I am the MBA with no aspirations but only dreams...
I am the Corporate Bitch with no direction but only hopes...
I am the cliche...
I AM Another Brick in the Wall...
So ok, what’s this huge, elephantine problem that is bothering me? I am pregnant, or rather I look like I am! Hyderabad has been one big party for me with all the sinful indulgences- food, food and more food! So at the end of seven weeks, I find myself 4 kilos heavier, two sizes bigger and trust me, it takes all the fun out of shopping. And what am I without shopping? It’s like I have been ripped off my identity, the only thing that defines me! And I have a wedding to attend next month with the Sale season due in two months, so it’s of utmost importance that I lose weight, and I lose it fast!
So please stop smirking and help me: it may not seem to be a big deal to most of you, but it’s important to me! I can’t help being shallow and stupid and insecure! Hmmmphhhh….
Paradise Regained:And it’s not John Milton we are talking about. I have always heard about the famous Hyderabadi biryani and have secretly wondered, what’s the big deal anyways. After all, it’s just rice and chicken with a few artificial flavours thrown in. But all those half-baked ideas where abandoned forever when we pigged out at a certain place called ‘Paradise’: I described it as a ‘temple’ when I took my first spoonful, and by the time I finished, I realized that it was an understatement.
Our Place: No, I am not inviting you, but if you are in Hyderabad, don’t miss out on this open-air restaurant: it’s the prefect ambience to enjoy a blissful romantic dinner with candle-light, gentle breeze, the verdant seating arrangement, and if you are lucky, a few drops of rain…and if possible, don’t repeat my mistake of going with a bunch of rowdy, shameless friends.
Serengeti: If you want to experience the African Safari without going to Africa, this could be your ticket to wilderness of the wild. An innovative concept with great ambience, it’s definitely a place to celebrate all occasions.
Chutneys: If you freak out on South Indian food as much as I do, then you run the risk of finding yourself in the long queue outside the bistro any time after 8 p.m., especially on weekends. But its authenticity is unparalleled and even if the lassi costs more than the autofare, for once I am willing to pay the price (over and over again)
Well, as you can guess, with all this pigging out, I have started looking like a pig too. Right now my weight has hit a personal best, and my shopping woes a personal worst… anyways before I get into my trial room traumas, a final word about Hyderabadi Pearls: I know absolutely nothing about them, but I liked what I saw, and again I splurged like there’s no tomorrow.
May be money can’t buy happiness, but it surely makes the Pursuit of Happyness more fulfilling…
Friday Night Fever: and fever it was, literally! I have no reservations against people who make a fool of themselves AND pay obscene amounts of money for all the mindless obscenity which crosses all boundaries of professional comfort, as long as I am not a part of it. But given a choice, I don’t like to go to conventionally “happening” places, and yeah, I am not ashamed to admit that I have hardly been to any of the “cool” places in spite of being in Mumbai for over four years! I would rather stay at home, curl up with a book or chat with close friends and munch on junk food: all for free…
Tryst with the Reel: Finally on Saturday we braved the scorching sun and set off for the much hyped Ramoji Film City. Some 28 of us, basically whoever is interning in Hyderabad, got together for the expedition and it was quite an experience of sorts. Coordinating nearly thirty people was no mean feat and wherever we went, we created chaos! The artificial sets which brought the Chor Bazaar of Mumbai, the Taj Mahal, the Mughal Gardens, the Swiss Bank, the London roads right next to one another, which made it possible for the same building to be the University from one side and the High Court from the other, made us go around the world in thirty minutes! But even after the tour guide’s dramatic narrative sequined with dollops of humour, it still remained the poor man’s ticket to the vicarious pleasures of Bollywood dreams. The shows, the rides, the games and the food stalls were a perfect recipe for keeping the children occupied (and in some cases, even 20 something, excitable people who suddenly discovered the child in themselves). I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, but at the same time, I wouldn’t like to revisit it. It’s a great business idea, and I would be content to admire it on the movies! Next time I see Shahrukh Khan romancing a heroine young enough to be his daughter in a beautiful locale, I will take it with a pinch of salt.
