My India

Early morning in the Pune Ernakulam express. A groggy-eyed me watches the world go by, bathed in the golden rays of the rising sun. Small hamlets rush by, their occupants just beginning their days. Small mud houses with thatched roofs and acres and acres of farmland all around. The sun continues its rapid ascent in the eastern skies, a blob of fire fast being tamed by the haze and fog of the morning. The wind rushes in through the open window, making me raise my jacket's zip upto my chin. It's the middle of winter. A train whooshes past, shrieking away to glory. The cold in the wind adds to the magic of looking out of the window, there's something quite inexplicable to it. A falcon starts the day's hunt in the distance.

The occupants of the train slowly start rising from their slumber, and start going about their morning duties in leisurely fashion. Such luxury would be rare for many of them in the normal course of their lives, and the sudden abundance of time seems to make many of them a bit confused. Or maybe it wouldn't be. I should stop looking at others through my rather clouded lenses.

A group of Sadhus are traveling in my compartment. They suddenly burst into prayer, performing their daily rites. The rest of the bogie looks on curiously.

A group of kids, just up, wave at us from another small hamlet we pass by. Cows and buffaloes roam around near houses, waiting to led to their daily pastures. A farmer pulls a lone reluctant bull towards some task which it is loathe to doing.

Small hills and large mountains escape by, as the train passes through a more or less barren landscape. Suddenly, as I've just got used to it, the forest closes in. How could I forget? The forests of Eastern Goa, the stunning evergreen forests in which a decade ago, I'd spent an incredible week. Down and down the train goes, leaving the deccan plateau towards the coast, skirting past the awe-inspiring Dudhsagar waterfalls, the rails a mere thread over the vast expanse of the valley.

As I sit at the window of my 6 Euro-for-24-hours, non AC seat, I look outside and think... this is India. My India. As I contemplate my future and wonder where I want to be, these are the moments which will drag me back, from all the wonders and magic of the outside world. Where a simple train journey will give me that unexplainable feeling of everything's-right-with-the-world, even when it isn't.

Last term at IIMK beckons...

It's the last day of the break between Term 5 and 6 of my MBA, and as I pack up and try to collect all the mess I have systematically spread all over the house, the myriad collection of chargers, cables, devices and accessories that our lives have become intertwined in, I am at a loss to understand my emotions. Am I happy or sad? Happy to be heading back to what would be the last few months on campus, or sad to leave home again, this time with the rather scary feeling that I have no idea when I would call this place home again. Leaving home for the MBA was different, there was a time frame attached to that, there was a fair bit of certainty involved. As I leave for campus this time round, I am staring at a lot of uncertainty. Where would my job take me, how far would it from what I call home now? Should I be happy and excited at the change and look forward to another new beginning, welcome the differences and new things, and try to get a role which would take me to new places and destinations and let me carry forward the experiences I so loved during my summer internship, or should I try to come back to what is essentially mine; my city, my people, my friends? These are tough choices to make, especially after I've spent a fortnight at home, experiencing so many of this things that made my life nice before all this circus started. How much of change is good, and how much is too much? When would I get tired of things being different and crave for the things back home? Do I make new friends and move on, or do I come back to the ones I have here, who, although having understandably moved on a bit with their lives, are still more or the less the same old folks I remember from my engineering days? Sometimes I crave for the awesome experiences I had in Europe, the feeling of instant friendships and deep connects that I experienced in a matter of hours, at other times, after a party or two in Pune with the old gangs, I tend to forget that this is not reality, not my present, but a fast-receding past which I am still fortunate to visit once a while.

Should I try to make my past once again my present and future and wallow in the comforts of known vistas and horizons, or should I step out and leave it all behind and move ahead? As much as I loved my experiences at IIMK and in Europe over the last 18 odd months, I do believe that change is often over-rated, and the known and comfortable past too vilified and under-rated. Should one keep striving for change, for novelty, for new experiences all the time, or is it fine to come back to what one loved after experiencing a fair bit of it?

Its a matter of weeks before my time at IIMK ends, and before I (hopefully!) make a choice about my work and location after my MBA. How do I even begin to tackle these questions is beyond me, and what I will do and how I will react when it comes to crunch is something which pretty much scares the stuffing out of me!

Messed up!

