Job Fit It Seems :-|

It may sound clichéd , but the placement season at a B-School teaches you a lot. Not so much in terms of knowledge, or interview skills or GD skills but in terms of how to get your way around things, actually more than that, how Others got their way around things while you were sleeping although you thought you were at your peak alertness. It also teaches you how to pretend 'effectively', sometimes subtly, but most of the times very obviously to wake up a sleeping GD or an interview panel.

It is said that companies are looking for a person-job fit. Believe me , its true. Not in the regular sense per se. It has more to do with how much of their work you as an individual can (will) do. Now , you d be thinking why I wrote this statement as a separate statement , sounds pretty useless as an additional piece of information, doesn't it? What I meant by work is not only their management work but also their mismanagement work, the unethical , so considered inappropriate work. (although the line between ethical and unethical is blurring by the day and ethical now extends up to the amount of moral dilemma your conscience can ignore. And that limit is different for different individuals and hence the difference in the definition of ethics etc.) ( Hilarious to see 'ethics' is now coming under the 'etcetera' category :D )

It is one helluva a sight to see a candidate so unaware of why he got selected and basking in the glory of his success for something great he bragged in his interview and how brilliant he is etc. etc.. I am not saying that that information wasn't instrumental in his selection, in fact it was probably the only thing that got him through. It was exactly what the panel was looking for. They were probably waiting for one such candidate who would actually break some rules and give some information (which he thinks shows him in good light , but the content of which is of no concern to the panel). A guy who could brag, lie, be able to disregard the rules and get their work done. It wasn't because of the content of the lie that you got selected but due to that very distinguished quality :D . Who do you think wants a hoard of people who are so damn high on morals that they d never agree to do the dirty work, What on earth would FMCG s ( in fact almost all sectors) do with them. The rules are on paper guys, some are required to follow them, some are officially not. When companies come on campus , yes, they are looking for a person-job fit, now you know what they want to fit whom into :-|

The placement season has been insightful , very interesting to watch human interactions and behaviours and ignorance most of all....

Whether You Win Or Lose , You Are a Rat In The Rat Race All The Same

I wont waste writing space giving an introduction to this topic, it is all evident. We (esp Indians) have been running around since the day we were born.The word 'competition' is becoming more and more cliched by the day. We ran to take admission to Montessori, we ran to take admission to kindergarten in the perceived best school in the city (even though we now realize it would make any difference whether you attend lower primary school or not), we ran again for admission to Std 1 in the perceived best school and kept running since then: Ran for the school bus , ran back home from the bus stop to pick up a lab coat or a record , ran around copying homework , ran in and out of class in the breaks more for the pending work than for the food , ran around with notes to mug for the test in the next hour, ran after school to keep our presence felt on the sports fields or extracurricular classes , ran from one fest to another to garner CV points and ran and ran and ran , and ran again to and from IIT coaching classes and filling admission forms to competitive exams for undergraduate courses. I ll personally take a break here.. I didnt exactly 'run' in my engineering college for a change , 4yrs of holiday :) , but then the race began all over again , MBA entrance exams , and the season of filling forms began and we ran to and from coaching centres and now at a B-school I am still running the Rat race.
Thought I had fallen many a times , but got up dusted myself and ran again to win or to lose at every step; I was in the race all the same. No time to stand and stare , No time to cry , No time to analyse where life s taking me , No time to stop and redo or remake , No time to make a new path , still treading the rough old path , still doing the tasks situations demand and priding myself at achieving the results of the preset tasks...

Where am I heading???? Is not the question I have time to answer , the best I can do is to make the best use of the trap I am already in....

Chronicles Of a B-School - Volume 1

It would be right to think that in a place like a business school , you 'll find diversity, people from all corners of the country, people having nothing in common with each other except maybe a common language , people brought up under different circumstances , studied in various engineering colleges across the country - I write Engineering colleges instead of undergraduate colleges because I wouldn't want to portray B-schools crowd as consisting of a mix of prominent number of Arts & Science grads.. It is not true , and it is a fact that almost all students are engineering grads and some others with a distinctive Psychology/Psychiatry/ Philosophy/ Economics/M.B.B.S./ Pure Sciences undergraduate degrees. But , mind you, there are just about one of each kind :)
And then again there are engineers who have done weird things in their lives :O Take my roommate for example. a simple sleepy girl, (very sleepy for that matter and she manages to get the grades :) , god knows how :| ) , very sweet , would simply attend all the scheduled classes and come and sit on her computer till I bring the roof down with my banter ;) , no one would ever think of disturbing the peaceful soul for group projects/assignments etc unless absolutely necessary, and no one could have imagined that SHE has the '21' kind of resume (If you can relate to the movie 21) . She had been to 2 undergraduate colleges - SRCC and Jaypee Institute of Information Technology , in a single lifetime I mean! After 12 std and a few months into SRCC, she comes home one fine day to 'inform' her parents that economics was 'boring' :| and very conveniently she was allowed to switch to engineering! Aare, I would be dead if i dared suggesting such things to my parents :O
Another of her chronicles : After a series of MBA entrance exams and their results , my dear rommie was called for a GD and interview round at IMT , Ghaziabad. It was then she built on her resume by turning up 24 hours late for her GD and interview :O .. Need I say more :|
She supposedly read the date wrong on her call letter and hence turned up for the same the next day.. And look at her accommodating circumstances once again, She was allowed in the process on a good excuse of having fallen ill the previous day ( imagne , the panelists actually bought that) .. SO you see, there are people who want to be exceptional and there are those who have no such intentions and turn out that way all the same :)

So , that was the Volume 1 of the chronicles- Of people who intend to make '21' jaise resumes , and those whose become '21' jaise resumes !!

