Aadi Ant Aarambh - Placement @ ISB

The start, the end and the new beginning - each a thrill, each a trial and each a prize.

It's the forty-sixth week at ISB now, and there remain five more before graduation. Let's start looking at a few things at ISB in backward slow motion.

Placements

One blessed week, when four hundred careers were sought after. Into the magical hat, each thrust his hand and pulled out a rabbit with a hue ranging from snowy white to dusty grey. It all started with a big bash of interviews of the MBAs by MBA (Mckinsey, BCG, ATKearney) on day 0, when months (weeks in my case) of case intervew preparation was brought to the altar and commanded to do the 4-beat jig of Define, Structure, Solve, Synthesize one last time. Well, I've always had two left feet when it comes to dancing, no Ash... so I fidgeted and faltered through the whole process. No worries though, what I've got is worth it's weight in gold... umm, which is not much gold, but is enough for life. For many fellow aspirants, the dream did materialize and as for the firms themselves, it was a bumper harvest as our best were handpicked and will soon be jet setting across the world carrying the ISB brand neat and high with them. Rock on, guys!

There are close to 200 companies visiting campus this season. Two hundred?!! ejaculated amazed a few friends back at Baroda, and struggled a bit to say the next word which was Wow. On campus, though, that doesn't mean a thing. We can't just take ANY job, we need what we want. But, were we able to wait for the right one? Not many of us, I hazard. The pressure was maybe telling on many a resolve to wait out for the dream company/sector/industry. Umm... TWI (Thomas Weisel) is today and I have signed out of the placement process. Surely not dream company... but dream industry?

The process, then.

1. You register at the placement website and receive an id and a password
2. As recruiter companies are bowled over by ISB Business Development team or by themselves, they register for placement
3. PPT's happen throughout the month of January, upto 4/5 a day, where the hallowed firms brag and the less shiny ones pitch
4. You pick a set that you find matches your capabilities, or aspirations, or rarely both, and apply online. Some of them also have a tedium of form-fillings. Others just have these:

• The Resume: A contorted 'activized' picture of your professional life, where you struggle to not lose the prominence of what you did in those relevant necessary words.
• The EoI: Expression of Interest... or for us career-switchers, an Endeavour to Overshadow Incompatibility. I tried hajaar and one creative bursts in those EoI paragraphs. I knew they don't matter much, but I felt good about making those 3 paragraphs as interesting as I could, possibly just in the hope that some cute HR in some company would read it, like it and note down the phone number at the top.

1. Come the D-Day, and you scurry to the magic hats to pull out your rabbits.
2. Shortlists and Interviews are often very much inter-twined almost as close together as a fresh couple on lonesome place besides a lake. You get one night to prepare... I got half a night for one of my fav companies.
3. After you have managed to impress and prove that you had really 'pioneered the new perspective on' whatever technology, you get a 'Letter of Intent'
4. LoI converts to offers the same or next day (a maximum of two offers across days, unlimited on the same day)...
5. An excessively formal, but quite visibly self-conscious placement team member congratulates you.
6. You pick your choice within the stipulated time (1-x days), sign at the bottom of the form and make a dotted line beneath if you wish.
   
   Umm... people who excel in the end are mostly people who have focus or who have ma fate. I had a little of both. "I accept the offer and am willing to opt out of the placement process."

Ding-o

Hello World,

 

I want an answer. I am not okay with Forty-two.

 

1) The Trinity Gods just looked at one line of the CV and selected me, while all others (8 thus far) looked at the whole thing and found me wanting in calibre in addition to wanting the job. i.e. my CV was the letdown.

2) The Fins thought I am IT, the tier-II Consults thought I am straddling between finance and telecom, the Medias would think I am nowhere.

3) Career switching is not possible or easy, and Cisco is my life savior... for now at least.

 

My head is 'eating circles' with What-if questions now. And it's just the beginning. I cant complain, I agree.

