My tryst with destiny.

Two incidents of note happened yesterday.

The first took place at 11am on a sleepy Sunday morning. I live in the 3rd floor of an apartment in Lokhandwala (Andheri West), Mumbai and at that high altitude pigeons are common. And so there I was in my room, cuddled under a silky blanket and a pillow, peacefully asleep, taking full advantage of a sexy Sunday when I am awoken to the sound of flapping wings and before I know it there was this pigeon sitting on my shoulder. What a mad f*&((*& pigeon!! Suicidal to say the least! Like a panicky antelope with frazzled nerves trying to put distance between a cheetah and itself, I sprang out of bed, was on my feet and instantly into the “drunken crane on one foot” stance. Years of practice had made this possible, No no .. not the mastery of martial arts but coming up with stupid names for the kung-fu stances like a “one-eyed monkey dancing in front of a sloshed cobra”. Time seemed to stand still as the Pigeon and I studied each other, watchful of every movement, all senses on red alert, and waiting for the first thrust to parry. Even the spiders had stopped spinning their webs and were watching the drama unfold. The tension in the air could have been cut with a knife. As I watched carefully the Pigeon on the curtain rod, it went into one of the most feared stances of fighting Pigeons, the dreaded “Mad pigeon on a curtain rod” stance. The growing trepidation in me was beginning to show with each drop of sweat that gracefully made its way from my cheeks and dripped to the floor. Drip drip. Drip drip. In the dead silence, the drops of sweat thudding to the floor seemed cacophonous.

Then the mad f*&((*& Pigeon, bored out of its wits because of the inaction, just found where the gap in the window was between the curtains and the pane and flew out. And I jumped back into bed and went to sleep.

The second incident was not really an incident but a revelation. I was watching this movie about this awesome car called Tarzaan (yeah, I half expected the car on a banyan tree swinging away to glory) and this dude who builds it from the remains of his dad’s Beetle. So there is this one scene in which Tarzaan(the car) is in hot pursuit of a villain when it stops on the highway to the cries of desperate children and teachers outside a school bus which has got stranded in the mud. So its revving its engine and the teachers and children keep pleading with the car to help get the bus out of the mud. I believe Tarzaan (the car) revved higher to say ok. And the next thing you know is that all the students and teachers have got into the bus and are exhorting Tarzaan (the car) to push them out of the mud. How super brain-numbing is that? Getting everybody into the bus makes it easier to get it out of the mud? Forget all the random scenes in the movie; this one was the pick of the lot. Go figure! And of course the revelation was Ayesha Takia. Most of the movie was just her revelation, know what I mean?

P.S: I do find Ayesha good looking and with potential for high caliber performances.

Smiling to improve face value

Back in my undergrad days ( my third year if i remember right) - I was the event coordinator for JAM - Just A Minute; one of the most popular events at the college culs. And when other local culs came up, i would be there to reel off gibberish on stage and hope to win a prize for it. And some of the topics I came across were amusing to say the least and some just redefined whats pjs could be. Here is a mixed bag of some of them:-

• Railway reservation is berth control.
• If you are quizzical after a quiz, what are you after a test?
• A girl with a good geography as a bad history.
• Sex is a misdemeanor - the more i miss, the meaner i get.
• Benarasis are betel nut fans - no paaan intended.
• A man was sitting on a park bench feeling happy. After some time Happy got up and walked away.
• Skirts in women's tennis : A rising phenomenon!
• If electricity comes from electrons, where does morality come from?
• If coconut oil comes from coconuts, where does baby oil come from?

JAMming in college days was great fun - i was able to leverage my core competency of talking crap in diverse work environments by building long term capability through synergistic relations with similar individuals. As you can see, I have an MBA to boot with my B.Tech degree !! More later !

My world is a bullet

Not those dime-sized metal things that you shoot from a gun. My bullet is an awe-inspiring lion-hearted road-eating work of art. A full blooded 500 cc motorbike from the stables of Royal Enfield, the only bike in production today in India that can take you as close to Nirvana than any other contrived contraption on wheels. I have fallen in love, yet again! And every chance I get to unleash the beast within, i shall grab.