Very Little Is Needed To Make A Happy Life

Contemporary Gyan

You Love Someone
You Marry Someone Else
The One You Marry Becomes Your Husband Or Wife
And The One You Loved Becomes The Password Of Your Email Id...

Hey, Our Raft Is Sinking !!!!

This post is dedicated to my dear sinking raft team mates - Mangsule , Shouvik, Sapan, Akriti, Indrani, GP, Vinay and Himanshu :)

It all began at the XL adventure trip when we were taken to the beautiful Dimna lake for water sports and were asked to construct a raft by ourselves with the materials provided to us (tyres , logs, ropes) .. It basically all began when we started "Strategising" to build the raft so as to win the so called competition by completing the task which included building the raft , climbing onto it with oars, rowing till the middle of nowhere and returning from that middle of nowhere to starting point where we would be served snacks at the end of the task in as short a time as possible... It also basically all began when we rejected one by one the ideas of constructing a hexagonal raft, a grid shaped raft, a square raft and what not and zeroing in on a simple straight raft , almost as shown in this google image :-|

It also basically all began when we quickly , smartly , sincerely tied the logs with the ropes loosely :-| and then very happily went out into the 'sea' hurraying with our oars.. rowed for a whole 4 meters when we realized that our poor raft was wobbling in the middle of nowhere.. our captain and co captain tried their best to keep rowing against the strong tide in the opposite direction, all the while everyone screaming and shouting and laughing alongside at everyone else on the god forsaken self constructed wobbly raft. And then the inevitable happened... the captain and the co captain fell off the raft :-| while the rest of the team members looked on bewildered and then burst out laughing when we realized that they hadnt drowned.. haha.. the raft had started falling apart by now and most of the members were busy holding onto it while the rest rowed in the middle of nowhere in the direction of the shore... finally we reached the other end of and reported, and turned back for the return journey... But , then again , all was not very well , especially when the weather became all stormy and ours was the last raft left in the lake, and two of our teammates were floating in the water and the rest were clutcing onto the raft and the remaining few were trying to row back.. hehe.. after dragging the boat for a few metres , the environmental conditions became unberable and before we could all drown , there came a rescue boat to save us :) .. then in the middle of nowhere , we somehow tied our so called raft to the hook of the rescue boat and were being dragged to the shore , when suddenly the water became too stormy and it started pouring heavily with boat the boats being dragged in the opposite direction.. admist the high tension packed adventure , each of us switched over from the broken raft to the seemingly safer boat and dragged our way out of the lake in the stormy weather to the shore.. on steppin out of the water , we were given a standing ovation by the rest of the group who had been waiting for us from the last two hours :-| ..

So , thats how it all ended.. the two hour adventure in the middle of the hugggggeee lake surrounded by mountains , the embarrassing standing ovation , a memory of a lifetime more for the organisers than for us ( they ll mention this 'incident' to the batches coming next year on ) and our "safe" return :)

Sweet September

Do not , on a rainy day ask your child , what he feels like doing, because I assure you, what he feels like doing , you wont feel like watching...
-- Fran Lebowitz

Come September and there are raindrops crashing down upon corrugated iron sheets, raindrops quenching the thirst of this parched earth , raindrops filling dried up dead lakes and ponds, raindrops washing off the layer of soot on tree leaves and clinging on to them like pearls, raindrops falling off rolled up car windows, raindrops bringing a smile on the face of every Indian farmer who has been praying heartily for this very moment of the sky showering down upon his land, raindrops filling up innumerable potholes on the roads of the country, and ending the wait of every rain enthusiast who wanted to jump in the rain filled slushy potholes having a time of his life.

The late revival of monsoons has lifted spirits of the people throughout after many parts of the country being declared drought hit not more than a month back. It has come as a relief not only to the agriculturists but also to the government and the urbanites. The unbearable summer temperatures have finally fallen and everyone is enjoying every bit of this Sweet September weather with farmers thanking God for saving their crops , lovers walking in the rain down canopied paths, office goers folding up their formal wear with a smile on their faces , children rolling in the wet mud , some science students trying out their models for rain water harvesting , poets sitting by their windows with a pen in their mouth, intellectual crowd becoming even more intellectual by the charismatic effect of the rain , people everywhere inhaling the sweet fragrance of the rain on dry ground, people frying pakodas in their homes and rest of them cosying up in bed by the windowside and catching up on movies.......

All this and more has a lot to do with what Sweet September is all about :)