Dekho, wo aa gaya

Har kadam par hai naye mod ka aagaz, suno. Not necessarily though. Chalte chalte kadam thakne ko aaye the, tab kahin jaa kar ek right turn mila tha, teer ka nishaan bhi bana tha 'This Way'. Ab manzil pe aake dekh raha hoon to bade bade bold red aksharon mein likha hai 'Members Only'. Soch raha hoon kitne lagenge...

 

Three days to the start of the Rodent Derby at ISB! (to quote Mundi). Let's go stomp on the large pie, fellow rats and make it messier. Let's then fall on our bellies and eat belly-fulls of it.

 

Happiness to all, success to the deserving!

See'ed Saw'ed

When I was a kid, our house in Subhanpura, Baroda (Vadodara, or Banyan-in-the-tummy city) had a nice garden... To set expectations right, it was around 25 ft x 10 ft; not huge, but big enough to fuel a child's fantasy. Now, there was this seed peddler who used to come on a bicycle with a rectangular "hold-all" military green bag, full of white sachets of seeds, tied to the carrier. Nothing great, told my mind to me, boring looking sachets with tiny equally uninteresting seeds.

Then one day, he brought seed sachets, which had colorful pictures of the vegetable or flower that it promised to deliver in due course. It kick-started my curiosity and my fascination with those sachets. Mom would buy some 10-20 of them - tomatoes, peas, marigold, chillies... and stack them up on the rack besides the bed. At first opportunity, I'd take them out, lay them side by side on the bed, like you do a pack of cards, look at the bright pictures of flaming red tomatoes, seemingly innocuous green chillies, peacefully yellow marigolds and sunflowers, and wonder when our garden will bloom with such life and green.

Well, the garden remained largely the same. Those tiny lemons never tasted any better than bought ones. Brinjals never turned purple like the sachet had promised. The tomatoes were always the worst letdown - the plant never bore any tomatoes! I kept imagining for a while and then gave up. Mom kept buying for a while and then gave in. Dad went and hired a 'maali' who changed the garden over to lots of easy-to-grow greens and no vegetables - money plant, office flowers, and others that I don't know the name of. However, he knew his roses well... and boy, did we have one great winter when those five rose plants were on a roll churning out gifts by the dozen every week!

Agreed, there's no point. But, seeing those tiny seeds in splendid sachets gave me the kicks... and they were fun to play with.

I weed weed
I need seed
I did deed
I Saw'ed See'ed
(Shut up, stupid,
'ere you become a kid)

Khatir

Kitne malaal-e-peer mar chale

Kitni khushiyan jee uthin hain

Khatir kiske zubaan muztarib

Khwab mein kiske zehen girift hai

 

(When grief dies of old age, 

replaced by new-born joy...

for whom I wait anxiously,

of whom are dreams slaves?)

They're coming!

A little boy had a dream one night. Two Gods visited and said he was going to be an Angel soon, if only he behaved from now till the Valentine's day and memorized his prayers and read the Holy Book daily. He woke up in the morning to find he was still a shepherd's kid that he was. The same old goats he'd been tending to for 5 years were bleating outside, pleading to be taken to the lush green farmlands. After all, there was so much of delicious greens to be grazed in there, and the goats, who had no idea that soon they would be delicious mutton, wanted to have it all.

Well, the little boy picked up the phone and called Gods' messengers and re-confirmed that the deal was on on both sides.

Msgr: (over crackling long-distance line) Have no doubt! There are some hundred prayers to be internalized and there is a religion to be assimilated. And then you win yourself the cloud #1.

Sboy: I don't believe in God, but I don't believe in goats either, and I don't believe in mutton for sure. Can I maybe switchover to milking cows... I hear there is money to be made in dairy.

Msgr: All hell shall break loose on you, boy, if you don't try to be an Angel. To try and fail would be pardoned though. Now, now, don't you find those feathers that come with Angelhood rather nice?

Sboy: Umm, yes. Will I get to play too among the clouds, and... you know... those heavenly beauties?

Msgr: Take your pick, lad. We believe in work-life balance.