My first bike was a Yamaha RXZ, bought it in the second semester of my undergrad. And that was a ripper if i ever knew one. Thats as much as i am going to say about my first bike cos there is a whole lot more about that bike and what i did to it and what it did to me in return that someday i shall blog about. Right now, my past flames are a distant memory and my heart throbs for my 178kg sweetheart.

The Enfield bullet is in a true league of its own. Most bikers are daunted by its sheer size and weight but those who cross over to the other side have always been on a one way road. There is no turning back again ever. When i was working in Trichy, my boss lent me his 1972 model 350 cc bullet, which i fondly nicknamed black beauty for it was all black - even the mudguards and the tail-lamps panel. And man was i able to show the latest kids on the block a thing or two. You should know one thing here, that i am not much of a speed freak now. In my heydays on Yam, I dabbled in rips and wheelies but those seem to me now as just adolescent desires that i was fulfilling. Now i have a Zen approach to biking, at peace with the knowledge that my baby can unleash 22 bhp at my command, and eat the road for breakfast should i choose to do so. Never will you come across a more stable Indian bike that at 100kph, just purrs like a contended kitty with no sign of any stress whatsoever.

My love story will continue ... and you will read more about it here. Fellow bullet owners / lovers, i really look forward to hearing from you - need to plan a decent road trip sometime soon.

IIPM v. Bloggers Part III

I have always prided myself with my ability to crack all these puzzles that come in newspapers and comics especially the ones where you are given 2 similar pictures and are asked to spot ‘n’ differences between the two. Change the setting to a few websites with ‘similar’ data and I believe I can still do a decent job of spotting the ‘not’.

Everything written here is my personal opinion. I do not ask you to read it. If you continue to read though, you agree to not holding anything written on this blog against me. Legally or otherwise. You are doing this out of your own free will and have chosen not to press the back button on your browser.

(I got this inspiration from IIPM’s disclaimer only! (read my previous blog post))

Get to know your IIPM better!

Amidst this fiery controversy of IIPM vs. Bloggers, I set out to do some more research on IIPM and came across some facts that might interest a lot of us who have been affected in some form of the other by this eruption in the blogosphere. Note that all the info that I present here are either from IIPM websites or IIPM affiliated websites. I state here that I am neither copying content for commercial purposes nor am I reproducing the content to ‘defame’ IIPM (as if that was necessary). I have gone through the IIPM disclaimer (and their afiiliates’) with a fine comb and am doing nothing that violates their said policies.

Go to http://www.iipm.edu/ . The page you go to, on the blurb on the left, you will find the following text :

“Founded in 1973, The Indian Institute of Planning and Management has grown to become one of the most respected business schools in South Asia. Spread across India with its seven centers, IIPM has area of more than 200,000 sq. ft. and has also been vested with the most technically advanced infrastructure in business schools”

No talk of faculty, no talk of placements here but of the total sq. ft area of the IIPM schools. The infrastructure at least is something that I would like to position in front of potential students but built-up area? As you go through the website, you will find references to faculty and placements etc, but at the threshold of entry into the IIPM website, I find it rather bad marketing to just say you have a lot of floor space and good infrastructure.

Further, it goes on to say,
“IIPM dares to look beyond, and proudly understands that what we teach today, others adopt tomorrow.”

IIPM dares to look beyond what, I am unable to find a reference to on the webpage.

On the “About IIPM” link, you have a link extender called “Alliances”. (http://www.iipm.edu/alliances.html)

There you will find this as part of the text:

“Planman Consulting has been rated as India's largest multi-interest consulting firm.”

Eh? By whom exactly? Ok may be the information being absent on the website is not proof of the information’s absence at all so I wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth which took me to http://www.planmanconsulting.com/ . Under ‘Overview’ it says,

“Planman Consulting is India's largest multi interest consulting and business services corporation engaging a variety of organizations, institutions and enterprises in diverse industry and government verticals”

And this is what confuses me. Planman consulting has made a statement saying it’s the largest multi interest consulting group and it probably is. But I am just tempted to wonder whether the post on the alliances page of http://www.iipm.edu/ making the same pitch draws source from Planman Consulting’s statement about itself or whether it is from an independent third party observer / auditor. Is it just me or is there really cause for confusion?

