketing is Globe / Gyan / Faff or whatever you choose to call a lot of arbitrary viewpoints derived from common knowhow but glossed by multi-syllabic verbology. How true is this? Is reading Kotler with near-zero retention going to be of no use?

Insights, perspectives, strategic thinking... though intertwined with the course learning, frequently seem to be left high and dry by us. "Yaar, all we need is the BEV, and then we can decide on the best alternative best on the required dollar sales." In addition to the case studies where we get to do extensive number crunching... wonder if we would have a study on a marketing campaign for a floundering business manufacturing, say, pimple care soap. Why don't we ever see and advert for such a product? Go design an ad series for the same ... etc. And only if we had more India-centric cases. Wouldn't we like to talk about the white revolution, how Amul drove the Operation Flood and proved itself the best and most profitable cooperative?

Naah ... MKTG != FAFF, provided we have the right perspective, but that's exactly what the course is going to provide us with - the realization and the perspective forming the parts of a Kekule snake - 'seized hold of its own tail'.

Class apart

Is it a good idea to stick to one's section or city or group or gang or whatever when partying or would one be better off trying to befriend the world? It's an old debate of knowing "a few good people" versus "a good lot people".

Flocking together... way back during engineering at RECT, we used to see this 'regional affinity' in a few from, say, Kerala and Bengal. Jokes a plenty about how one Bengali could sniff out and zero in on others in a crowd. Well, that was then... in ISB people have been in and seen different cities, enough to cosmopolitanize them to the right degree.

A couple seniors told us to go beyond section lines when making friends. I'd add city lines, SV lines, Quad lines ... and an easy one, gender lines.

It's been good here. The week long class, followed by a blast in Ahala, Taj Krishna (thanks to M for getting us free entry in there.) Sadly, we're back to student life, and the extraordinary prices in Ahala gave enough headroom for not more than one beer or one vodka each... but then there was enough legroom for all 100 ISB'ians to throw around limbs. Some of us did so gracefully, some tactfully, some steal-limelight-blow-me-up gorgeously... a few like me did it quite 'repetitively' ... cycling through the limited known movements that qualify as dance. Aah, only if dad sent me to the 'break dance' class in 8th standard instead of Guitar classes!

The story of the road

One great thing about ISB is the learning. Well another one is DVD library. Watched Pather Panchali over the last 2 days, scenes rending and warming the heart punctuated by chat, long talks, studies, food. Yes, it is a slow movie, and I didn't do it justice by not finishing it in one go, and by forwarding several times over mute scenes of Apu chasing Durga over the fields, Apu running home shout-singing 'Chithi, Chithi'... worst, I ran the famous scene at the end of a snake entering the forsaken house of Apu in 8x. I could have immersed myself better, yet on an even more dispassionate run through, I would've been hit. And, hit I am.

Harihar was a playwright by birth and with dreams, but poverty drove him to the city to earn for his family. After six months, he managed to eek out a living, but the home was no more. And the family that remained finally moved on... not in search of happiness, but just to survive.


















Apu and Durga run out to the rain on news of baba's return. Durga gets drenched, lets her hair down and dances round and round... savouring every drop falling on her. But she is soon sitting under the tree with Apu, sneezing and chanting 'He Brushti, ghore jaa', trying to protect Apu more than herself with the shawl. The same rain that symbolised the welcome news of Harihar coming back to Sarbojaya, eventually caused the biggest grief to both. It's just a story, and a very common place one, but it's told at length and in detail in four faces of the Ray family (five, including Pishi - Chunnibala Devi). It's about life, and it's full of life... in a small Bengali village.

FADM

The 1st class of FADM - Financial Accounting in Decision Making is underway, and Mark Finn, our professor seems quite an able, informed, and genial teacher. Going to have a good time learning. Accounting to several engineers amongst us was quite a scary thing to begin with, what with a majority of us flunking the IA preparatory online test.

Couple of interesting tid-bits ...

- Terminlogy Confusion: Debtors are A/c receivables, Bank Loans is Borrowings, Turnover is Sales is Revenue, etc. And in India because of the mixed influence of commonwealth in the past and close US trade at present, we find alternative terms showing up sometimes in the same balance sheet!

- Witholding damaging company information from shareholders in financial statements is myopic, akin to treating a symptom rather than the disease. (Courtesy Tuhin, our good CP'er)

- The fundamental debate of Accounting is between Acquisition (Historical) Cost Accounting versus Market Value Accounting.

- Double entry book-keeping is probably one of the oldest things medieval man learnt to write, counting goats and sheep

 

 

Get a life

Should I have begged palmistry
For tid-bits of my was-is-be
And wont it be good company
If all we do is sit and see?

Guitar's unstrung, Swim trunks dry.
Watch that racquet hanging high
Like a distant dream of my;
A full circle is two semi's.

It's not going to be easy
to get a life at I S B.
Sleeper, dreamer, learner me
Rolls go-doer with finality

First Account

The very first Accounting class, and I see myself getting enlightened bit by bit with every word Prof Mubeen speaks about companies, financial statements, shareholders, creditors, bankruptcy. Words trickle down into the mind and spark a thousand others that were heard earlier but stowed away for the lack of overall understanding.

Experience gave me a lot of ideas and lots of jargon terms like paid up capital, limited liability, etc. The class attempts to bring them together and build them into a lucid whole.