Sboy: Awesome, I should start the first prayer then... Pratham Patit, Paap Punya harit...

Days passed... the boy had managed thirteen prayers and only half the holy book in preparation of Angelhood. The goats had all run out to feed themselves and escaped fated muttonhood. His luck in the milking cow business had run dry for good. Then came the Valentine's day... and he ran into the woods.

Shouting "They're coming, they're coming!"

ISB Radio - Compare

We play good songs for the junta and play the guitar at ISB Radio for the media. Sample these media clips:

NDTV:


TV9:


Times NOW:


And then, compare all the above guitar playing to this. If I ever see this guy in my life, I will be willing to let him make love to me.

Winning over watching over me

It is not easy and it was not easy in the beginning. The stupid little black kitten kept jumping around smiling, grinning, giggling, laughing her guts out, and always managing to stay just out of reach. Seemed like a wild goose chase, only difference I wasn't even sure I was the hunter, and before long I was out of that jungle and into another one - ISB. Later that year, I tested waters and found it freezing cold. Then one day, the geyser switched on suddenly and the cat jumped in and started splashing around with the tiny toys in the bathtub. The water is health-spring lukewarm now, and it feels good that as I watch over someone, someone's watching over me.

 

Blah... it's impossible to encode bare facts. I am sure even a Christ College grad can figure this one out.

 

In other news, placements are on. Have BCG in the kitty besides having the kitten in the kitty. Life is coming back to life.

New New Year

It's been long. I'd tell you why if you were me...

I've got to extract my pound of flesh from 2007. 2006 was a mixed blessing. Failures dressed up gaudily like successes, which in turn wore a shabby torn bloody orange tee-shirt with the devil on it. ISB Rocks! People here came to know me finally as that other guy who was a commodity guitarist at the 'Five year celebration'. My relatives are now proud of me for showing up on T.V. and advising the Prime Minister himself on policy changes. Watch:



All I really did was to blurt out the only idea I had learnt well in the Government, Society, Business (GSBC) course... (Blah to the media, fie on glossification).

I glossified my resume to a point where the important details of what I did are nicely obscured by dollar figures and action verbs. When I sat down to undo the (c)harm from the CV, brought on over the last 2 months under the effect of boastful self and helpful peers and alums, I found there was absolutely no value in it left for a telecom company, say, Cisco, where I can very well end up given the scheme of things. Placements are on... placements are on me. I am under placements, and if it was meant to be a good place, it's perfect placement.

Bangalore, the crazy city doesn't leave me... I am not done with you yet, Richmond, Brigade, Koramangala. I will be back. Need I? I undid the harm. What remains is what survived and what died was... aborted, loosely. Happiness all around and joy to the world, the Lord has come! I played the guitar with the Carol group as we went from student village to student village on eve before the eve before Christmas eve, singing.

It was nice to have so many alums come down around Christmas for Solstice and tell us something we all wanted to hear about the funny way fate starts behaving around now each year at ISB "You're not the only one. We've seen it too. This too shall pass. You will get a job. You will like your job or you'll find another one." Yeah, we have it in us! Or rather we have it on us... the ISB brand that is, and we shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome, one week.

I read this and see a divide between my positive and negative sides. Every one around me who has kept me uncomplicated enough, thank you and have a great year ahead!

Rukh Kis Taraf

At my surprise birthday party, all wanted some serious stuff, and I was blank... these lines came later in the night.

इस कदर के हुस्न पर, हो फना रहमत कभी
रूह को जन्नत नसीब, तन जले इस चाह में।
होगी बेहतर मौत मुझको बेबसी की जिंद से
खाख होगा दिल मगर, ख्वाब होंगे अब्र पे॥

(Rahmat can give up his life on this beauty, better ayhow than keeping a life of want and despair. Even as the pyre burns my body, heaven will be assured for the soul and the clouds for my dreams)

बेवजह रहता परेशाँ, बेवजह की आस में
बाट जोहे उनकी जो हैं बेपरस्त इस राह से।
आ चुकीं हैं फिर बहारेँ, आँख मूँदें क्यूँ रहें
एक ख्वाब है नुमायाँ, बेहतर है क्या हकीकतें॥

(Pointless is the worry, and the wait for the one who will never come by. It is spring only if you open your eyes. Is there a better reality than the advertised dream.)