Just a nugget here: On http://www.planmanconsulting.com/ , there is a scrolling marquee on the admirable client list of Planman Consulting. Amongst other names, Planman Consulting has also worked with McKinsey and Co. Impressive, I must say!

Still on the Planman Consulting website, I navigated to “Global Locations” under the “About Us” main menu. http://www.planmanconsulting.com/global-locations.html

There is a world map with the locations of Planman’s global locations. Scroll down a little more and you will find the names of the locations too.

“Los Angeles Chicago New York Boston London Brussels Dubai Johannesburg New Delhi Mumbai Bangalore Chennai Hyderabad Singapore Shanghai Sydney.”

Scroll down a little more and you will find this.

“Planman Consulting is in the process of establishing offices in these foreign cities by the end of 2005”

If Planman doesn’t have global offices yet there, what exactly does “Global locations” in the present context mean? Hmmm. And when they say “…establishing offices in these foreign cities…” aren’t they including Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi and Hyderabad?

You know how you always did the things that you mom said you shouldn’t? So help me god for I sure couldn’t help myself when I promptly clicked the “Founder” link under About Us. http://www.planmanconsulting.com/founder.html .

Excerpt from there:

“Today, Planman has over 250 self motivated MBAs contributing to its ever increasing growth making it India's largest multi-interest Management Consulting Firm”

Interesting and positively admirable. Bravo Planman!

Until I chanced upon this itsy bitsy piece on http://www.arindamchaudhuri.com/ when I clicked on the “Profile” link on the left side menu. In the profile of the great AC, it says:

“…Planman Consulting today has more than 500 self motivated MBAs contributing to its ever increasing growth making it one of the fastest growing Management Consulting Firms in Asia and the largest Indian multinational management consulting firm…”

Ok, so is it 250+ or 500+ ? And both articles claim those numbers are relevant as of “today”!! So you might say then that, well they could actually be 600 self motivated MBAs which is both 250+ and 500+ and therefore the two pieces of information are not contra to each other. Confess then, oh paragon of logic that this line of reasoning is hardly convincing.

If you are wondering why I am dwelling so much on Planman Consulting, I think of it as an extension of the pithy maxim “ A man is known by the friends he keeps” … ergo, “an institution by the alliances it keeps”? The common thread in all this is Mr. Arindham Chaudhuri and that’s the reason for all this research.

Let me take a breath taking pause. (Hmmmmm !! That felt better) Moving on….

In the list of Planman’s Global offices on its own webpage (scroll back up if you must), do you see any references to either Kolkota or Toronto? If your vision is as good as mine, chances are you didn’t. And yet at http://www.planmanconsulting.com/founder.html , the text has this to say:

“…In just 8 years, he (Arindham Chaudhuri) has made Planman a respected and a well known name in the consulting business. With branches situated in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai and Toronto …”

Sheesh !!! Do I need say more?

On that note, lets get back to IIPM now, shall we? On the alliances page at the IIPM website, the page asked me to visit their jobsite for a live experience and so I heeded their request.

Can you even begin to guess what IIPM’s official jobsite is called? It would be a long shot unless you could come up with … hold you breath … http://www.groovyjobs.com/ !!! What an absolutely groovy name !!

Ok so how many of you have heard of http://www.groovyjobs.com/ ? If there are a lot of you, please do pardon this particular ranting of an urban ignoramus for the IIPM alliances page goes on to say

“..Arguably, GroovyJobs is amongst the best job sites even when compared with those that exist currently in the job market”.

The word ‘arguably’ lends itself to rather elegant usage, eh?

This one is a personal favorite of mine. Go to http://www.iipm.edu/about-iipm.html . As you read through the page, you will chance upon a statement which goes,

“..The best of learning methodologies have carved the students in such a way that no less than the Fortune 500 companies come here for placements”.

