The Seven Year Itch

Last weekend anon was in town after almost two years. We did what we usually do, i.e. she comes home, criticizes everything about my life, then SH joins and they both gang up against me, we shop, we watch movies, we meet the guys and we all get drunk together. Of course, now that it’s been over seven years since we have known one another, we end up repeating the same old stories, playing the same old music and cracking up on the same old lame jokes. The only difference is now, some of us are married and we expect them to laugh and enjoy the same way as we do, even though they have no background or context. But they politely oblige us and even patiently take pictures while we pose trying to recreate the past, notwithstanding the receding hair line, the bulging stomach or the wrinkles under the eyes.

So as I try to trace back my life over the last few years, here is a journey back in time: from college to Goa to Kerala to Coorg to Singapore to Malaysia to Cambodia to Goa again, these are the people I have grown up with, learnt to drink with, traveled with or simply called up in the middle of the night to crib…

SH, me and anon in the first term of college…

And on my birthday in campus on a cold December night…

On our way to Kerala…

Our roomie bonding trip to Goa…

Then in Singapore after graduating…

Roadtrip to Coorg…

Not to mention Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia…

Again in Phnom Penh, Cambodia…

Finally the Goa wedding last year…

Never even realized how the last seven years simply went by while we were busy making other plans…

From Monkeys to Men

I have always struggled with the theory of evolution. I mean, come on. One fine day when you are just going about your daily chores, fighting with your spouse, yelling at your kids and abusing your boss, some smart-ass stranger comes up to you, pats you on the back and says matter-of-factly, “dude, by the way, do you know we have a common ancestor? We all descended from monkeys!” The only response you can come up with AFTER you have made up your mind to kill this stranger and feed his remains to Bunty, the dog, is to look at yourself in the mirror, inspect your neatly combed hair, the starched shirt and perfectly ironed trousers, and wonder, “Monkeys? Really?”

But having said that, this weekend reinforced some faith in the theory and the fact that may be, just may be, we ARE indeed monkeys underneath all the veiled sophistication.

So while Thursday night meant getting drenched in the rain and then in alcohol in the nearby shady pub, Friday was about stepping out to an unknown territory (also known as Khar) to another shady place, which proudly called itself, “Three Wise Monkeys”.
But hey, Signature tastes like Signature everywhere and after a few drinks, when there is no wisdom remaining, the place could well have been reduced to “Three Monkeys”, appropriate, given that three of us from college were meeting up.

Saturday was alumni meet night, when you turn up at a Five Star Hotel, hoping for some free booze AND some influential alum who can magically fast-track your career, but just end up hanging out with the same set of loserly batchmates and turning it into one of those age-old drawing room discussions you have had at each other’s place over the last four years. But thankfully, I did manage to catch up some of the other people I had lost touch with over the years, most of who were busy getting married and getting fat, while I was just busy getting fat.

Now Sunday night being Kap’s birthday and since he was sad about turning 27 (sniff sniff), he decided to treat us at “Three Wise Men”, thus allowing our wisdom to leapfrog from the level of monkeys to that of men in just two days! Ahh, the irony of it.
But hey, Signature tastes like Signature everywhere and after a few drinks the place could well have been reduced to “Three Men”, appropriate, given that three of us from college were meeting up.

What with all the free flow of alcohol, I ended the weekend with considerably less wisdom, as depleted as it already was.

But the signature of an evolved wo(man) is that s(he) can hold her Signature with poise and dignity, something I am sure even the wisest of monkeys couldn’t have done…

Anon Comes to Town

Lately I had been bonding a lot with my OTHER women friends, and it has not gone down too well with anon, as she felt that her status as my best friend was being threatened. Hence, gripped by fear and jealousy, she decided to fly down to Mumbai over the weekend and put things straight. Or that’s the version that I would like to believe…

In reality, since yet another member of our CKB gang was getting married, this time in Mumbai, the outstation members had to come down to offer their condolences. While the wedding was a no-nonsense, one day affair and my first brush with a Maharashtrian ceremony, the rest of the weekend was about me and anon, making the most of our time together. Once more, it hit us, how different we were, once more, we wondered how we have managed to remain friends over the years and once more, we marveled how we resisted from killing each other in Room No. 213. Of course, now that we have booked non-refundable tickets to Cambodia, and would be meeting SH as well, there is much to look forward to!

Saturday night, we threw a bachelor party for the groom, but the only glitch was that the groom wasn’t there. So, the four of us celebrated on his behalf, as the LIT pitchers and the non-veg platters at Out of the Blue seemed strangely inadequate.

Sunday, we had a mini-CKB reunion, as the uncle of the group finally fooled a girl into marrying him before she could change her mind, and we all heaved a collective sigh of relief.

And Monday morning, we left: anon back to Bangalore and me for my one-week vacation to Kolkata.

She came in a breeze, she criticized me in a breeze, and she left in a breeze: mean as ever, annoying as ever and judgmental as ever…

The Rachael Green Syndrome

You can take the girl out of SCMHRD, but you can’t take SCMHRD out of the girl. Now, I wasn’t exactly a role model student in my MBA, nor did I think it added much value to my education. Besides, I almost looked down on HR as a specialization, because let’s face it, no employee in any company across the world has good things to say about their HR department. And after all, HR is like, you know, so GURLY!

