Memories from the golden years of my life (13)

Well ... the golden year did not seem golden right just now. In fact, when I look back, I would perhaps remember these moments as the darkest moments of my life ... it seemed to me as if I will have to let go of my dream ... of doing my MBA from IIM ... Yes! .. It was that bad ... that medicine from Rangan had done its damage. My foot was in the worst possible condition ... actually not foot but feet .. The infection had spread across both the feet ... i had sort of boils filled with disgusting smelling water all over my feet. I just could not walk as that bursted the boils on the bottom of my foot and I was covered in that smelling liquid ... But I had to attend the classes .. thanks to 80% attendance rule at IIML. I remember ... it used to smell a lot and hence even though a sandal would make things simpler for me ... as i would be able to keep my foot out in open ... I still used to wear shoes to classes .. so that its not embarrasing for me ... as well as inconvenience for others ... I still remember Diwakar's (my classmate who used to sit next to me) reaction the day it was at its worse ...

Srimurugan Veluswamy (commonly called as "murgi") .... one of my classmates as well as hostelmates ... one day suddenly called it my bday in class (i am sure it was just a joke) .... but the tussle that followed .. ensured that my feet went from bad to worse ... I had almost emptied the bandage and dettol provided by Manish (thanks!) ... Since I was nursing my foot without proper directions, care and with horrid wrong medicines ... I had an irky feeling sometimes as if its going to spread to my hands also ... one or two days i could see small irritation marks on my hands also ... i could still give exams ...without my feet ... but if something happened to my hands ...

I cried in my room ... all alone ... asking God why had he done it to me ... and if I could not complete my studies ... why the hell had he allowed me to come here ... All this time I had kept everyone at home oblivous of all this ..... But now i decided to let them know .. I needed their blessings to carry on ....

Memories from the golden years of my life (12)

We were standing at Aliganj ... also known as the Purana Chowk ... Me and Manish. This was the first time we had come out of campus together ... for a strange purpose ... to buy my medicines ...

I had developed an infection in my foot ... which was going from bad to worse. It all started with an itching in between of my foot fingers ... then i got wet in the rain ... and the itching area soon converted into a rash! Slowly the rash was spreading to the areas between other fingers. I realised that this could be serious (and God damn it .. it was pretty serious) ... and i went to show it to Rangan (and this was the biggest mistake i could have committed) ... Rangan was the doctor hired by our institute .. He was the strangest creature I had ever met ( well not really :P ... I have met many more stranger creatures ... But amongst doctors .. yes). This guy did not even open his mouth once during the entire period I sat with him .. Just scribbled a few things on paper and handed it over to me. Even when I asked him .. what exactly is this ... he just mumbled something I could not understand ... Later on I came to know that people went to him only when they wanted to die :P

Back to Aliganj .. we were here to get these very medicines prescribed by Rangan! It was very kind of Manish to come with me .... this is one good thing about this guy .. he does try his level best to help people whom he doesnt even know properly .. Agreed we had been neighbours for 3-4 weeks now ... but still ... we had not yet developed the kind of bonding that we had later ... Or maybe this was just the beginning of that bond ... So there we were standing at Aliganj .. I had managed to get a few medicines from the small shops there (later on came to know there was a huge medical shop just nearby!) and we were waiting for the bus .. and I was praying that it does not rain ... as that would make my foot worse ... but it did rain ...

To all friends ...

Happy Friendship Day ... to all the friends whom I met in my this journey called life ...

I was reading one of the newsletters from campus the other day and I came across this line written by one of my juniors. And it truly portrays my feelings today ....

"We may chat on phone ... we may meet occasionally ... we might even spend some time with one another whenever our ways cross each other ... but we will never be all together at the same time .... at the same place ...."

