Few days back my ex-boss passed away, suffering from a medical condition. Intelligent, professional and full of drive, at times he was perceived as eccentric. The news left with a weird and dumbfounding feeling.

The point isn't to attach labels of adjectives especially to a person no more. Rather the point is that many failed to see the innocent heart obscured by our perception of eccentricity.

We don't appreciate as often as we criticize.

May you R.I.P. Ulpa Thapar.

cowards strike again

Yes, you heard it right
cowardice it's not a fight
brings anger than fright.

Yet another test
of the society's patience
someday it will end

You want your voice heard
you shout but you don't listen
we are far too many

Your noises will drown
you shout or we do, anyway
the world is worse-off

The more you do it
the more it unites us all.
Worst ever deadlock
------------------------------

Cowards. You did it again. If you have any guts, dare to touch me, online or offline, day or night, Mumbai or Bangalore. I'm no powerful, yet you won't dare. Because you have no courage.

You hide behind the mask of your fundamentalistic issues. Don't you realize the next wave of issues you create? Your families are destroyed, so are those of peaceful comrades. One of my friends (who is peaceful, like most of the Muslims) was about to beactually denied his visa to US (to visit Stanford univ.), just because you express your outrage in hostile manners.

Some good things will come out of this, although there were less bloody ways.

First, it will tend to reduce corruption. Police will unite against death of colleagues. System will be pressurised to stop Havala route of money.

Second, since CEOs of companies got stuck in the hotels attacked, companies will be forced to rethink their social responsibility. They can no longer shrug it to the government that the world should be a better place for everyone.

Third and not so cheerful, life of peaceful Muslims will get worse, but in the long run they will turn against you. You are not helping your community at all, forget about bringing Caliphate rule (Like all recent blasts, HuJI are being suspected behind this. Update: Deccan Mujahideen have taken responsibility via email, but media suspect LeT.)

Last, it will force me to think - "Can I do anything?" And there so many like me, that somebody will have an answer soon.

Questions to my friends: Can we do something? What should we do?

WTF

What do you do on a lazy drizzly sunday evening with awesome weather -

1. watch cricket match
2. study for end term exam on next day
3. listen to a torturous discussion on topics hardly relevant to you

I happened to choose the third option today. Since the match was shortened to 22 overs and studying for exam is also no fun, there was a little consolation anyway.

From another standpoint, I took pity on life that offers only sucky choices.

How many things have you come across at a stretch which have left you with the feeling "WTF?"

• Your mentor prof asks to meet on a day before exam
• You are the first one to arrive, and prof comes when you are on your way back
• There are two groups apart from yours, yours will be discussed last, and apparently you need to sit in other discussions
• One group discusses their project for one hour, you sit quiet
  
• Prof says it will be over in another half an hour and actually means one and half
• Second group discusses for another hour, you are again forced to attend because apparently it is relevant to your project. In reality either
1. you already know it, or
2. you don't know it but it is totally irrelevant to you, your life, your project, and your exam on next day and you couldn't care less, or
3. you stopped listening while thinking "even this shall pass away" until you get bored of that thought or any other line of any poem too, or
4. you are lost in the thought of pending assignments and prof himself answers a question he has asked
   
• Your turn comes, prof asks more questions than you do, does not answer any and draws a diagram no one can understand later
• You want to ask a genuine doubt, but unlike everyone else in the institute, the prof who is the chairperson of computer centre, does not have office 2007 installed on his pc
• Update: Prof scans your pendrive in suspicion of a virus, but his own system is infected and it creates 68 trojan files in otherwise clean folders
  

I can go on. The point is, whatever I did ended in "WTF". You might have gone through something worse. But hey, you didn't blog about it.

On a positive note, it has probably made me more tolerant (or ignorant) of bullshitting.

What to do

Earlier I had contemplated whether I will steal someone else's chappals, if I could not find mine outside a temple. My obvious answer was - no, I will not. I may have to go home barefoot, but I will stop the potential chain of unhappiness then and there. The fact I did not consider while answering was the price of new chappals. Then something happened after I wrote that post.

About 3 months back, my and my friend's laptops got stolen from our hostel room, during our summer internship in Hyderabad. It happened because of ignorance of many people, including us. The police were reluctant to accept the FIR, but we did lodge a complaint against the theft (without any bribe).

Meanwhile, as laptop is a must for academic (and entertainment) requirements in IIMB, I purchased a relatively cheaper one with a decent config, and returned to Bangalore. I occasionally missed the data I had not backed up (the bugger stole my USB hard drive as well, where I had most of the backup. Though I saved few CDs which turned out handy). Otherwise the incident was put in the backseat. Rather it was written off.

Lessons learned:
1) Ensure that your room is locked in an unfamiliar place, at whatever cost.
2) Back up your data on multiple media - CDs, online storage.
3) Do not keep all the eggs in same basket.

Now the twist: earlier this month, I got a totally unexpected call - from the police station, saying that our laptops have been recovered from the concerned person. They asked us to travel to Hyderabad and collect the laptops, no questions asked! We were ecstatic and astonished about their efficiency.