Thanks guys for the nice party... for making me feel good about myself!

Apur Sansar

And thus I finished Ray's trilogy at long last. I didn't expect the story to end on a happy note. But, it did. I don't expect the story to end happily. Will it?

Apu goes back to college in Calcutta after Ma's death in Aparajito, but moneyless, he drops out before graduation. He lives off tuition and gets some money writing short stories for magazines and by selling his books one by one. Harihar, Apu's father, was a playwright with his dreams shackled by daily drudgery of feeding a family. Apu seems to revel in the freedom afforded to him by orphanhood and bachelorhood. He is writing a novel, which he says to his close friend Pulu, is half autobiography (his poverty and resolve) and half imagination (love which he's still unaware of).



That changes, when he marries Aparna, Pulu's relative. Love seeps gradually into their chance relationship aided by Apu's care and Aparna's softness and before long they are inseparable.



Aparna's face by the light of the matchstick that she used to light Apu's cigarette. "What's that in your eye?". "Kajal"



Aparna goes home for her first child and writes back to Apu reminding him of his promise. Apu spends the entire day trying to steal moments away from the prying eyes of people so he can read a line or two of what his fondest one has written.



And just when he finishes the letter near home, Murari, Aparna's brother gives him the news.



Everyone. Everyone who has been in Apu's life left him. A long silence in which even the clock stops ticking, or maybe it's time itself that has stopped.

This time, to live anyhow and move on is not Apu's resolve. It is his fatalism.



He writes to Pulu, "I want peace". He had been a karmyogi in the face of every bereavement. This time, it's renunciation.



The novel, Apu's single dedication before Aparna, is also no more. Is nothing left?

Five years hence, Apu has been roaming the country and now wants to go abroad... peace still not in sight. Pulu instead coaxes him to go fetch his son and care for him. Kajal has grown up at his grandfather's house.



Kajal reminds one of what Apu was in Pather Panchali - playful, mischievious, innocent, curious. It takes a while for the child to warm up to his father, and then Apurba Kumar Roy takes the last piece of life that's still associated with him, with him. What survives, is life.

Birthday Cut

Term 5 finished with a whimper after that apology of an exam of Property Finance, which was an insult to the intelligence of even the most academically uninclined (or alternatively most entrepreneurial) brain. But what's the big difference... it's over!

I rode out to get a new haircut done for my Bangalore trip. Now, maybe I am the only one like this... but what do you do when your nose or ear or forehead itches while the barber is at his job? You bring out your arm from beneath the folds of the overall and itch. Well, not me. Since I was a kid, I was terrified by the Navdurga Hair Art barber below the Golden - Silver Apartments of ours at Baroda. I don't remember how he looked like, but I sure knew what the Ustara could achieve if need be. I also remember that first nick, after which I refused to go to the same guy again. That has left two scars in my head. I do not small-talk with the barber and I do not itch when it itches while on the chair.

Today, was different. I requested a special cut at the Loreaal in Madhapur, and got it done too - A close shave at the back, and kinda short but not spiky in the front. I also talked to the barber a little bit. But most importantly when the tiny hair decided to stay put and offend my nose, I itched. Not once, but thrice.

In other news, yesterday was my birthday, which was less happening than today's visit to Loreaal. Or was it? I got a nice gift from the kid I teach the guitar. A Reebok woollen vest... sleeveless. Hmm, hmm. Wonder when I will have enough bi/tri/multi-ceps to flaunt the flashy maroon garment. Till then, the jacket shall help hide the mombatti's of my bare arm whenever I try it on.

What can 2 letters do?