This .... is the truth of friendship .... yet there is another one ....
"You may call a friendship so .. only when it has passed the test of time and separation"

Only a friendship which is able to sustain separation .... and still be as strong as ever is worthy of calling a frienship .... Three cheers to all my friends ... Thanks ... for giving me strength ... Thanks for being my emotional and moral supports ... Thanks ... for leading me to the right way ... and guiding me at every important or less important step of my life ... Thanks ... for being my life ....

To my friends (From the beginning)

Dhiraj Motwani
Navneet Jain
Varun Kumar
Shounak Ray
Yuvraj Sikriwal
Priyanka Saha
Manish Peter
Avichal Agrawal

Memories from the golden years of my life (11)

It was day 2 of our classes. The first day had been good. We had studied MANAC, BIO and COM which stand for Management Accounting, Behaviour in Organizations and Communication in Management respectively. We had Rashmi mam as our MANAC teacher. She appeared to be extremely strict. Deb Chat (Debashish Chatterjee), who is apparently amongst top 15 thinkers of Harvard University took BIO. He was an extremely “Global” person. Said anything and everything most of which meant nothing to me. But I liked using his language … and many a times Manish had to bear the brunt of this :) Raina, who took COM, was really a character. My seniors had advised us (and no, I did not believe that) that we should never go to his class after shaving our beard (and being a so called chickna) and all as he was thought to make unwanted advances towards some …. Anyways, that apart, he was an extremely boring teacher. Communication is a very practical subject and he had made it completely theoretical by drawing those charts in which words which mean nothing emerge as stems from other words which also meant nothing. Those trees, stems 7 Cs and 5 Ss were his favourite. God! Once I had slept in his class. I just could not help it. He was going on explaining those 7Cs and I had had very little sleep the night before due to some assignment. And the he caught me! Immediately I started looking busy ……but he said “You are not quite there with us”. And I was so embarrassed that I had to go out to wash my face!!!

Anyways back to day 2. Rashmi madam announced that we will have a quiz today! On second day of the college … a quiz! And that too of accounts. She had even made different sets for people sitting adjacent to others!. That was my first quiz at IIML. And the next day I was a proud owner of 4 marks out of a quiz of 5 marks. Clearly this was not the best but I had done a lot better than many others. CAs had outperformed and Anil Agarwal ( a dark fellow from Calcutta) was being hailed as the topper already !!!

Memories from the golden years of my life (10)

From now on my blogs are going to be about one off incidents @ helL. Basically I realized that if I continue giving a day to day account, I will die before I complete the story … and this is a story that needs to be told … maybe to myself … when the days would no longer be so good. I would need something to remind me then … that once I had the time of my life … I would need to be reminded of the memories from the golden years of my life ….

The inductions were over … all that presentation and that paper were a hoax! A small prank played by our seniors on us. We were supposed to start classes tomorrow. And the books were supposed to be given to us today. I carried the flimsy bag to the section from where we were supposed to get books. I had got two of these flimsy bags that mummy had given me. They were very cool looking. One was green and the other was blue. To my horror I found out that we were being given a huge pile of books. I was cursing them that why are they giving us books for the entire year. Can't they give it termwise? But to my utter surprise, I found that these 15-16 books that we were being given were only for term one. Some of them were as heavy as 2 kgs (Remember book on LP Manish?) The books were of two types: textbooks and compilation of notes, cases and other material called polycopies. Somehow I pushed all polycopies in my bag and then carried all the text books in my hand. I bet the weight was more than 15 kgs! And then the inevitable happened. Midway that bag was no more!. How I managed to carry those books to my hostel, only I know. :-)

I am missing hostel terribly today. Why are some things like ... gone forever?

This is how I rate a movie ...

Ok! I have had many discussions (and I truly enjoyed all of them) on how do I rate a movie. How do I say that a movie is good, bad or ugly (it fails !). Here it goes my marking scheme.