One Wild Night: So you have four girls, all newly rich, you have a mega sale with all brands at dirt cheap prices, and then you have Ice Station: and in no time, you are back to square one, i.e. poor college girl bargaining with the autowala! I was determined that I wouldn’t shop anymore till I lose weight, but I am ashamed at my lack of self restraint and every time I stare at the bill, I am overcome with guilt. But there was no such guilt when we devoured the Triple Sundae ice cream AND the Dieter’s Revenge (yess, they have such kick-ass flavours) along with pizza and French fries at Ice Station. It was so awesome (one of my friends described it as “orgasmic”) that whoever stopped to breathe was losing out on her share… and to end a perfect evening on a memorable note, we decided to get drunk! So the cheapest available vodka was smuggled inside the room, and, well, it was a night of getting high, throwing up, crying and confessions. Sadly, I was more of a sober observer rather than an active participant (well somebody has got to listen and clean up) even though I was drinking after nearly a year… at times experience can be a real dampener!
Money for nothing: Well, this weekend I got to live the Dire Straits dream of “Money for nothing, chicks for free”- at least the first part of it! Yeah, I got my first month’s stipend and all for nothing. As in I do go to office and I do “work” for nine hours, five days a week, but well, it just doesn’t seem like work… I get to read and write and learn: things I usually do for free!
Bickering with autowalas:That’s one thing I am NOT going to miss about Hyderabad- the autowalas. Since I stay in the outskirts, every weekend when I plan to go to the city, I have to struggle through crowded buses (which are few and far between) or bargain with the autowalas. So the first benefactor of my stipend was this one guy who literally took me for a ride yesterday and charged me 120 bucks for a twenty minute journey! Well, I knew he had tampered with the meter, but hindsight is not very helpful…
No free lunches: So we met up at Parinita’s place- some 8 of us from college who are currently interning in Hyderabad. Her mom cooked an awesome lunch and especially the aloo was simply out of this world. But then, somebody had the bright idea that since I am noveau rich, I should pay for dessert and all of them made sure they had the most expensive ice-cream! So what I thought will be a free lunch, ended up being an expensive trip, thanks to swindling autowala and fleecing “friends”…
Dressing Down: One thing I love about Deloitte is the informal and casual attitude- no Sirs, no red-tapism, no fawning to seniors and yeah, no dress code. As in you have to wear formals four days a week, but unlike in college, nobody is there to morally police you, and your exam papers don’t get scrapped for wearing sleeveless. So I have carried my “daring” collection which hasn’t seen the light of day in the last one year. And Friday being casual day, I usually have a ball as I finally get to wear my skirts and fancy tops. But this week, HR lady jokes: “Hmm SCMHRD right? You guys have all sorts of restrictions… aish kar lo in do mahine mein”. Now was that a “friendly’ warning or what?
Choodi Bazaar: So what happens when one guy is stranded with five girls in a place like Choodi Bazaar next to Char Minar? Well, the guy has enough time to think about all his past sins and wonder why the hell he is paying for it all at once… but being one of the girls, I had a blast as I lost myself in all the cheap thrills and glitters and ended up buying some four dozen bangles, all for a paltry 100 bucks! And yeah, I flaunt my new found obsession with gaudiness even in office and take a perverse pleasure in inviting disgusted looks from all the classy, well-pearled ladies from Banjara Hills…
So, it’s been one full year, and I am still at it: quite a surprise given my high boredom quotient… yeah, it’s been one whole year since I started blogging, and the best part is I just love it more by each day…
I was always in a habit of writing a diary, but now that I am adapting to modern technology, this has been quite an addictive hobby, and not just a passing fad that is usually the case… the major difference between a diary and the blog, is that in my diary, I can write anything and everything, whereas in this case, I become slightly constrained, a little more responsible. On the other hand, the feedback and the encouragement I have received in the past year, has simply been overwhelming. I am deeply grateful to everybody who has been patient enough to read through pages and pages of insane ramblings, post comments and generally been supportive.