Ever since I've moved into a hostel, I've wondered what motivates people into maintaining their rooms like hospitals. The strange part is, everyone here seems to be like that. I came here, a year and a half ago, thinking about how awesome it would be to half my few square feet where I could live in as squalid conditions as I liked, irrespective of what anyone thought about it. I've always thought that being orderly and systematic was a wee bit too over-rated, and disliked it with passion. So I came here with dreams of squalid splendor, with nobody bothering me about the state of my room. Turns out, that's sort of true. The only bad thing is that rather that leaving me completely alone, they've started making trips to my room to convince themselves that theirs is so much cleaner. Which it is. Which I would happily go and tell them myself if they wanted the pleasure. But no, they insist on trooping down, walking through my mess, murdering a few paaavam (the disadvantage of hanging out too much with a tamilian :|) ants and making me rather annoyed. Worse, a few such trips, and I actually start doing something about my room.

So you have me, once every weeks, cleaning up the whole darn thing and turning it all upside down. Yeah, it does look much cleaner and better organized when I do that. Looks. I've no idea where my second belt is after I cleaned my room the last time, which is a bit of an annoyance since Max, the only clothing store in calicut randomly labels jeans with any size tags that they can catch hold of, with the result that unsuspecting customers (and also lazy ones, who do not try out everything they buy) end up having an assortment of stuff, half of which threatens to stop the family genes from going any further, and the other which makes me a fervent believer in the fella up there when I end up wearing it some groggy morning and praying that it doesn't come off till I am in the safety of my room again, all labeled the same waist size (am not telling ya what that is x-( ). And the other day, I drove myself up the wall looking for my pair of scissors, and found it half an hour later hanging on the softboard, apparently an appropriate place for scissors, as I had thought in the moments of insanity that take over me when I am in a cleaning frenzy.

Now the thing is, it would be understandable if folks maintained a bit of consistency in this fastidiousness about cleanliness business, and applied it other matters too, like, for example, hygiene. But no. You see those same buggers with sterilized rooms moving around in the same tee for a week or so. The reluctance to wash clothes and wear fresh ones is remarkable for a place which boasts of 100% humidity almost the year round. It would quite in line for a pig like me, but hey, those hospital keepers ain't allowed to do that!

It's downright funny when some company decides to distribute freebies to us on campus, during a pre-placement talk or some competition-related promotion stuff. Obviously, being free, most people make a beeline for it, irrespective of what's on it. And then, for the next week or so, you have half the campus as if in uniform, wearing the same stuff. I also fall in that category of freebie-lovers, and one morning as I walked to class, a friend asked why I was wearing the tee. I told him that it was the only clean thing I had, so that made it a simple decision. He said that he had received the same answer from a dozen people that day, and was going around checking how many were wearing it for the same reason. It did make me wonder about his sanity and what the hell he'd been doing all this while here if he had to ask people about such stuff.

All in all, I am rather peeved with these hypocrites. And rather disappointed with this aspect of hostel life. I mean whats a 4 by 4 (ok, they're quite nice to us, we have an 8 by 13) without there being no space left to walk in? Kind of takes the charm out of life...

And I reclaim all those comments :)

For a long, long time now, the comments site that I had entrusted the job of handling the comments on my blog was messing around with me. Or, I have moved from being techno-aware to remarkably techno-dumb in a short span of a few years. As much as I would like to claim the former, I have a strong suspicion that it was the latter.

Whatever it was, it meant that I no longer had access to moderating comments on the site. Which was all right, except for the fact that I started getting a few rather annoyed comments from people who were a tad unhappy that I had not approved their detailed comments on my post (not true, I just couldn't!!). So for all those folks, thanks for keeping the faith, and all your comments have been approved :) I've no idea how, but I managed to log in into the site after giving up the last half a dozen times, after trying an obscene combination of passwords and usernames and stuff. The thing is, every time I visit their site, they seem to have changed everything, which makes me rather confused (I have a strong feeling that business education is not too great for the grey matter up there :| ). And when I give in and tell them that I have lost my password, my username, everything, but I do want the site back, they throw some strange html code at me and ask me to put it some unheard of place in my site, stuff which I obviously have no clue about as much as I have done my own share of tinkering around with the template's html code (isn't half of it useless? I keep deleting and adding code and it doesn't seem to make any difference whatsoever :|).