So, so, so I opted for finance/economics instead, even though I hated it. But unfortunately changing my aptitude is tougher than changing my specialization. Hence I continue to exhibit traits normally associated with HR personnel, and lately I have been doing a lot projects related to Diversity, Talent Management and Communication, none of which are remotely related to my original mandate. Apart from that, there is recruitment and I have been completely enamoured by the whole interviewing/evaluating process.

But now comes the tough part: decision making! Now, I am the sort of person you would describe as a ‘push over’ or as I would like to call it, ‘flexible and understanding’. I am not comfortable with taking charge, I am not comfortable with making decisions and I am definitely not comfortable with power. Even in simple day-to-day situations like going out with my friends or group projects or eating in a restaurant, I usually go along with whatever others decide. I am happy with someone else taking charge, I am happy when others decide where to go and I am happy when my friends order on my behalf, while I just sit there looking pretty, smiling and worrying about my weight, because I am too shy to say that I would rather have the plain parantha than the butter naan, because, you know, I don’t want to add to the confusion.

The only occasion when I am headstrong is when it comes to any sort of authority: my parents have never forced me to do anything, and that has made me uncomfortable with blind compliance, be it with professors, seniors or bosses. But with peers, I am the most malleable person ever!

Which is why, I simply hate making decisions, especially decisions which would impact multiple people and now that I am being forced to do so at work, it makes me extremely conscious: on one hand, I am flattered that people would put so much trust in my judgment so early in my career, but on the other, I am worried about making the wrong choices, being biased or simply messing it up.

Sigh… If only I gave it so much thought before making choices in my own life, things would be much simpler!

Leaving on a Jet Plane

My B school is a strong believer of making your life miserable by forcing unpleasant subjects/schedules/roommates down your throat, because, apparently, reality doesn’t give you any alternatives. So while students in other colleges enjoyed a lot of freedom and were considered matured enough to be responsible for their choices, our college was a replica of our government: a moral police telling us what to study, who to study with or even who to live with. Hence, we were ALLOCATED roommates on the very first day, based on some random variables. I, for one, DO NOT believe it was random at all; they deliberately put the MOST INCOMPATIBLE people together, so that we could learn to adjust, compromise and become more tolerant, i.e. more prepared for marriage.

So this is how I met SH, five years back, on an unpleasant June afternoon. Now, given my gift for judging people accurately based on first impression, I had immediately decided that I wasn’t going to get along with her. After all, she was from Faridabad (and NOT Delhi), she was tall, slim, fair and worst of all, she was an ENGINEER! In the following months, my dislike for her was only more strengthened: we were opposites, like Rahul Dravid and Shahid Afridi, like Bono and Justin Bieber or like Shah Rukh Khan and well, a normal person.

She was a social butterfly, who would hang out in the cafeteria/Sweety Stores with people even AFTER classes got over at 10:00 p.m., while I would rush upstairs to be on my own/go for a jog just to be alone…

She had her entire bookshelf empty and NEVER read, while I would finish off one bad book after another…

She could never study on her own and would insist that we mug up Segmentation variables TOGETHER, while I needed to be alone in one corner of the library, scribbling notes, WITHOUT HER MAKING PNEMONICS…

She loved to party and dance and despite being older than me, she had enough energy to put a 5-year old to shame, while I would crib every time she booked a table at Mezzanine… AGAIN…

She had the metabolism of a hummingbird, and she ate everybody else’s food but still remained thin, while I was fat despite my jogging/diet/gymming/diet/swimming/diet…

And since she was the queen of the room (apparently three years of pre-MBA work experience gives you the right to boss people around), she would ORDER us about. There were so many times she would scream at me, “Close the windows”, while I would scream back, “Close them yourself!” and she would retort back, “Stop lying around and lose some weight” and I would stop talking to her, SUFFERING SILENTLY.

To cut a long story short, we BARELY tolerated each other, and anon, as the most moderate of the three, had to act as a mediator to arrest the collapse of Room No. 213. But somehow we managed to survive through the open wars and the cold wars, and finally after two years of living with her, I heaved a sigh of relief that she was finally off my back.

But, no, apparently that was not to be. Both of us got placed in Mumbai, so even though she got married in the same year and we weren’t roommates anymore, I saw her more than I would have liked to. Every weekend, I would dread her phone call/text message, again ORDERING me to come to town or Bandra or to her place, not caring if I actually WANTED to go to town or Bandra or to her place. The worst was after every few weeks of avoiding her, when I would be celebrating the rare peace of mind, she would call me innocently saying that she was coming to Powai for some work and we could catch up for a quick cup of coffee. But it would NEVER remain ‘a quick cup of coffee’ as promised as she would just crash at my place, again not caring if I actually WANTED her to stay back. And then there were those times when I would be drunk/sick/upset and I would explicitly tell her NOT TO COME HOME and that she WAS NOT WELCOME, and yet she would show up in the middle of the night with medicines/alcohol/a shoulder to cry on, repeatedly buzzing the doorbell till I finally gave in and opened it. Or she would drag me to her home on my birthday or help me with the saree every time I had to go for some guest lecture/placement duty/social event.

And now, after five years of being bullied by her, she is finally gone, if not from my life, but from the city, as she starts a new life in a new country, leaving me a little more lonely, a little more nostalgic and a little more sad.

There is something about the person you have shared beds/closets/bathrooms with...