And stay with me on this one cause I am good at these CAT-type questions – no less than the Fortune 500 companies means ONLY Fortune 500 companies come for placement. It’s akin to the categorical ‘NOT’ operator in Boolean algebra. So I did the next logical thing. I checked out their placements page at http://www.iipm.edu/student-life-placements.html .

And what do you expect to read there?

This : “…some of the other big recruiters for 2005 were HDFC Bank, E-Value Serve.com, Essar Group, Shaw Wallace, Air Sahara, Hindustan Levers, National Engineering, Pipal Research, Times of India, IDBI Bank, CitiBank, Tata-AIG, India Bulls, Hutchison, Anand Rathi, Karvy Consultants, HCL Infinet and many many more..”

A fine club of “Fortune 500” companies I must say. What do you think? And in case you are wondering why the word “other” at the start of the sentence, it was because the article at the very outset said:

“The No.1‘s across industries like Oracle Corporation, G.E. Money, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, DLF Universal, ICICI Prudential, ICICI Bank, Price Water House Coopers were jostling for the zero day at IIPM.”

Hindustan Levers interestingly doesn’t appear in this list but the former one.

I reckon that if I spent some more time on the IIPM website or any of its affiliates, I would spot a lot more such interesting conundrums but I will save that for another day. Right now, I am more interested in hearing what you folks have to think about my two cents here. And just to rejig your memory, everything on this page is my opinion. Its personal and non-commercial.

IIPM v. Bloggers Part II

Continuing with the IIPM vs Bloggers debate, I was surfing www.iipm.edu to know more about the institute when i, just for the sake of curiosity perused their disclaimer page.(You can find it here http://www.iipm.edu/disclaimer.html). I present below an excerpt from that page : "IIPM is not responsible for the contents put on any of its own web sites by the web master. None of the information provided on the web site may be held against or for IIPM."

Make your own opinion on that one, but i personally think thats shady. Now can somebody who is legally erudite tell me if thats a standard disclaimer? Brilliant if it is, cos then rashmi and gaurav just need to add the same lines in their blogs saying information on their blog cant be held against them and they will be in the clear. That line of reasoning was purely for argument's sakes and I would much rather that the war was fought in the open and not over a cup of tea on some cosy corner table.

P.S: Read the entire disclaimer at the url provided lest i be accused of thrusting that excerpt above out of context. And in case they do change their webpage before you can get to it, not to worry. I have that covered.

IIPM v. Bloggers Part I

Before anything, please note that everything I write here is my own personal opinion. I write it in my capacity as a free individual to express my thoughts and feelings. Nobody is meant to read this and if you are doing so, you do so at your own risk. I write this because I must.

I had been watching this Gaurav Sabnis – IIPM imbroglio silently from the sidelines before I felt that things have taken a turn for the worse with allegations flying freely on what Gaurav Sabnis had to say about IIPM ( the fact that he had only linked to somebody else’s opinion is a different matter altogether ) or what IIPM is purported to have done against Gaurav Sabnis as retaliatory action for what they believe is a clear case of public defamation. It is not becoming of a burgeoning society such as ours to sweep this issue under the carpet and so stay it shall, up and in our faces till we give the devil its due and close this out once and for all.

Fundamentally, I think this issue begs answers to 2 burning questions: 1. What is the “limit” to a blogger’s expression of his thoughts and feelings about a public issue – for I believe limited freedom is no freedom at all. And 2. Who should it behoove to audit educational institutions making claims on their credentials before the same credentials are put forth in front of the common man – is it a question of moral responsibility or is it a question of government policing?

The first question which seems rather nebulous at first is straightforward once you cut through the riff raff and see the heart of the question for what it is. A blog is something like a personal diary – a not-so-secret sort of a window into your life, a window through which somewhere down the line you would often look through and turn the clock back, and experience the clichéd walk down memory lane just once more. Its also your own personal space in the web, a virtual abode if you may, where you can (atleast in spirit and I still believe this) be open in your thoughts and actions which you believe in. One man’s food is another man’s poison so be it, I don’t want to please anybody else but my self, in what I think, speak and do. My blog therefore is a reflection of my mind, as it sees itself in a world that it has created for itself. My mind and I are one…. You have a problem with what I write in my blog, live with it. I never asked you to come here.