To cut a long story short, and let you move on to the real short story if you haven't read it yet, I am now the supreme commander of arbit globe again :D Err, not a challenge to some bored hacker there... please... I love my site and respect your skills :|

Trapped!

I am not very good at writing fiction, but do keep making the occasional feeble attempt at it. This story is one such attempt, originally written in an hour for a course in Term 5 at IIMK. I've made few modifications to the original draft, with the result that I am not overtly thrilled with the way it has come out, but the underlying theme is something which has been bothering me for quite some time.

The door of the cage shut behind the keeper, and Mordy waited for the familiar click of the lock that followed it. No sound came, however, and after a few minutes, Mordy couldn't resist his curiosity, and ambled his way across to the door. With his large paw, he nudged it, and it slowly opened a few inches. The keeper had gone, his duties done for the day. Dusk was rapidly losing its daily battle with the night, and a blanket of darkness was quickly engulfing the zoo.

Mordy pushed the door open and walked out a few feet, when a wave of terror hit him. Suddenly, he was petrified, and blanking out of fear. A cold wind had up, giving him goosebumps. He fled back into the cage and hurried to the farthest corner. He tried to ignore the open door, but it stared at him, tempting, confusing, seducing and utterly terrifying. He started pacing up and down in the cage, his mind a chaos of emotions and thoughts. He remembered his days in the lush, evergreen rainforests of the Malabar coast. Life had been a daily battle then, struggling for food, chases gone wrong, the unbearable pangs of hunger when the prey had been too wily, and, often, intensely satisfying too, the incredible feeling of being satiated and not needing to chase those darn bucks for another week or so, long afternoons spent on the warm rock on top of the lone hill in the forest and those intensely heady days with Kayra. The thought of Kayra sent a tear down his now increasingly scraggy face. Where was she? How would she be? Would she be still roaming those paths with his children? Or would they be out on their own, intimating the forest that a new predator was on the move, and that they had become a force to reckon with on their own? Life had been tough and exciting, frustrating and rewarding, stressful and leisurely, all at the same time. The constant struggle to stay away from that two-legged ape who could magically kill you from a hundred feet away, who would kill and then not eat, for some reason, who would kill for reasons Mordy could never understand. And yet, they had been so magical, those days.

A deafening crash brought Mordy back into the present. Thunder, followed by a heavy shower. He couldn't really complain about life at the zoo. There was absolutely no struggle. Food was regular and plentiful, and brought to him chopped and cleaned, everyday precisely at 7 in the morning. The zoo was well off and treated its animals well. The cage was clean and comfortable. And yet... Mordy missed the jungle. Years of lazing around and doing little had blunted his wild instincts. Even the children didn't seem to be too scared when he growled at them anymore, they laughed and pointed it out excitedly to their parents. He was bored to death. Life had become a meaningless chore and an orgy of sleeping and eating. His rippling muscles, primed for the kill in his forest life had been smothered in layers of fat. His keen, taut face had turned aged and scraggly, the wear and tear of years of having nothing to do and thinking about it showing clearly.

Yet, life in the zoo represented security. He liked the keeper. He got food regularly, didn't have to worry about the next kill, didn't have to fret over whether he was becoming too old to chase down prey or whether his tactics were too outdated. He didn't have to freak out, seeing his dad die of hunger, not being able to chase prey on his own, and refusing to accept charity from his son. Mordy thought hard and long, but just couldn't make up his mind. It was easy getting back to the forest, he had the night in front of him. Several times, he walked to the door of the cage, stepped outside, only to have the same, gnawing fear hit him like a thunderbolt. Several times he walked to the farthest corner and refused to look at the open door, but it refused to let him be. The clouds disappeared as soon as they had formed, and a full moon shone over the horizon, flooding his cage with white light. The wind picked up again, and hit Mordy in the face as he gazed at the moon through the bars of the cage, contemplating his past, present and the future.

