farewell...

imagine an animated world moving slowly around you and you are stranded feeling numb while the storm of change beckons you to move ahead. you are brushed by a shoulder and you turn around to see no faces looking back at you. you wonder whether you did actually brush any shoulder or not. fingerprints dont fade from the lives we touch. all you fear is that in the costemic world that we live in, is there a feeble chance of people faking the fingerprints? as you take a pause from your busy lives, you realise that afterall, these brush of shoulders and touch of hearts is what makes life memorable and pleasant, no matter how short these special moments are or how it is going to turn out in future!

few months from now, it would hardly matter how we ended up being there or what we believed about that place before. because we would be so immersed into our lives that asking if one is asleep or not, worrying if one has taken her medicine, caring if one had a ugly day with his boss, or assuring that you would never give up on your special one, would be if not anything else, difficult. hence, it would be a test of the highest degree which would eventually determine how good friends you are. when the juniors asked me about farewell, my initial reaction was "no way am i going!!!" i strongly believe that for those you care for, there isn't gonna come that single day when u say, "tadaa bubbyee...see ya!! adios..." and for those you don't, the very least that you can do is not fake your wishes and good gestures. and so, you see why i don't see the point in a farewell party. but due to my sweet juniors and my mocking di, i made up my mind, very reluctantly though, to make a short visit and come back. but as it turns out, i am a fucking emotional prick!! i ended up doing all the wrong things and feel bad later on. hehe...

when me and my friend arrived at the party, it was already late and i felt meek seeing all the lavish dreases and elegant makeovers. but then i thought, who is here to praise my dress or look special for. it was a day of love birds dancing in the love-makes-happy-ending tunes. it was good to see the happy faces, although i wondered if i would ever be gutsy enough to dance with a girl on stage. with my receding hairline and disbelief in the notion of love, i might probably give you the good news in the next lifetime. at one point of time, i felt it was very absurd. no1 seemed to remember the huge fight which caused cracks all over the place few months back. people were all smiling while asking sweet questions to the one they had a day of phillipics with that day. is it really true that time heals all wounds? when called upon to the stage with the dearest of my friends, me and my friend ended up fighting not to dance together and falling short of words for each other. after some wild dance steps, we called the day off. the juniors had asked us to write something for each other on a piece of paper, and as always i ended with abruptly terse and insufficient one liners and wished i cut everything i wrote and write something more sensible.

frankly, i didn't care about this day after a very special day yesterday when me and some of my special friends spent a long-wished-for hangout roaming, eating and watching a movie. Anyways, THANK YOU ALL very much for everything!!!

Heckler's Veto

The recent stretch of events is beckoning the society towards a grim road of intorelence and vandalistic approach towards disagreement. Various incidents come to my mind when i consider the violent response to a piece of art, speech or expression. Salman Rushdie being debarred to attend a video conference at the Jaipur Fim Festival, Taslima Nasreen's books being banned, M F Hussain being sent virtually to exile or Kashmiri filmmakers condemned for making films of Human Right violations of Indian Army in the ever sensitive region of Kashmir, all signal towards a sad reality of today- Heckler's Veto.

I came accross this word in a national daily few days back and it intrigued me to the core. A heckler is a one who disapproves of an idea hypocritically and while he cannot back it up with proper logic, he thrusts his views on others with violence. While change and protests are an integral component of a democratic society, we can't afford to get it done at the barrel of the gun! Personalities like M F Hussain, Taslima Nasreen or Salman Rushdie have a intellectual or artistic career spanned over atleast 20-25 years and a single piece of their work may be offending. One may oppose a single work of these artists but can we ban the artist himself/herself? Few regional polarising powers are at work and it seems there is oppurtunistic politics at its blatent best. 

The sad part of the whole episode is that the organizers and the state governments lack the spine and fail to provide safety and safeguard constitutional rights. We need to be a community which is so confident that a single person cannot change the whole dynamics of our belief system. The Supreme Court sits at the helm of things and the people who oppose an idea or a creations can always take the legal course of action.

I fear a world where many potential M F Hussains would think twice before brings their imaginations to colours or potential Salman Rushdies refrain from writting something with the fear that people may threaten his life. In the words of Voltaire, " I sometimes hate what you write, but i will give to my death the right you have to write."

Confessions of the callous mind

I have seen guys taking a look at a picture of IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta before going into the laps of sleep angels. I have seen guys arguing about the fact that the fastest way to earn big bucks is to be an entrepreneur or get into the corporate scheme of things. I have seen guys walking with naked feet on the chilling floors of the corridors for preparing for the gateway to these Ivy League B-schools- the CAT. And primarily for these reasons it has become an upheaval task for the renowned professors and counselors to select the appropriate candidates for these colleges because simply, there are absolutely so many worth it. So, the inclusion of the class 10 and 12 in the selection criteria is not a surprise. But as I see, there are some gaping lacunae in the system.

The CAT exam is structured in such a fashion that it is the measure of the quantitative and logical ability of a student. In other words, it determines how much a student is appropriate to be an entrepreneur. On the other hand, a class 10 or class 12 score is a measure of the hard working and to some extent mugging ability of a student. I don’t mean to denigrate the importance of hard work but are we ready to accept to the fact that firstly, we can compromise the entrepreneurial abilities for that and secondly, that IIMs don’t believe in “living in present” and “a change is possible” anecdotes anymore? The IIMs seem to say,” You might be fat-glassed nerds with no leadership qualities. You must be able to work your asses off for all we care. We have got experts in this field and we can make you an entrepreneur and a leader in 2 years!!” There are students who are destined “not to think big” just because they had a 63 in Hindi in the 10^th or a 67 in Physics (or any subject which has nothing to do with judging entrepreneurial abilities) in the 12^th or unfortunately fell sick during the crucial times. It seems they would have to atone for the “mistake” that they committed 7-8 years back. I mean, there are people who didn’t even think about doing an MBA when they are 16! The real question is, what is the IIMs going to do when grading system is implemented at both 10^th and 12^th levels as Mr. Kapil Sibal is so eager to do? How would they distinguish between a huge pool (and by huge, I mean HUGE!!) of Os? I guess their kindergarten scores would determine if he is apt for an IIM or not! Moreover, there is also the whole uproar about the whole normalization process which is anything but transparent.

There are certain argument that there is very low correlation between CAT scores and actual academic performance inside b-school and some b-schools have gone a step ahead and performed informal studies to find that there is high correlation between one’s past academic scores and b-school GPA but my simple question is this – To take to cycle of events forward, does the placements in the corporate world and the ratio of students being independent entrepreneurs have any “correlation” with the student’s GPA? Once you are inside a company does the boss care whether you are from the IIM or a college like MDI or NITIE? All he is concerned is whether his job gets done!! I once talked to a NITIE alumnus and he had a very interesting thing to say. He said, “You can’t really blame these institutions because even the top notch corporates want to show a heavy intellectual workforce to the market with students from IITs and IIMs. Being from a college like NITIE or XIMB or MDI there is just an year gap when u need to compensate for your profile with hard work and deep aspiration. At the end of the day, you just need to believe that these institutions didn’t recognize a talent, and move on. Nothing is the end of the world.” So true. If all your work is geared towards securing yourself against failure and embarrassments, why live at all? If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.

A simple solution could have been this - The IIMs should first conduct the CAT and then allow all above 97 percentile or say 95 percentile to send their resume. A panel of experts should scan the applications based on the overall profile (extracurricular activities, positions of responsibility, scholarships, etc.) and not just some board or graduation marks. Okay, hardly matters what I think…hehe. In the word of Susan Sontag, “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.”(Few IIMs are out of my list though…lol)