1. Content (50 marks)
This one area can make or break a movie. Now, people might have different expectations on what exactly the content means. Content is based on the following 4 sub-parameters:
- The Story - 25 marks (and yes ... it includes a proper ending)
- Justice to the movie's Genre - 10 marks (I don't want to see a horror movie when the expectation set by promos is that of a comedy)
- The Basics - 10 marks (For heaven's sake, we are in the 21st century ... let the past go ... I simple won't appreciate movies that don't live up to the times that we are living in)
- The Songs - 5 marks (Wondering why such less weightage to this one? ... Don't want to be unfair to English movies)

2. The Presentation (30 marks)
I have always maintained (unlike people who say that content is what that matters) that it takes a good presentation to take you to the content. If your presentation is not good, no one will bother to see the content. Here is what will go into the presentation.
- The pace of the movie (has to be right) - 5 marks
- The set design - 5 marks
- The costumes - 5 marks
- The packaging - 5 marks (Yes ... promos do make an impression)
- The look and the feel of the movie - 10 marks (I am allowed to be arbit at times :) )

3. The Actors - 20 marks
Need I say more !

Ok ... All this is fine .. but how would i describe a movie .. depending on the marks ...

<33 - Well ... this is fail even in board examinations .. do I have a choice
33-50 - Below Expectations
51-75 - Met Expecatations
>75 - Exceeds Expecatations
Yes! Accenture has a huge rub off on me .... Lets start rating movies now !

The three biggest gifts of my life ...

Our life is a mix of a few good things ... and the other bad ones that happen to us. This particular blog is just to thank God and acknowledge the presence / happening of these few good things, which are also the biggest gifts given to me by God ....

1. 22nd November, 1986
This was the day when God gifted me my baby brother. Till that time I was so dependent on others, for playing, for emotional support. Papa mummy tell me that there were two twins called Sonu Monu who were my life (kind of). Even if they were back home at 11 in the evening I had to visit them before I went of to sleep. And then Dhiraj came ...

I remember ... Dhiraj had jaundice when he was born .. and hence he was kept in an incubator. I used to visit mummy and Dhiraj in hospital. But since I could not visit Dhiraj, I used to play with another new born kid (somehow he was within my reach, as he was on one of the lower cradles) and come back home .. happy and contented. Since that day .. Sonu and Monu lost their importance in my life ... and Dhiraj took it all. When Dhiraj was finally brought home .. I was the first one to take him in my lap ....

21 years later, he is still my best friend ... Of course we fight .. there is a difference of opinion many of times ... but I dont think that underlying emotions have changed ... hope it will always remain the same ....

2. June, 2001 (Don't remember exact dates)
This was the day when DCE's result was out. I knew I was going to DCE that day ..... Somehow, I can't say that I had a great time at DCE. May be i was too tight assed at that time (and I have no qualms in accepting that). But it was a life changing good thing that happened to me. I knew I had a secure job at the end of four years ... Yes, many a times those four years seemed like a torture. Dhiraj will vouch how much I used to crib about DCE. But I still say that it was a good thing that happened to me for two reasons. DCE was a stepping stone for another great event in my life and of course I owe to DCE friends like Shounak, Yuvraj, Harman and Devender ..... Four years ... Four friends ... does it seem like a raw deal? You bet not ...

3. April, 2005
When we are young ... a small incident can change our life ... however as we grow older .. it takes a lot (of good things at least) to make even a small change to the kind of person you are. But this particular incident .. changed my life ... completely. Remember those mixers used for mixing cement... out side buildings where construction is taking place? It was like I was taken suddenly in one of those mixers ... and what came out was that ready to serve... cement. IIM Lucknow happened to me ..

I have changed ... I believe for the good. IIML does that to you. I have become more assertive, more progressive but maybe somewhere I have also lost something .... it is very difficult to express that in words .. so let it be .. and anyways this blog is about good things ... like Manish Peter ..... two years .... one friend .... (ok .. I can count Avichal also) ... I would still say I couldn't get a better deal ....