The open door of the cage greeted the keeper from afar, as he walked in after signing his name for the day. Wild panic set in, and a bead of sweat trickled down his spine. Mustering all the courage that he could, he approached the cage slowly, anticipating a charge any moment from the thick shrubs spread all around the cage. He tiptoed to the door, and peered inside, trying to get a view of the farthest corner, the only one not visible from outside. With a sigh of relief, he saw Mordy looking at him, spread peacefully on the floor, his tail involuntarily swatting the half dozen flies which always seemed to be bothering him. A strange look had spread over his face, placed on the floor between his front paws - the look of an animal truly trapped.

Nostalgia...

Nostalgia is a funny thing. I have to admit that over the last few months, I've been a tad frustrated at various developments on campus. These things are inevitably a part of campus life, but when you are living through them, they tend to look much larger than they are - as is very often the case in life. I've tried hard to not let myself be affected so much by these small things when all this is going to end so soon, but I have to admit that I've failed. Slowly but surely, I was turning bitter, a state I hate. I don't mind being livid or really upset, but being bitter seems rather a waste.

Tonight, I sauntered into the Night Canteen for what has become a daily routine - a around midnight shot of cold coffee. The far corner table was empty, and I settled there. A rare wind was blowing from the east, cold and crisp. Within minutes, there was thunder and lightning, and the usual pitter-patter of large rain drops smothered most other sounds on campus. An unseasonal shower.

I finished my coffee, went down and stood at the cross-roads. Water dripped over the tall roof, glistening in the amphi lights. The wind brought the rain in in the form of a fine mist. And suddenly, from nowhere, it struck me - I was going to miss this place so much. I stuck my hand out, and wondered - is this the last one? I heard a deep, scary voice within myself saying that it is, indeed.

A short walk down from harvard steps with Rupee, Nami and Tanu, and I started feeling if I was going to leave tomorrow. Oh my god, this is getting over...

I have to cherish these moments. Cherish them for posterity, for a lifetime. Yes, times have been rough, but these times here have taught me lessons about life and myself that I will probably keep discovering for years. I have to be positive, not be petty and not hold silly things against people whom I probably won't see again in my life or if I do, will probably end up having a good laugh over. I have to be a larger person, I have to think big. I have made friends and lost friends here, but I want to take back only the good memories from here.

Can I...Will I?

Where the hell have I been?

I've dared to see my blog home page after what feels like (and turns out to be) an eternity. I see the last post on the 8th of October and wonder what the heck I've been doing all this while. I've really not been around, from the fact that even blogspot seems to have dumped my cookies and is asking me to sign in!

It's strange how you just stop doing the things you love so much for no apparent reason. I went through the first year like the clausial (that's not a proverb, so what else do I call it?) headless chicken, and yet managed a decent frequency with my blog. And then along comes second year, and there is this tremendous lethargy in me. I have a zillion topics buzzing in my head, a few hundred mentally written articles, but I just don't seem to get to putting finger to key (bah, oh, the old days when it didn't sound so ghastly!) to punch that piece down.

It's also strange how after dishing out stuff fairly regularly for a while, and then suddenly stop. It's not that I've been writing elsewhere (as one regular reader assumed). It's just that I've stopped writing. Period.

As I started off writing an essay the other day for a competition, I realized how rusty I was. I wrote the first draft and balked. What the heck was I writing? Right as I was punching out the words, I was going, oh god, what is this? Atrocious stuff.

And so, I make another attempt at a comeback. I am not very good at comebacks, though. My last one in photography ended up with me being in the field with a camera and desperately hoping for some inspiration. I dread to think of a time when I look at a blank screen and feel sweat running down my temples, or worse, nothing at all...

What, in the world, are they selling?

Going shopping for something specific is an adventure in itself in good ol' Kerala, especially in a suburb, which is the best way to describe Kunnamangalam. It's almost impossible to decide what exactly the shop-keeper intends to sell in his shop (not intending to be sexist here). You have the most odd combinations here. Bananas and hardware. Real gold jewellery and children's cheap plastic toys, the ones which leave you in no doubt about the toxicity of the materials used. Model wooden KSTRC buses, stationary, and a huge lot of something covered with a LOT of dust. Seriously, retail is a very interesting concept here. The selection of goods that a single shop will have is fascinating and mind-boggling.