GTB, Enron, Ron/ofI... insights, explanations and concepts rushing through to me. Imbibe, imbibe, imbibe!

Career perspective and Pre-terms

A panel of 4 industry entrepreneurs, coordinated by Harish Bijoor:

K Pandiarajan, MD, Ma Foi,
Anand Talwar, Head of Talent Mgmt, ITC Infotech,
Alok Sethi, CEO, MsourcE
Noni Chawla, Former CEO, Max Healthcare

Several takeaways, which are of course nothing new, just reinforced by the fact that a few big ones think them important.

- Work life balance. Mr. Noni resigned from Max Healthcare, started consulting for a living, and then went around roaming the world, fishing, doing photography, spending time with family, everything that he couldn't during his professional life. When?

- Grass roots. Honesty. Mr. Rajan from Ma Foi comes from a humble background and has created this 20000 strong organization with his wife.

- Job hopping versus selective shifts. Again a balance, and a non-conclusive discussion item, but it pays to know both sides.

non-conclusive brings me to LDP. Leadership Development Program was launched today. And the first thing we were given to think about was "Do teams succeed better in individualistic societies like America, or pro-community societies like India. And we got the first taste of CP - Class Participation. Everyone has a lot of nice words up his sleeves to mould similar ideas into really unique sentences. Ram had listed a few good CP's last year. There would be a lot more in the C section this year.

The Pre-term courses start next monday. 5 days of sailing through Quantitative Methods and struggling through Introductory Accounting, and then starts the fun.

Banavati Bye Bye

Just back from a huge party thrown by the 2007 batch for the 2006 batch. We have got a lot of info from these guys. Rohit from the Consultancy, Ram the blogger+helper, Murali, Atta, the Bhakti prankster... very nice people. Of course, not many of us know many of them, but where there is alcohol to heart's content brotherhood and other less platonic feelings surface quickly. Dance to most delhi males means throwing out limbs in tandem with others, and yet it's amazing that they manage to pull it off among their women. Meanwhile, the southie distorted-Amitabh-with-protruding-tongue dances are not so well received by theirs.

Anyhow, were we artificial in bidding the seniors good bye then? Was their welcome made up in the day-before's party? Did we have fun or manufacture it?

Kam hota hai khud-ba-khud
Dil-e-zard-ruu mein ho aayee khushi
Aksar hamne khush hone ko
Bematlab hi banayee khushi.

Where's Sumit?

I got my new ISB email id and it happened to be kumar_chandra@isb.edu. I am upto here with the permutations my name 'Kumar Sumit Suresh Chandra Poddar' keeps throwing up. At the entrance gate of ISB I was Kumar Sumit, but at the registration I was Sumit Kumar... wonder of wonders, at the IT registration helpdesk, the reg form had my name as "Sumit Kumar SureshChandra Kumar Sumit SureshChandra". While I was figuring that out, I also got to know that there is another Sumit SureshChandra in ISB. I can do with all that, but not an id with mine and dad's middle names fused into first name_last name. Thankfully, IT helpdesk at ISB is ever accomodating, and being in the state of longest names, must also harbour compassion for my ilk. One quick mail and I am now sumit_kumar@isb.edu

You know and I know that I am Sumit Poddar, but until my passport says so, it seems I'll have more such amusing anecdotes to share.

Staggered Launch

We reached the ISB gates early morning on the 15th with lushness of the green grass standing in sharp contrast to the summer expectations of aridity. These healthy sprouts must suckle litres from their sprinkler moms, but while we're in the land of haves let's have the best.

 

The process of registration was quite streamlined and well organised. Approach the Admissions during the allotted timeslot, get a token number, and do a quick round of each department on token call. Hmm... and what messed it up? Pro-active students, having a wholesome appetite to devour student life on campus from the word go, conveniently forgetting their timeslots, lined up early at the the Admissions desk, attended to by pardoning alumni, who gave in at the drop of an alum hat. Result... the traditional Indian chaos seen elsewhere, remember our teachers shouting 'Is this a fish market or what, you loafers?' entering a particularly unruly class. The committees, though, did a good job and though the token system never got implemented, the queues were not jumped and we generally got by quite nicely. On the sunny side, we got to meet many more faces than we would have if the process was followed to the tee.

 

Networking's on, a sort different from Cisco's. The more people you know the more you know people is all fine, but in a sea of 432 bobbing heads with faces, some smiling, some smug, some wannabe-cool-smirking, how do you single out the ones which you WANT to remember? I'll just leave it to myself. Although having mice-like memory, I have managed to remember a few good people in the first couple days. A game that's on for non-starters amongst us to secure a 'fair' acquaintance. Name, origins, background, whereabouts and section. Ask these 5 questions to a new interesting face, quickly memorise the name and forget the rest. Meet again, call out name and the 4 other questions guarantee you a 25 sec talk time plus a minute of apology for forgetfulness. Attempt a triple encore and you may be booted out squarely, however.

 

Presentations, Alum gyan and section games are going to take all of this week, and while we are getting oriented, someone within me is shouting 'boy, this place is all about loud extroversion. where's your fire?' I will go find my old engineering flintstones but someday I'll write something about 'Are loners losers?' and I am sure of which side of the fence to be.