What was the last time you recovered a theft, via police? We were jumping with joy and celebrating. I almost gave a mini-treat to friends.

But wait, what if the trip to Hyderabad turned out meaningless? After all, taking a weekday off from life at a B-school was not that easy, not including the expenditure on travel. What if they demanded money to return the laptops? What if the process took too much time? What if the laptops were not ours?

We called the concerned officer. We enquired about all that. Later we also asked friends in Hyderabad to meet them. The police seemed to be worried about the court-case that was imminent from the FIR. They give us the laptops, we cancel the FIR, problem solved. So bribe was probably not required. About the processing time, they said that we will require at least another trip later, but they promised to solve the things quickly - remember, they had the responsibility on them and they didn't want the matter to reach courts.

And then we realized, that was the precise problem - they didn't want the trouble in their books. We asked them to describe the laptops. From the description, it was clear that one laptop could be ours, one surely was not.

Now here is the dilemma we faced. Should we take the laptops which are not ours? We have the following two options:

Option1: Take. Use in whatever way possible - sell, give to friend/family, donate. Police are also relieved. Live with the choice - possibly few sleepless nights about whom the laptops actually belong to.

Option2: Refuse. No hassle about going to Hyderabad, no time spent chasing papers and no visits required further. Possibly we were the lumberjacks in the folklore. Or possibly the laptops will be scrapped, nobody would claim them, and there was no chain of unhappiness.

We have made our choice mostly. Before revealing that I would like to see what you would have done in this situation. While making your choice, remember the temple connection, the old folklore of the lumberjack and his axe, and the opportunity cost of not taking the laptops.

Your thoughts?

Quota for professors

According to the latest whim from HRD, IITs now need to reserve professorship for categories. Someone who is shaping the future of the country can't be trusted anymore.

I hope some director resigns, standing against this tyrrany. I will feel ashamed to be an alumnus of an institute calling itself elite and not practicing meritocracy.

This is not ending here.

the organization kid

From the organization kids being bred at Princeton -

[...]But nowhere did I find any real unhappiness with this state of affairs; nowhere did I find anybody who seriously considered living any other way. These super-accomplished kids aren't working so hard because they are compelled to. They are facing, it still appears, the sweetest job market in the nation's history. Investment banks flood the campus looking for hires. Princeton also offers a multitude of post-graduation service jobs in places like China and Africa. Everyone I spoke to felt confident that he or she could get a good job after graduation. Nor do these students seem driven by some Puritan work ethic deep in their cultural memory. It's not the stick that drives them on, it's the carrot. Opportunity lures them. And at a place like Princeton, in a rich information-age country like America, promises of enjoyable work abound—at least for people as smart and ambitious as these. "I want to be this busy," one young woman insisted, after she had described a daily schedule that would count as slave-driving if it were imposed on anyone.

[snip]

In short, at the top of the meritocratic ladder we have in America a generation of students who are extraordinarily bright, morally earnest, and incredibly industrious. They like to study and socialize in groups. They create and join organizations with great enthusiasm. They are responsible, safety-conscious, and mature. They feel no compelling need to rebel—not even a hint of one. They not only defer to authority; they admire it. "Alienation" is a word one almost never hears from them. They regard the universe as beneficent, orderly, and meaningful. At the schools and colleges where the next leadership class is being bred, one finds not angry revolutionaries, despondent slackers, or dark cynics but the Organization Kid.

[big snip]

Maybe the lives of the meritocrats are so crammed because the stakes are so small. All this ambition and aspiration is looking for new tests to ace, new clubs to be president of, new services to perform, but finding that none of these challenges is the ultimate challenge, and none of the rewards is the ultimate reward.

I am afraid students at IIMB (and at other elite institutes) more or less belong to the same class - self-imposed workaholism, no motivation to question authority (rational ignorance) and no motivation to get hands dirty (high opportunity costs). I am not sure where I belong, but it does sound disturbing. Something needs to change.

(Link from India Uncut)

awww

Which one looks cuter?


this -















or this?
















It took two years before those 20 minutes in hair saloon, to try being this -








sigh.

second term

(credit - Naka , modified to suit local context)

So what does term 2 bring? A colourful marketing text book? A 'god level' finance text book? A heavier load of case studies?

What does term 2 promise? A 3-month marathon of what kind? A summer internship selection process, one too many PPTs, reams of application forms, vault guides, case-books, surprise quizzes, Vista, sleepless L²s, and an indirect rat-race till death with 259 others for a place in the sun- these all and some more.

Rats! I have to begin somewhere to fit myself to companies.


So what does life after IIM bring? Professional nostalgia for the alma mater? 'God level' finances in your bank account?

What does life after IIM promise? Decades long marathon of what kind? A job with huge load of binding responsibilities & expectations, one too many formal PPTs, losing sleep over deadlines and another indirect rat-race with thousands of others for proving the worth of the brands - these and more.

Rats! I have to begin somewhere, to seek the purpose of this life.


Though I keep rationalizing by saying "This too shall pass away", whatever comes next, will also pass away. So will life, universe and everything.....

Sigh....

That is 42.