Shopping here is one of the most entertaining activities you can think of (Yeah, I need to get a life :|). Of course, you need to be a bit flexible with what you want. And ready to have a bit of fun. I wanted a couple of nice plastic baskets, the types which are open and have a grilled bottom. Basically something to store all the paraphernalia I have which ends up hogging all the space everywhere. Also to keep some bananas to rot. I prefer them rotting in the basket, rather than in the plastic bags. That they would rot is beyond doubt, my timing of purchase is perfect in that sense. I go out and buy enough bananas to last a week, after not having any for a month or so, and whaam, next day I have a cold bad enough for me to stay away from even smelling the darn things.

So I went off to buy the baskets. A couple of plastic-thingy-selling shops had everything in baskets but the type I wanted. A couple of shopkeepers gave me strange looks when I asked for them. Maybe they drew the line at selling baskets in mobile phone shops, I realized when I looked at the boards after coming out. A couple of others tried to sell me an assortment of mugs, the types you use in the loo, a wastebin, a plastic bathtub and a plastic pot which looked suspiciously like one of those potty thingies, though I think it was merely for keeping potted plants. Finally, I saw 2 dusty looking things in a stationary shop which looked suitable. They didnt have grilled bottoms, but didn't wanna be picky. Atleast I could watch the bananas rot in their full glory now :)

Chikungunya Sucks :|

I always thought that the whole thing about getting tropical diseases when you live in, err, the tropics and close to large forested areas was a bit of a stretch. I don't mean that there don't exist ghastly diseases which cause some amount of rather unpleasant stuff, but I always though that the odds of getting one were rather remote, and that it was something that was more talked about to get the sympathy vote rather than anything else.

Well, as the fella up there has been trying to make me understand in some rather unpleasant ways, I admit that I was wrong. As wrong as I could I ever be. Wholly, completely wrong. Now could I, please, have the joints of my body back? Yes, it does seem like I don't have them anymore, atleast not in the way I remember they used to be a long, long time ago. Now all they do is stiffen up and pain like somebody's been rolling over them with those cricket pitch rollers. And then they pretend to get well, when all they've done is just pass the buck to some other random joint. Darn, I hate how many joints I have, especially when this bloody disease seems to be on a mission to remind me of all the ones which don't come to mind very often.

It was some time in the end of June or the first week of July, I forget what, when I woke up feeling rather strange. Each and every joint of my body was paining, paining like the dickens. I thought I'd messed up with the whole running thing too much, and my body was wrecking revenge on me. A couple of days rest and I'd be ok, I guessed. I was wrong.

There's something about this disease which makes even the strongest of folks want to break down and cry like a baby. Now I don't claim to belong to that tribe by a long margin, so I got that feeling pretty much every morning when I got up and *tried* to wear my chappals to go to the loo. There isn't a simpler activity and a more painful one when you have Chikun%*(&&%^$^&gunya. One by one, the nasty bug affected every part of my body. Except for my feet, which got special treatment, where the darn thing holidayed for like ever.

Even now, I am not completely over it. A couple of hours of less sleep in a night, and the next day it starts inching back. Asking for a full 10 hours sleep every single night in a b school is a wee bit too much, so every week or so, the virus is back. Add to that the fact that the campus doctor refuses to acknowledge the pain I am going through, and keeps on referring the condition as some 'minor' local viral strain, which does not qualify for medical leave, and I am left frothing out of anger. I only wish, from the very bottom of my heart, that he is visited by the nasty 6 legged flying bug which gave me this hideous thing, very, very soon. x-( Ok, I don't. I seriously can't wish this upon anyone. But atleast he could have given me some leave :(

Blog Updates... or the lack thereof

Sometime around mid-July : Darn, haven't updated my blog for a week now. Uh Oh.

A week later : Gotta update blog. Gotta update blog. GOTTA UPDATE BLOG. Tomorrow, pakka.

Another week later : Darn blog :|

End of July : My worst writing month ever. ONE blog post. Tomorrow, update, pakka.

August 1st week: What blog? :|

And that's been the state of affairs for a while now. God knows what got into me since I've returned from Europe. I'm having an allergy towards my blog like I've never had for even other people's (kidding, no really, I love them all, please don't stop reading mine :) ). Yeah, it's been a crazy trimester, but I've seen crazier. It's just that as I progress through my MBA, I get worse and worse with this whole procrastination business. I have a sinking feeling that I am going to end up being an absolutely worthless imbecile by the time I am done with this place. Not that I am very far away from it, but the final shove, yeah, that's happening very soon.