Black Swan

My MBA gradesheet shows that I have majored in Finance (which also explains my huge number of backlogs), but somehow I am ashamed of that fact (not the backlogs, the Finance major). I find it so much cooler to say “I specialized in general management”, which is a polite way of saying, “actually I fooled around in my MBA.” I could still get away with it in Company D, but when you join an I-Bank and say, “Oh I am a right brained person”, people look at you like you are Paris Hilton.

And it doesn’t help when you sit right in front of the Equity Research team. As soon as the markets open, everybody gets excited as if Aishwariya Rai just gave birth to a baby. All kinds of alien jargon like “rally”, “short sell”, “stop loss”, “option trading” are thrown around by people (why is it mostly men?) and the next half an hour would be spent on the geek’s version of locker room discussions, i.e. vomiting the contents of the Economic Times they just memorized on their way to work. Male bonding amazes me at times…

No, I am NOT passionate about the markets and no, I do not trade, but that doesn’t mean I am not human. I may not get orgasms comparing the P/E valuations of different companies, but I also have feelings. Every time someone at work asked me, “So where are you investing these days?” like an innocent, truthful person, I would say, “Actually I let my dad handle my investments”. Over time, I have noticed that this honest admission leads people to treat me like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.

But thankfully, I have discovered some sane people (all of them women) on the floor with whom I can take coffee breaks and discuss the Kardashian sisters, travel destinations and other people’s shallow tastes.

At times, you wonder if there is indeed a valid reason for stereotypes…

Homecoming

I assure you this weekend was more than just going back to college, meeting the same set of people, talking about the same stories for the hundredth time, going for a sleepy LONG drive to Mulshi dam, drinking, having breakfast at Café Good Luck, lunch at Blue Nile, high tea at Chaitanya and dinner at Mezza9.

It was also about suffering a slow death inflicted by Nargis Fakhri. Katrina Kaif, take a bow. You have competition. Who said, you can’t act?

Now, as a group, we are very diverse. We have very different personalities, tastes and opinions, which is why it takes us at least 30 minutes to reach a consensus, even on simple things like in what order we should use the loo. The process can go on for over two hours if it involves critical issues like, say, how to have fun, because we can’t even decide on a common DEFINITION of fun. But Rockstar achieved what nobody else had ever managed: instant agreement.

Anyway, moving on, the trip reminded us of the old days, the carefree life, the little things that made the two years so special. But it also confirmed something which we already suspected, i.e. certain things/people never change:

Like the awesomeness of the bun maska/baked beans on toast/scrambled eggs at Good Luck, the Patiala lassi and parantha at Chaitanya and the joy of ravishing daal chawal at 1 a.m. after four hours of binge drinking…

Like repetition of the same jokes which still manages to bring a smile on your face…

Like huddling over the laptop to watch old videos and snaps and randomly hugging each other…

Like revisiting every corner of the college and trying to recreate the same memories: sitting on the swing where we had our ‘deep conversations in the dark’, crowding around in front of the Sweety Stores (only it’s now called the Rangoli Stores), arranging ourselves in the exact order in which we used to sit/sleep in the classroom (Room No. 307) or sitting opposite the canteen by the Zenia flowerbed (the guys arguing over who gets to face the girl’s hostel)…

Like barging into Room No. 213 (the hostel room we shared) and squealing like excited schoolgirls as we posed for random pics (me cursing ‘my’ wardrobe by the door)…

Like the guys taking care of us (booking cabs, buying tickets, food and alcohol, arranging mattresses and pillows, making tea and waking us up in the morning) while we let them…

But then, we also noticed the differences: like getting older, getting married, talking about bosses/investments/property/family, tiring more easily and slowly giving in to mundane mediocrity…

As I tossed and turned on a rented mattress, I found myself a little less impulsive, a little less spontaneous, a little less uninhibited and a tad more scared than I was two years back…

Good Riddance (time of my life)

There are reunions, and then there are REUNIONS. The first one implies the formal alumni meet organized by your college strategically timed (during summer/final placements) so that the college can hand out colourful and badly edited (trust me, I worked in the Corpcomm team; I know how we made these pamphlets) placement brochures in the hope that some bigshot alumni will be charitable and nostalgic enough to “give something back to the college”. The alumni, on the other hand, with nothing better to do on a Saturday night, will turn up for the free food and the booze, in the hope of networking and passing around business cards, while comparing their cars/houses/size of… (I was going for bank balance, you dirty-minded losers). Thankfully, I haven’t attended any such meets (except as a student, when I was there to hand out the colourful, badly edited pamphlets).

But this weekend, we are going to Pune for the REUNION, which implies that our small but extremely confused group of 10 people (the other three spoilsports apparently have better things to do and I am jealous of them) are going to get back together to mourn over the misfortune that hit them four years back, when they met in Div B. The idea is to revisit college life, i.e. do all the stupid things we used to do, get drunk at the same place, watch the cheap morning show movie at the same theatre and generally try to go back to the past on a very expensive time machine ride. If you ask me, it’s just the desperation of a few OLD members, pushing thirty, trying to hold on to their youth.

Anyway, as much as I tried to get out of it, I couldn’t think of enough creative excuses, and hence I have reluctantly agreed to spend my otherwise happening (yes, I can never get enough of cooking/cleaning/washing/doing laundry/reading/watching marathon episodes of BBT) weekend in the most unpleasant way: meeting people who got on my nerves for two years, getting drunk, dressing up, staying up and discussing the same old stories about college life.