The second question revolves around the controversy surrounding IIPM’s immaculate credentials. I have always wondered how an educational institute had the wherewithal to sustain such astronomical levels of advertising. And I rationalized it myself thinking that there were wealthy patrons of the institute and left it at that. Until Rashmi pulled the plug on IIPM’s claims. Until Gaurav unwittingly found himself in the eye of a storm, bemused by an apparently great institute’s perfectly idiotic reaction that defies any attempt at a sensible de-construction. In my opinion, whether IIPM has a case for themselves or not, they committed the biggest blunder of this century by launching a malicious attack on a blogger expressing his opinion. And so they blissfully opened Pandora’s box and the proverbial can of worms too, for I see no way in hell that IIPM is going to come out of this unscathed.

(Incidentally, just to cut away from the dreariness once in a while, read http://www.radiosargam.com/movies/moviereviews/r/rstrl.htm for a review of “Rok sako to rok lo”, touted as a brilliant hit-to-be because it drew on deep marketing knowledge of the Indian consumer. Incidentally, one person touted this … any guesses??)

While we keep this issue about IIPM’s claims alive, we should also understand that the IIPM students themselves have nothing to do with this. In their minds, they are protecting something that they strongly believe in and that I think is nothing wrong. As long as they don’t infringe on other’s space, they are welcome to do what they want. Should someone say something about my alma mater, I would be petulant too. And you dear reader, would be no different. So lets not lose focus on this issue by slinging mud at the products of IIPM and get embroiled in a needless scuffle but instead bring the spotlight on the institute itself and confirm for ourselves that what they say about themselves is the truth. For, if what IIPM says about itself in all its ads are true, I applaud them for it is definitely an achievement but if they are not, I will not stand somebody else making a mockery of my sensibilities.

I stand by Gaurav in what he did. I don’t need to offer him any support, for I am sure he has enough support to handle a million IIPM’s and their likes together. I stand by him for I believe he is right in spirit and action. It completely beats me why IIPM didn’t just smother this controversy by comprehensively proving that they are backed to the hilt on their claims instead of trying to use strong-arm tactics into pummeling someone into submission. All this only goes to deepen the suspicion that I have about IIPM trying to hide something from public scrutiny. IIPM, I ask you this, if your flag indeed flew high and proud and shimmered in the colour white and not low and dark, sulking in baleful black, why haven’t you made a single attempt in answering any of the questions that have been asked by Jammag (read Rashmi)? Why hasn’t there been a single attempt to assure the general public that Arindham Chaudhuri indeed is a great management guru, with sterling educational qualifications from pedigree institutions? And the institute that advocates to “dare think beyond the IIM’s” should have itself carefully studied the strategy in which they chose to handle this issue, by resorting to despicable and sub-standard methods of coercion.

Net Net, I write from my heart, straight as an arrow. And so did Gaurav. And so do millions of other bloggers. You mess with one, you mess with everyone. We, the bloggers are but atoms of a much larger-than-life supreme omniscient organism that breathes a life of its own. That is the true and only reality of the blogosphere.

And finally, if indeed IIPM did threaten to burn their laptops outside the IBM office and do so, they can rest assured that they would face a PIL (public interest litigation) from me and hundreds other for burning toxic plastic in public than disposing of them safely. IIPM, tell me slowly and clearly, for you are losing me here, on how burning laptops is going to prove that the claims made by you in your advertisements are true.

At the end of the day, no matter which b-school you are from, remember that a B-school is not a magical Xanadu, where one swish of the magic wand will turn you from a born loser to a valiant victor. It’s what you are made of, the strength of character that will differentiate you being a winner from you being a loser. Like Michelangelo remarked on his famous sculpture of an angel on how he was able to carve with such a surrealistic touch, he replied, “…in the stone, I could only see the angel struggling to set herself free and so I did”. That rings true of every one of us. Its what inside us, at the core of our existence that matters. Not passing out from an IIT or an IIM.

On a more personal note, Rashmi and Gaurav – I salute thee.