A special thank you to Shankar Iyer and Raghav (whose blogs were the main inspiration), Aashay (the harsh critic who promoted my blog more than I did), Shivangi (my room mate who takes a pleasure in finding errors in everything I write), Abhishek (whom I don’t know, but who patiently reads through and adds his thoughts although he doesn’t belong to the SCMHRD circus), Ashwin and Arijit (for listening to my cribbings and then again reading them) and yeah, Usha Aunty- the only sensible, mature reader that I know, so your comments mean a lot!!
Okk, am done with my Oscar-like speech… so go lose yourselves!
Now that I am back in an office environment, I am slowly getting used to my previous ways of navigating through restricted sites, of surfing the net secretly when I should be working, of pressing “alt+tab” as soon as I hear somebody coming, of writing a blog when I should be writing an “analyst report”…
But armed with two years of experience, I am a pro at it. However, it reminds me of the time when I was new to all these sneaky ways, and believed that as long as I deliver my deliverables well (which have never been compromised on) it’s nobody’s business what I do as my “extra-curricular activities”. But, clearly hypocrisy is a big part of corporate life which I learnt pretty quickly…
Situation 1: This happened within the first week of joining. I was still not on the job, and was asked to read up and generally get a hang of things. Being a fast reader, I finished it before day end, and was bored stiff. So I decided to take a break and started playing freecell in broad daylight. Before long, the secretary of the VP calls me up and sternly says, “Sir has asked you not to play games…” so that’s that!
Situation 2: I was still in my first month, when one afternoon, all the PCs conked off and there was no work to be done. So I happily crossed my legs and started reading the very entertaining Mumbai Mirror. As luck would have it, the Regional Head walks in and finds me in that “compromising position”. He calls me back to his cabin and what follows is a flurry of sarcastic comments alternated with “you will be fired” threats which really got me all freaked out (I was too ignorant to know about the stringent labour laws in India at that tender age)…
Situation 3: During the last six months at work, I took more unauthorized print-outs than all employees put together, thanks to the number of B-school forms I filled up. So on my last day, as I was doing the good-bye ritual, a senior guy wished me luck in Symbiosis. I stared at him, wondering how he knew that I was going there. He twinkled and replied back, “Unfortunately I need a lot of prints too!”
But in spite of all my misadventures, people still loved me there (being young and cute helps), and more importantly they loved my work. Irrespective of my partiality towards unpretentious display of my “hobbies”, I did more than my fair share of work (and did it fast) and even to this day, my ex-boss (who is no longer in IDBI) mourns that he misses the pleasure catching me red-handed and delegating more responsibility as a punishment!
Okkk, statutory warning: this post is not about Deloitte, not about Hyderabad, not about SCMHRD and not even about the self-deprecatory humour that is the hallmark of this blog (which explains the hits)…
This is a totally and completely selfish post, it’s about ME and it’s going to be boring and rambling and LONG!!! So people looking for cheap thrills, take a hike!! And err, on that sulky note, “Happy New Year”!