The sacrifices you have to make for family… oh yea, they are like family (remember, you can choose your friends, but not your relatives)

Purani Jeans all over again… time to buy a new pair?

Message in a Bottle

This is an alcohol post… pure, unadulterated, shaken but not stirred, though it does stir up quite a lot of memories!

Now people who know me well will vouch for the fact that I am an occasional drinker, who, can at max hold five (at times as little as two and a half) drinks. Anything more than that, then beware of your car/home/clothes, because I can throw up on any of them. And that too, as my dad aptly says, like all other things (meaning guys), I have very immature taste in alcohol as well and his isolated attempts to help me acquire the taste of whisky or red wine have fallen flat. Me, I prefer to stick to my breezers/ vodka/ gin/ tequila/ LIT/ margarita and the occasional sex on the beach (the cocktail).

Over the years, I can confidently say that alcohol is one thing that has stood by me thick and thin, in the hardest of times as well as the happiest of days.

My tryst with alcohol started in high school, when as a seventeen-year-old, I was pining for my “best friend” who was leaving the city for good and we drowned ourselves in an entire bottle of port wine kept in the fridge and then filled it up with water. Ahh… “love”, separation and alcohol make for a lethal hangover…

My initial days in Bombay were pretty mundane, when I was this sincere, demure career-oriented CAT-oriented girl, “who did not want to let her parents down or misuse the trust vested in her” (my mom’s words, not mine). So for three years, I just studied, topped my exams, took CAT classes, discovered the joys of roadside shopping and street food, without giving in to peer pressure to party. Thankfully, I never felt I was missing something, as I watched sloshed girls sneaking into the hostel from the safety of my 8/8 room. May be the watchful eyes of my religious Muslim roomie who prayed twice a day and stayed away from all the ‘vices’ kept me in my senses…

But soon, I was working (after failing to crack CAT in my first attempt) and then I decided enough was enough. Being “good” and “responsible” was getting me nowhere AND my above-mentioned “best friend” was now moving to the States which meant our occasional phone calls and annual Kolkata meets would also come to an end. Now that I had a little money, it was time to “misuse the freedom and trust vested in me” by my parents. So the next year, I really “discovered” all that Bombay is famous for. The vodkas and the LITs poured in, affections were showered, the music became louder, the nights longer and the morning-after hangovers more frequent. So yes, I was finally ready for B school…

The key takeaway from MBA was discovering my OTHER passion (writing, and no, the first one isn’t finance). But very close was our ability to find the most creative excuses for drinking. You give us an event (say xyz company is visiting the campus for placements) or a non-event (xyz company cancelled its visit due to recession) and we would automatically reach for the bottle. And then add to it, freshers’ parties, farewell parties, birthday parties, clearing exams, failing exams, placements, lack of placements, Neev, Kerala, Goa, well, you get the picture…

Company D was just an extension of college, except now there were occasional company-sponsored parties which meant you could get drunk for free. And now that we had more money and we were yet to learn to cook, we would be eating out multiple times a week, and of course, no self-respecting first-year analyst has ONLY dinner at a restaurant. But, but but, then we discovered the beauty of home-delivery of alcohol. So on a particularly lazy weekend, we could just order for tandoori chicken, beer and vodka to be delivered right at our doorstep. Of course, having a flatmate who prided herself on her “refined tastes” and relaxed with a glass of whisky after a long day, was constant peer pressure, one that I didn’t mind giving in to. Now that bachelor parties were starting to slowly replace birthday parties, the only thing that restored the sanity was alcohol. Admittedly, I have a very poor track record as far as bachelor parties are concerned (I have thrown up on each of them), but I completely blame the enormity of the occasion rather than my inability to hold my drink.

And then it was new year’s eve… and it turned out to be the longest and most expensive hangover of my life!

After some impromptu drinking binges, t-shirts soaked with tears and sweeping changes, I am sober again, and except the occasional moment of weakness, I stay conscious and careful and very much in control…

The Curious Case of a Corporate Bitch

Do you believe in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? When I look back, I can almost classify my life in those five parameters, if only in an inverted pyramid, pretty much like Benjamin Button.

Age 1: Self-actualization
Spontaneous- cry/poop/pee whenever I want to
Lack of prejudice- anybody who pinches my cheeks is a creep (no exceptions)
Acceptance of facts- Without mom, I am screwed

Age 5: Esteem
Self esteem- I go to school; don’t mess with me
Achievement- I can count one to hundred AND sing the alphabet song
Respect for others- I have other five-year-olds as friends; don’t mess with THEM or else…

Age 13: Love/Belonging
Loyalty- My friend has a smartphone. Ergo, she knows everything
Family- They say NO to everything. What a pity I can’t choose my parents
Sexual Intimacy- What are those two doing on TV? Why is my body acting funny?

Age 18: Safety
Security- I have a 6”3, 150-Kg boyfriend
Employment- I got through the best private engineering college within 100 yards of my locality. TCS will surely take me in
Resources- I emotionally blackmailed my dad to buy me a smartphone, an i-pod AND a second-hand car

Age 26: Physiological
Food and drinks- I eat healthy (fresh from KFC) and drink moderately (only five times a week)
Breathing- Fresh air please (only first-class compartments in Mumbai locals)
Excretion- I work in an Investment Bank

P.S. From blogger to failed writer to columnist, I have come a long way. I was approached by Viewspaper to write a guest column for them. Here are the two articles: Status Message and Terrorism.