A crazy day!

I am still hunting for the senior who told me that second year was going to be a 9 month long vacation. Especially since having 20 hour days is not my idea of a vacation. How does it happen that the exact combination of subjects that you have chosen is the worst possible amongst the couple of hundred ones possible (possibly more, I suck at P & C)? So here I am, stuck with enough coursework to last a year, while the guys who've taken fin are having the time of their lives. They seem to be lounging around everywhere, cracking up when I run past them, rushing from one group meeting to another.

The last day of June was the pits for me. This was the exact sequence of events :

00.30 hrs : Wake up in a completely confused and bewildered state after having fallen asleep half-way through reading some case. Cannot fathom where I am and why it is dark outside (I dont recall the last time I woke up when it was dark outside)
00.45 : Continue with reading the case
02.00 : Get a call for a group meeting for discussing a marketing case, submission due the next day
04.00 : Finish case analysis after tearing half of my hair out (group meetings, AAAARGH!)
04.00 - 05.00 : Reply to some emails which have been dropping lower and lower in my inbox, wonder whether it really matters that I reply any more, especially since it's quite possible that the recipient has forgotten everything about the matter and me.
5.00 : Fall asleep at the comp, get up with a start to check if I've caused any permanent damage to my precious mac. Having dandruff sucks in ways more than one.
5.00 -8.00 : Sleep. Thank god for small mercies.
8.00 : Wake up in a completely confused and bewildered state again, look at my watch and try to figure out if its 8 pm or 8 am. It's bloody dark outside due to the rains. Fight with myself whether I should get up now or sleep for another 45 minutes.

Wanting-to-be-good-me (M1): Get up, you lazy slob.
Lazy, sleepy me (M2): Zzzzzzzz
M1: Get up now or you wont be able to have a bath.
M2: Dont wanna have a bath....
M1: You didnt have one yesterday. Or day before.
M2: Nobody knows...
M1: You don't even have a deo.
M2: Nobody knows.
M1: Nobody will want to sit next to you in class.
M2: (a) Everybody else is as sleepy / stinky / indifferent as I am
(b) I always sit in the last row; nobody is gonna leaving a precious last row seat empty to avoid sitting next to a stinking pig
(c) I don't sodding care
M1: Go have breakfast.
M2: Dont wanna have breakfast...
M1: GET UP, YOU STINKING MONKEY
M2: Huh?

8.30: I trudge into the bath, slip over the soapy floor and almost ensure that I don't see the place again for a while
8.45 - 8.55: Gobble down breakfast while watching completely bewildered looking fachchas wander around aimlessly with their breakfast plates.
9.00 - 12.20: Marketing Class, and we end up playing the Beer Game. Without any beer, of course, if only our educational institutions were a bit more fun, I would have taken to this game rather wholeheartedly. What's this balderdash about too much inventory and all, gimme the real thing and all you'll have are backlogs. I guess they'd figured that out and thought matchsticks were a better idea after all. Can't have stuff disappearing half-way down the supply chain, can we? Anyway, the game itself was pretty good, I guess.
12.30 - 13.30 : Another class of marketing, though it's a different course. Nobody's read the case, so we have to do that in class, and get into groups and answer some questions which will be graded. More work.
13.30 - 14.00 : Lunch, thank god for another small mercy.
14.00 - 15.00 : Work on a write-up due in Strategy class at 15.10. My brain's dead, and I just can't think of anything remotely innovative to write. Finally end up writing something.
15.00 - 15.10 : Mad dash from room to computer center to print out the assignment. It's in .docx format, unreadable, damn you, MS. Have to get a print fast and reach class before 15.10, the strat proff locks the door and leaves you outside feeling like a real jackass if you miss getting in on time. Finally manage to get a print, and sprint through the rain to class in time.
15.10 - 17.20 : Strat class
17.20 - 19.30 : More submissions and assignments and readings for tomorrow, try to read up for the fin class later, but I am brain dead
21.30 : Fin class. Good proff, and sounds interesting. Am still following what he's saying, which is a great deal for me.
21.45 : Fall asleep, head on table.
21.55 : Get up with a start, get angry at myself for sleeping when I so badly want to listen.
22.00 : Fall asleep again.
22.25 : Get up, listen to proff for a few minutes, realize I already have no clue what he's talking about. Get really annoyed for having slept off, then mad at the whole world for getting me into this state. Sulk till end of lecture.
23.40 : Lecture ends, walk back to room, angry, irritated and very tired.
23.45 : Go to bed, beyond the point of caring whether there was anything to be read for the next day. Baah!