Comes a little 'h' followed by tiny 'i', and there go 30 minutes of important study time staring at the laptop screen. What a big waste!

DeBacle

On the 6th of November, Deutsche Bank called CAS at 10 in the morning and said "So-and-So and Sumit Kumar are also shortlisted. Interview at 11".

Don't shortlist me. Me no complain. Don't give me a chance to see if I fit in. Me ice cool with it. But, come on, don't make a mockery of my limited and dwindling capabilities by calling me in last minute, talking to me casually about my experiences as the college cultural secretary and if I ever wanted to start a tech company, and then deciding that I don't belong to the hallowed ilk. Because fyi, sir, I know I don't.

After all real interviewees were done and gone, two of us stood there awaiting our turn, I certainly feeling second-rate. Came by the PPT star himself in a hurry, took me to an AC8 room, where he talked to me about his uncle who had to tie a rubber band around his fist to remember to-do's. We really had a hearty chat for 20 minutes, and just as I thought, nice he's made me quite comfortable before starting some real questions, says he 'Nice meeting you!'. I felt like the man in the song 'Norwegian Wood'. Jilted after a one-night-stand, or worse, one in which nothing happened...

Sophie's Choice

Finished a great movie finally… Sophie’s Choice - an indirect comment on the holocaust, whereas Schindler’s List was more direct and moving. I am affected much, just like that night at the Tawakkal’s when during the Spielberg classic, I had wept just a little bit and hated hatred a lot. This time, though, the feeling is different. Styron, the author of the novel must have already done the magic of bringing together two complex lives of Sophie and Nathan with the able minded trusting friend, the story-teller Stingo. The director, Alan Pakula, has done a perfect job in rendering it for those of us who are slow with books.

Sophie, whose father, ironically, was anti-semitic, was taken to Auschwitz by the Nazis. She survived, though her children couldn’t. In Brooklyn, Nathan gave a new life to her… a new love that was the last recourse for her to escape the many deaths that she had withstood. They lived a dream and Sophie was happy at least in her mind, while Nathan had his own problems with his mind. Stingo came along in their life; touched it very gently without moving much of it. He didn’t change much, but Sophie changed him completely. As she tells him her story, and as he tells their story to us, I see again several things that I keep forgetting to. But, above all I see that pain is all around, and there are people conquering it to at least live a life of sham happiness. Sophie’s choice was not only the one she made at the concentration camp, but also the one she made at the end… to the end. There was no weeping to be done in this movie… it wasn’t supposed to raise any issues with Holocaust. That was just a prop to indicate… no etch other thoughts permanently on one’s mind.

There are two other Ray’s I’ve managed to squeeze in: Shatranj Ke Khiladi (Thanks Ch and Ka) and Agantuk (thanks LRC). Both interesting, but will write about them some other time.

Ah, yes. And today I won a race, or maybe I lost the race, or maybe I wasn't in the race after all. Or maybe maybe, it was not a race at all. Naah, it isn't about the Deutsche Bank... (funny coincidence, Deutche and Nazis). It's something else.

The Herd's on the Street

As the big army comes together to attack the Deutche castle, knowing full well that, like in that old Sardarji/Blonde joke only one in a million will succeed, I know what is affecting me. What S told me to stay away from. Really, when you have no clue what you want, it's quite easy to know what you want... just ask around! I start with zero passion for anything and within days I am gunning for it too. It works... like a charm.

The herd is on the street, and it has a mind of its own.

Day dream night

जागती पलकों पे देखा, सुख स्वपन उस रात मैं
भोर फैली थी नगर में, क्षण हर एक सौगातमय।
तेज ना थी धूप ना सर्द, ओस सूखे को थी व्याकुल
दूभ पर औंधा पडा मैं, सुमिरन किये कल रात के।

I day dreamt that night, that in the warm next morning, lying on the grass which the dew was almost ready to leave, I was dreaming about that night.