Final nail in the coffin: Humour Columnist...

What's common between Aishwariya Rai and an Investment Banker?

Disclaimer: This post is what you get when you cross supreme boredom with top management…


Both think that a good launching pad in modeling/Ivy League is a ticket to be successful in completely unrelated fields, i.e. acting/banking…

Both look good in swimsuits/ three-piece suits till they open their mouths…

Both believe that giggling idiotically is the way to dodge difficult questions on chat shows/investor presentations…

Both flirt with exciting ideas (Salman Khan/Alternative investments) but settle for the safe option (Junior Bacchan/ Fixed income)…

Both think that the solution to Box office failure/recession is sex…

Should I Write CAT Again?

First there were SC/STs…

Then came the OBCs…

Now it’s time for the women and non-engineers…

Finally it’s the ‘lowest of the low’ species, the kind you wouldn’t touch with a bargepole, the kind your parents had nightmares about, the kind who would be reduced to holy matrimony at 21, because the academic/professional/corporate world shunned them: yes, the NON-ENGINEER WOMEN. Especially if you are an ARTS GRADUATE like me, then, well, you have no hope.

But, but, but NOW, the premier management institutes in India have decided it’s time to finally sit up and “emancipate” this downtrodden, intellectually disadvantaged species by “donating” GRACE MARKS to US. Yes, all the six new IIMs along with IIML and IIMK are now introducing measures to “address the gender inequality in their campuses”. IIM Rohtak, in particular, is awarding, hold your breath, 30 EXTRA MARKS to NON-ENGINEER WOMEN. Flunking all the engineering entrance exams is finally going to pay off!!

I still can’t decide whether to laugh or cry, whether to be offended or liberated, whether to brush it off as yet another idiotic idiosyncrasy or a noble intention to “encourage diversity” in oestrogen-starved Indian B schools.

I have never subscribed to the cut-off based admission process, be it CAT or any other management entrance exam. Not because I failed to crack Quant cut-offs in my two attempts at CAT, not because I can’t calculate 1/17th of a million under a millisecond and definitely not because I think entrance exams give an “unfair advantage to engineers”. Honestly, they don’t. The syllabus is based on your 10th std Math, and if you managed to get through your Boards, you are as good as anybody to write CAT, without the crutch of “grace marks”.

But I sincerely believe that there should be more to a worthy application than a 99.99 percentile in CAT and your entrance exam score should be just ONE of the parameters, even for a shortlist. In that respect, I think SPJain, SCMHRD, TAPMI and MICA are much more evolved in the way they shortlist candidates (I won’t get into the admission process of ISB or B schools abroad because their target audience is different). Now, there will always be counter arguments of lack of transparency, but I would rather risk not knowing why I didn’t make it despite a high score than being reduced to a number.

I am all for diversity on campuses and I fully support some of the recent changes like introducing a written assessment task instead of a GD, taking account of the overall academic record as well as work experience along with CAT scores. But I just don’t agree that awarding grace marks to girls/non-engineers/dusky people/short people is the best way to go about it, because, well, they are so rare.

By that logic, I am an East Indian, non-engineer, short, dusky girl, and therefore I should have automatic admission.

May be it’s alright to have a qualitative aspect to the selection process…

May be cut-offs are not so sacrosanct after all…

May be, just may be, you can still be a decent manager even if you can’t figure out the probability of that damn spider reaching that corner of the room, given the complex web of complex numbers…

Friends Vs. F*** Buddies

So there are friends, and there are f**k buddies.

By friends, I mean all of my FIVE friends (give or take a few): people I have shared rooms and closets with, people I can call at any hour, people who have helped me move and move on, people who have cooked horrible food and forced it down my throat, people who have carried me home when I was drunk and people who have wheeled me to the hospital when I couldn’t walk…well, people who ARE JUST ALWAYS THERE AND WON”T LEAVE ME ALONE…

And then there are people (in this particular case, a girl) with whom I had awesome chemistry (in a completely non-lesbian context), with whom I shared some wonderful (albeit a few) moments in college, talking about the most random stuff. Even though she wasn’t a part of my everyday life, she had all the rights a friend has (including turning up at my room at midnight and planting herself on my bed because she suddenly wanted ‘to talk’ as I yawned away to glory or singing ‘masakali’ till my head was about to explode)…

But that was two years back. We both left college and promptly lost touch, till yesterday, when she suddenly pinged me from nowhere (in her usual ‘invisible’ mode). After our usual sarcastic exchanges, she started with her probing questions, as I unceremoniously dismissed them on grounds that she no longer had any right to my personal space. So her counterargument was, “Like it or not, we are f**k buddies, if you leave out the f**k part. Now come off your high horse, and TALK.”

And there we were, in another of our 30-minute exchanges, back to the old times.

The ‘masakali girl’, who has all the rights, and none of the responsibilities, and yes, we are f**k buddies…

When Leadership Fails to Lead

Yesterday was like THE longest day of my life. Or may be it just seemed so long because it sucked so much. Now I am not one of those frustrated, disgruntled employees who vent about their jobs (and bosses) on online forums which nobody reads. I go a step further, and ABUSE them on online forums which nobody reads.