Does Apple have a self-imposed maximum market share limit?

With the kind of cult following that Macs have amongst their users, one would believe that Apple’s market share in the PC + Notebook category would be steadily on its way up, since their resurgence as a formidable player in the computer market in the early 2000s. Almost anybody who has made the move to a Mac (yours truly included!) swears by the fragile beasts, and wonders why they didn’t move earlier.

Read the complete article at : http://strat.in/2009/06/does-apple-have-a-self-imposed-maximum-market-share-limit/

Chill second year? Baah!

Second year is supposed to be this really chill thing... or so I'd heard. Unfortunately, the proffs here had something else in store for us. Couple that with my bad luck that all courses I had opted for had most of their sessions in the first few weeks itself, and you end up having a crazy, crazy start to what is supposed to be a time you enjoy and waddle around in and generally have a blast. So here I am, running around like I used to a year ago, except for the fact that I look at the juniors now and wonder why they never seem to have anything to do; they seem to be having the time of their lives. I am sick and bored and tired to death of case studies. A serious overload of these obnoxious things have completely blocked my ability to think of any solutions other than the mundane for them. Which is kind of sad, since it would be fun to really sit down and brainstorm, and come up with something good. Unfortunately, that kind of thing cannot happen when you sit down to do the case after 8 odd hours of classes and 2 more cases pending for you to tackle right afterwards.

Oh, how I long for the previous trimester... And fervently hope that the next ones will let me go around campus without feeling like somebody's run over me and then turned around and did it all over again.

Kampus calls again!

A year ago, I landed up at IIMK, naive and excited, eager to enter the big bad world of business, eager to be in the 'big league'. A crazy year it was, with ups and downs that a roller coaster couldn't come close to. The crazy first trimester, the unbelievable amounts of work, the awesome times spent with an amazing gang of friends with a cup of coffee and a plate of maggi in the Night Canteen, the senseless mugging before exams, days and nights merged into one and another and another till it stopped making sense to consider them as separate entities. The stress of summer placements, the joy of getting something you've dreamt of. A long and never ending yet chilled third semester, probably meant for us to destress from the crazy times of the first and second, and before I knew it, 1 of the 2 most awesomest years of my life were over.

20 days ago, and I step back into God's Own Campus. I fall in love with the place again. This time I come back as an experienced campaigner, but the excitement is not gone. Things will be different this year in many ways, we're used to the system, the seniors, our mentors are no longer around, placements are no longer something which can be forgotten about as something far away into the future. Plans have to be made, questions have to be asked, the mind has to be probed, harsh realities have to be faced, to decide... what do I do after this? What, after Feb 2010?

It's been a crazy 20 odd days here, the proffs probably want to ensure that we shake off all the rust built up over the summers properly and get down to work. But it is, as always, fantastic. There is, of course, a sinking feeling at the back of your mind that the clock is ticking, and before you realize it, your time will be up. So I have to make the most of now, enjoy these precious moments and store them in the recesses of my memory, moments which will have to last a lifetime....

Here's to another rocking, awesome year at IIM Kozhikode!

Disabled Thinking

Why, as a nation, as a society, as individuals, are we so callous to the plight of our disabled?

A week or so in Germany, and I was wondering, why are there so many disabled people on the streets? People bound to wheelchairs, blind people, people on crutches, they seemed a common sight, a tad too common for me. I saw them quite often in public, crossing streets, walking on the sidewalks, getting on and off trains, and getting on with their lives like everybody else. A few more days, and I was crossing the street in the square below my apartment, watching a wheelchair bound guy crossing the street at his own pace, when, like the sudden realization of a ghastly fact, it struck me. There aren’t more disabled people in Germany. It’s just that, unlike back home, they are given the chance to live life as normally as possible.

Read more at : http://strat.in/2009/06/disabled-thinking/