कल रात जब तन्हाँ था मै, लम्हे भर को यूँ लगा,
कि दिल ने मेरे ज़ुबाँ पा ली और शिकायताना ये कहा
रहमत तुम वो नहीं रहे जो एक अरस पहले होते थे।
कहा, सुन दिल॑-ए-फरियादी तु भी तो अब वो न रहा।

For a moment there in the dark of yesterday night, the heart found a voice and raised it high saying ' Rahmat, you've changed from the one you were a year ago '. Well, you're not the same either now, complaining heart, are you?

Learning, my foot!

An excerpt from a case study in Strategic IT ...

"Learning Organizations are able to capture, share and take action on information better and faster than competition. A learning organization isn't top-down and it isn't bottom-up. It works side to side. It's an organization that gobbles up information and experiences like a sponge and shares learnings throughout the enterprise in minutes, hours and days rather than weeks, months and years".

"Let's learn Strategic IT, people!", the Prof would thunder in his baritone if he were invited to an ISB party like Prof. Bhagwan was, "Let's not jump up and down. Let's groove side to side... yeah, yeah, that's the way you create Value!"

Resume/Resume

It's not easy to make a striking CV. Well, actually it is... if all you want it to do is to stand out, and not stay in the 'selected' pile. I put in "Created three analytical tools and productivity package, now used across Cisco" and realized soon that a) I had boasted beyond the Conscience tipping point b) using the word analytical doesn't imply I'm good Fin material. Then, I spent five minutes juggling with the same 15-20 words to come up with the right striking sentence, and as I am on the verge of giving up, words take on a life of their own

Created three analytical tools and productivity packages
Produced three creative, analytical tools and packages
Packaged three productivity tools rich in analytical creativity
Analyzed three creative tools and produced packages
Tooled three analytical packages that improved crativity and productivity

... had a threesome with Creativity and Productivity as Analysis watched on.

Time to move to the next sentence "Responsible for resource planning & scheduling besides Test and Automation of 6 individual feature areas".  It is beyond important to get the CV right; it is essential. I'm going to spend the next 5 minutes thinking of beautiful thoughts involving chocolate sauce and then... resume.

Barodian Cobbler - The Alchemist

This is not a Dh'esque entry on socialism, equality and egalitarianism and all that jazz.

With term 4, the core-term courses came to and end which means we are now on supposed to craft our way to graduation ourselves. No more hand holding by the ASA on what we should study. Thrilled, I should have been, but I wasn't. Reason? There was this all important course called Options and Futures that slipped out of my hand in spite of the 600 points bid. Talked to people at ISB, and received heartening gestures from many. Then talked to As, and she said 'It's just a course, isn't it?' and I said to myself and her 'Oh yes, by God it is just a course'. Sometimes it helps to take an external opinion. The outsider is likely not to bring any fresh perspective; all he'll do is clear your mind and make your decision easier.

In Coelho's 'The Alchemist', Santiago, the shepherd hero saw a dream about the Pyramids and some treasure twice, met a king who faffed "When you really want something, the whole universe conspires to make you achieve it" and took away a tenth of his flock for that. Well, actually the king confessed that all he did was to help the boy make his own decision, but that was substantial enough a deed to deserve 6 sheep.

The book, by the way, is a good read. I am at home right now for Diwali (cause I can't be home for Diwali). I asked dad what is the best place to get my smart leather shoes fixed, so that they could serve me at least till placement season. They've lasted the LDP sessions well. There is a cobbler who's been at the same junction of the Golden-Silver Apartments at New Ellora Park in Baroda for the last 22 years. Dad has kind of patronaged him. This cobbler must have fixed my very first school shoes too. I am not nostalgic. I just connect him to the crystal shop owner in The Alchemist, who dreamt of going to Haj but never did go, cause he thought once he had realized his dream, there would be no reason for him to live. The crystal business was certainly not where his heart was but he drudged on doing it to save money for the Haj he was dreaming of but was never planning for. I know there is nothing fantastic about the cobbler; still... if I were a writer and would have attempted a book, this Cobbler would have been in it.