So here goes:

I hate office parties: They are the single-most pretentious exercise ever devised to ruin Friday nights. Even the free booze and food are so not worth it. I mean, think about it: listening to some firang bigmouth (who has forgotten how it feels to stop and breathe once in a while) and half-a-dozen MBA grads pretending to be interested in ‘land monetization’ and ‘low P/E valuations of Russia’ at 9 p.m. so sucks the blood out of your system. Then when your boss (let’s call him DK Bose henceforth) follows you around and tells you to ‘mingle and network’ instead of sitting in one corner looking at your watch, it makes you want to throw up on his expensive suit.

I hate ‘showcasing our good work’: Now don’t get me wrong: of all possible corporate jobs out there for me, I think my current job is the best. I get to read a lot (even if it’s a whole of financial jargon), I get to write reports and make creative presentations and the best part is I have complete freedom to do what I want. I have full responsibility, accountability and minimal interference as far as my reports are concerned. And in the last six months, I have done some good work even if I say so myself. (I have got client emails to prove it, which I save and back up on gmail for year-end appraisal when I am sure DK Bose will try to screw up my case and tamper with my mailbox). That’s not because I am god’s gift to Company C, but because I slog 10 hours a day (without long breaks) and I really give my best. I am secure about my capabilities and I think my work speaks for itself (and hence we get recurrent client projects) rather than me doing so. So I don’t feel the need to pander to leadership and throw jargon or book airtime ‘with the people who matter’.

I hate jargon: If I ever get a chance to redesign the MBA curriculum, the first thing I would introduce is the Primary English Language course, which teaches you the very function of ANY language is to COMMUNICATE, and not CONFUSE. I mean, imagine this: two newbies just making casual (the guy trying to sound funny) conversation and DK Bose or firangs are not even around to assess your “team skills”:
Guy: "So what do you think I am drinking?"
Girl: (staring at the glass): "Err…. Vodka?"
Guy: "Are you sure? Within what confidence interval is your answer applicable? 90%-95% or 95%-99%?"
Girl: "95%-99%"
Me (who was stuck between the two): "Can’t you guys like be normal or something?"

Sighhh.. I miss Company D. I had REAL friends there, who just drank without talking about confidence intervals and central limit theorem (this came up during a lunch conversation which I am not even going to repeat here).

Why can’t parties be just parties and MBAs be, well, you know, PEOPLE?

The MBA Arranged Marriage Market Analysis

There are guys who fall in love and live happily ever after…
There are guys who fall in love, break up and never get married again…
There are guys who just sleep around without getting into a relationship…
And the rest of them (the vast majority), turn to their parents, who in turn, gleefully turn to the elaborate ‘arranged marriage’ mechanism…

So, if you are a guy from a premier B school in India, and you ONLY want to marry a MBA girl from a good institute and from your community, what are your realistic chances?

Now, I have appeared for a fair number of interviews, and a lot of them have asked me ridiculous ‘logical’ questions like “How many mobile phones are there in Pune’ or “How many tomatoes are sold in a day in Jaipur” or “How many agarbattis are there in Mumbai?” and similar such market sizing analytical questions, most of which I have goofed up.

But here is one analysis that may be valuable to all you single MBA guys out there:

Assumptions:
1.You want to marry a girl from the top 15 B schools in the country.
2.You want to marry someone from your community, i.e. Mallus, Gujjus, Bongs, Marathis, Punjabis, Tams, so on and so forth, who have a fair representation in a B school.
3.You are looking at women from your batch and plus-minus 2 batches. So for instance, if you from 2008 batch, you are open to someone from batches 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Now let us consider this Mr. X from 2007 batch, who is a Mallu. So what is his potential market opportunity?

•Consider an average batch size of 150 students.
•Now let’s be optimistic for Mr. X’s sake, and assume 33% are women. So average number of women in each batch is 50.
•Assume 10% of these women are Mallus. So number of Mallu women in a batch is 5.
•Extending this to 15 colleges, total number of Mallu women for a single year is 15*5=75.
•Further, extending this to ALL the women in the five years (viz. 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010), the total pool of Mallu, MBA women is 75*5= 375.
•But before you smile and think you have plenty of options, here is the spoiler: a majority of these women are married or in various stages of commitment (in a relationship/rokaoed/engaged etc. etc.)
•So let’s now apply weighted average to this total of 375. For someone from 2006 batch, the probability of her being married/committed is 90%. Similarly, for 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, let’s assume the probabilities as 80%, 70%, 60% and 50% respectively.
•Now, that reduces your universe of ELIGIBLE Mallu women to: (75*0.1) + (75*0.2) + (75*0.3) + (75*0.4) + (75*0.5) = 112.
•Out of this 112, some may be settled abroad and our Mr.X is not looking to leave his beloved India. So making an allowance of 10%, the pool reduces to 100.
•But good chances are that a significant chunk of these women are sinfully ugly/boring/unmarriageable/annoying. But, again, let’s be kind to Mr.X and assume that proportion to be a lowly 25%. So that now makes the total 75.
•Also, Mr. X is in Bangalore, and he doesn’t want to disrupt his life by moving jobs/cities/houses/bars. So he wants someone who is also from Bangalore or will move there to be with him. Now, since by now, we all know that Mr.X is not exactly god’s gift to women, we assume that no successful, educated, good-looking, eligible woman will throw her life/job/family/friends for him. So we look for women who are also in Bangalore, the probability of which is not more than 10% (given the placement history of MBAs). So that reduces the pool to 8.
•However, Mr. X is also traditional, and he doesn’t want someone who is earning more than him. So assuming a 50% probability of the women earning higher than him, the number now becomes 4.
•But, 50% of them are taller than Mr. X which is also not acceptable to him. Thus, the pool reduced to 2.
•Unfortunately, one of them is a lesbian.

So our talented, educated successful Mr.X has ONLY ONE women out there for him (and that too after being very generous in our assumptions).

So if you thought, finding a girl is a cakewalk, think again!

P.S. Guys don’t freak out… remember, I suck at math and market sizing analysis!

Purani Jeans

I have been seeing my CKB friends a lot these days, willingly or unwillingly. Of course, you don’t have much of a choice when people from different cities just land up at your place at night. At least for old times’ sake, for all those days you shared a room in college, for all those times you confided in each other and for all those annoying study sessions you shared, you just have to let them in, throw some stale food and some dirty clothes that you never wear and hope they leave soon. But of course they don’t. The cab they are supposed to take is also an accomplice it seems. It just refuses to turn up! Whatever you do, don’t book a Meru in Mumbai if you have to catch a flight…

And it was back to college: the same old songs, the daaru, the cribbing sessions: some things never change, even if the circumstances are different. Nothing like old times and old people to bring back the faith, the trust and the happiness. And sometimes, just sometimes, new people also add to it. And new experiences like exploring quaint old places or local festivals help you discover the hidden charms of Mumbai. Of course, we reduced the artistic aspect of the Kala Ghoda Festival to leaching at the scantily dressed crowd or gathering enough data points to discuss at lunchtime at work and show off our ‘acute appreciation for the finer things in life’: a desperate attempt to impress your boss or a colleague for a date…

Finally, Yeh Saali Zindagi is quite a treat. I am not ashamed to declare that I find Chitrangada Singh very attractive.

And what do you know, may be, just may be, zindaagi aint such a bitch after all…

You Know You Are a Grown Up When...

•You play the host and actually remember to care about things like changing bed sheets/hand towels simply because your friends are coming over (instead of letting them see the usual mess your house is in), cutlery (instead of serving alcohol in cups), and making Maggie at 3 a.m. for everybody even though you are half asleep…

•Your friends are also grown up and they bring sophisticated wine for you…

•You drink that same sophisticated wine instead of the usual cheap rum you did in college…

•Half the people in your group are married and they discuss family planning, career plans and property prices instead of gossiping about who kissed who near the library…

•You no longer sweat out the small stuff like going dutch till the last one rupee…

•You plan outstation weekend trips without worrying what to tell your parents or how to ask them for money for it…

But you also know that you are still a kid when you start calling up your other group members in different cities at 3 a.m. to tell them you miss them only to be asked to FO and NOT call them at 3 a.m.

December 11: Another One Bites the Dust

I hate December 11… it’s that damned date which ensures that my roommates/flatmates give up their single status and get into unholy matrimony. Last year it was my roommate from Symbi who tied the knot and this year it was my flatmate in Mumbai who did the same. While we are given ample notice and enough time to get used to the fact that things are going to change, you never quite believe it until it dawns right in front of you. In this case, I knew the wedding date almost a year in advance, I heard my friend argue/fight/discuss the details over the phone, I saw her shop for unnecessary things she will never use again, I saw her fretting over little things which I never thought mattered, I listened to her patiently as she cribbed, and we were well prepared for the grand event, or so I thought!

And it was a typical Bong wedding with all the familiar rituals that I had grown up on (and forgotten in the last few years) and things were supposed to be great. To some extent they were! Most of the CKB group managed to make it and we were meeting after a long time, it was in Kolkata, the weather was just perfect, the setting too, for a change, my sari was in place (my mom was there to help me get dressed) and unlike the couple of North Indian weddings I have attended last year, Bong weddings are less painful and less demanding (though one of the members who went red in the face carrying the bride for 15 minutes may deny it). But somehow, I can never get used to the ‘shock and awe’ feeling that overcomes me when I see a close friend get married, irrespective of how expected it is. And there is something about weddings that make my friends (the brides) glowingly beautiful- trust me, I have lived with these girls, I have survived their bad hair days and facial disasters, and I have seen them trapped in ghastly clothes (point to be noted: the distressing yellow pyjamas and the ancient blue chappals), but when I saw them dressed in their wedding ensemble, I could hardly believe my eyes.

Irrespective of how much I dislike December 11, it still manages to reinforce my faith in love and that relationships do survive the test of time and everything else. As I survive yet another cold December wedding, as I witness yet another close friend happily tie the knot, and as I come to terms with this new phase in our lives, I try to convince myself that I want it as well. The girl in me is tempted by this grand celebration of a lifetime called the “wedding”, but she is immediately silenced by the woman in me, who wants a “marriage” but is too scared to trust.

How I Survived a Wedding...

I hate weddings, or anything remotely to do with them: reception, sangeet, engagement, roka, and the thousands of other rituals associated with them. But lately that’s all that I have been inflicted with and it is getting on my nerves big time. Each time I open my Facebook homepage, there is some update on somebody getting married/engaged or changes in relationship status or worst of all, photos being put up of some obnoxiously expensive ceremony. As if that’s not enough, there will some 100 people commenting on the same, and another 100 people replying to it, resulting in a long chain of exchanges, all of which, note, are dutifully reported on MY homepage, even though I am remotely interested/bothered about it.

So with this kind of a negative attitude towards the Big Fat Indian Wedding scenario, I traveled all the way to Delhi (Faridabad to be specific) to attend the wedding of my ex room mate. It was a hard fought battle, and both the bride and the groom are close friends of mine, and most our entire CKB gang was going to be present. It was the first big wedding of our Symbi family, so we were all adequately excited, some (namely an alien called Webstar) more than the others! After a two hour struggle with my sari (borrowed from my mum) which left me with no time for make-up or hair (which, by the way looks abnormally flat on the scalp now that I have committed hara-kiri) we were on our way to Faridabad. As it is, I looked ghastly, and the bumpy ride through the Delhi traffic made it worse. So another two hours later, when we were finally there (and handsomely conned by the cabby), I was a picture of disaster! The Delhi cold kind of made it easier, as I wrapped a shawl around me and planted myself on a chair, determined not to move for the rest of the night. The wedding was long and detailed, as Kashmiri weddings are, with most people leaving or dozing off in between. We had no place to go, so we were stuck there, even after the bride, the groom, and the rest of the relatives had left, drinking n cups of coffee, and waiting for daylight, so that we can go back to Delhi. The next day, the reception went off smoothly, though the aftermath did not. While divulging further details will violate privacy norms, let me just conclude that may be free alcohol is not the best idea, especially when you have an early morning flight to catch. However, it did add to my list of experiences, so I am not complaining. This will definitely go down as one of my favourite stories I will bore my grandchildren into hearing repeatedly!

So yes, I DO NOT like weddings, I DO NOT like the obnoxious displays of grandeur that most weddings involve, and I definitely DO NOT like the elaborate rituals. But somehow, when I saw my old roomie walk in dressed in red, looking like a goddess, when I saw the groom look at her, when I saw their eyes light up, it somehow seemed worth it! Every bit of it: the years of struggle, the contemplation, and the grand finale! Finally it was the celebration of being together with someone you love, it was the victory of heart over head, and in the end, everything else faded against this simple yet profound reality. I have seen so many relationships fail the test of time, the test of acceptance, the test of parochial differences, and the test of narrow social norms. This one, though, survived it all.

It was THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WEDDING I have ever attended, and my roomie (the same one I had seen lounging around in obnoxious yellow pyjamas in Room No. 213 for two years) was the most beautiful bride EVER!

Ascend: The Beginning of my Descent!

This week, our company bribed us to attend some training program designed by some bigshot (who wants to get brownie points for his “organizational activities”- mid year review is approaching people) in Hyderabad. Five star accommodation, awesome food, no work for two days: well worth it, even if it means going through some inane exercises, some clichéd jargons, and some hackneyed jokes by the “who’s who” of the company. It was a trade off, but one that we were willing to take up! And then I decided to improvise! I left a couple of days early for Hyderabad, which gave me the whole weekend with my friends: the first ones in the company, whom I met during my summers, and who continue to be an integral part of my life. So yes, giving up the luxuries of Novotel was a tough choice, but all the haggling with autowalas, sleeping on the mattress, washing dishes, and walking 30 minutes in the sun were well worth it, because it gave me the chance to go back to my Summers days, when I would stay up with the same people, discussing the same nonsense, bitching about the same people (this time, we just added more people to the list)!

Now the training program was the typical exercise in corporate jargon, big words, and “best practices” laundry list, interspersed with “simulated team games”. Titled as “Campus to Corporate”, it was supposedly a “revisit” of our marketing and HR classes in MBA (but since I never “visited” them in the first place, I wouldn’t quite call it a “revisit”; however, whatever little jargons I had picked up in between my sleeping sessions, like “customer value”, “change”, “responsiveness” etc etc in college echoed here as well). And of course, how can I forget: it also gave us a chance to “network”, to “interact with the senior people” and to “broaden our horizons”. I had no expectations from the program: for me it was supposed to be a paid holiday, a chance to catch up with friends, free alcohol on “ladies’ night”, and yes, when we were asked to mention our key takeaways in two words, we were tempted to say, “breakfast and lunch”.

But it turned out to be quite an enlightening experience, much to my surprise, as I met someone who could have been the potential love of my life. The only minor glitch is that he is 20 years older than me, married, with a teenaged son. But note, it’s only a “minor” glitch! This was our coach, in Breakout 6, where I was thrusted with a bunch of strangers, and asked to “bond”. I reached late, as I was too busy talking to my friends who were all in different groups, hating this huge conspiracy of the company to keep us away, and therefore forced onto the front bench, where I couldn’t’ possibly sleep. But 15 mins into the session, and I knew that there was no way I can sleep! The guy had this uncanny ability to keep you enthralled: while he said nothing awe inspiringly new, he articulated simple things in a simple manner and the sharp wit made it all the more lively. Before I knew it, I was eating up all his words, listening agog, and actually participating! (People who know me, also know how rarely I open my mouth in a public gathering, and especially in classroom like environments). More than the chocolates he gave me, I appreciated the way he got my name right in the very first attempt! Anyway, before I start sounding like a ‘crush’ed and mildly crazy teenager, I would just shut up…

By the way, I decided experimenting with my hair, and got more than I bargained for, and ended up spending more for something I didn’t want in the first place. So yes, the disease is spreading: from clothes, to books, and now to hair!

Hyderabad rocks, and it also marks the beginning of my descent to complete degeneration…