So today is the Bengali new year! My parents woke me up to wish me… I mumbled something in my sleep and hung up. Then my uncle called (the same uncle whom I worshipped even till a few years back) and complained that I have completely drifted apart and haven’t even bothered to give him my new number. I again mumbled some feeble excuse and hung up. My cousin sister (we were inseparable when we were growing up) had a baby a couple of days back and I still haven’t spoken to her… so you see a pattern here- I am slowly getting lost in my own world (and it isn’t even a very happening place) and in the process losing touch with my roots.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this… lemme go back a couple of decades. I was born in a strictly middle class Bengali family and my parents really had to struggle to make it through the month after paying the rent and buying baby food for me. Yet, I had the best childhood that one could possibly gift their children. Even without siblings and in spite of working parents, I never had the chance to feel lonely. I grew up in a small two bedroom rented apartment in a modest locality, my evenings were spent running around on the streets with children of “disadvantaged background” (most of them didn’t make it to college) and the concept of phones (mobile or landline), computers, video games and even television simply didn’t exist. But I had a family: loving sensible parents, a maid who scolded me but loved me like her own sister, doting grandparents and an extended family of n number of cousins, aunts and uncles who got together for every little festival! I did reasonably well in school (with the constant remark of “can do better” but I never did better mostly because I spent my time playing kabaddi and pittu and marbles). I religiously enrolled for dance classes, drawing lessons, swimming and thereby fulfilling the middle class dream of “jack of all trades, master of none”… but I did manage to complete two diplomas in Bharatnatyam in nine long years of rigorous training though I hated giving up playing cricket twice a week for it. And like every middle class Bengali family we went for vacations twice a year…
Then came my dad’s rather meteoric rise up the corporate ladder and with that a bigger house, a new car, foreign holidays instead of conducted tours in India, long hours in the office and less time as a family. I was a typical adolescent for whom friends became more important and parents, an embarrassment (come on, we have all been through that phase… don’t judge me, if you are still reading that is…) Along with teenage, also came the baggage: career choices, peer pressure, obsession with weight and er, boys! I automatically took up Science in my 12th standard because, well, because that’s what the bright kids do right, and my Class X board exams marks told me that I am a science wizkid, the next Marie Curie in the making! So yeah, the next two years were spent in misery as I tried to find my way through organic chemistry, respiratory systems of toads and laws of reflection and in the process got even more lost. So I royally gave up and instead found refuge in English literature- the only subject that still made some sense. I read whatever I could get my hands on and found refuge in my diary as I secretly shifted my role model from Marie Curie to Ann Frank! Also, the fact that the cute boy-next-door refused to reciprocate my teenaged infatuations along with my miserable performance in school gave plenty of fodder to a budding poet. I still don’t know how I managed to secure a first class in my boards but thankfully with all the cutoffs being over 90%, I made sure that I wasn’t allowed to enter the hallowed portals of engineering colleges. That would have been a disaster! So I did what any self-respecting person with below average marks will do: studied Arts- the godforsaken stream that no parent (especially if they are as educated as mine are) will let their children study… (Continued)
Then began a new phase: a new life in a new city- a city that made me who I am (not a very good person, but definitely, an independent, strong one). I took up Economics in a decent college and for the first time, discovered a world away from my family, away from the safe havens of a comfortable life in the laid back city of Kolkata. After two years of being relegated at the lower half of the class it felt good to be the topper, it felt good to be not lost in class and it felt good when people came to me for help with studies. Unlike seasoned toppers, I knew how it felt to fail: it taught me to be patient, to be humble and to be empathetic. Also, I needed friends in a new city, so it kind of worked out well for me… while Economics was no pain, being in Mumbai alone certainly was as I struggled my way through crowded local trains, the pigeonholes in the name of rooms (in the hostel), the choice between the terrible mess food and the expensive eateries. Did I miss my family- may be, but by then, I was learning to be tough. And when I did miss them, I went shopping! Yeah, I discovered the beauty of retail therapy… I also discovered what I thought was my dream career, i.e. MBA. So, for the first time I really put my heart and soul into studies- CAT, the mother of all competitive exams. So it was a heartbreak when I failed to convert a couple of calls I managed, and even my graduation results weren’t a consolation for what I missed out. Still, I didn’t give up on the MBA dream, and took up a job to strengthen my application. While working, I redefined the concept of humility, I learnt to respect all professions and to deal with situations: humiliating ones, pressurizing ones, sensitive ones…and then I discovered how it felt to fall in love, or the idea of being in love, that beyond all that jazz, the mush, the fancy dates it was still as annoying as being with your family, that no matter how old you are, you are still a kid, that the grass is always greener on the other side! Only that it isn’t… at least the MBA grass definitely isn’t!
The whole point of all this is that I have changed, for better or for worse! May be I have learnt to let go easily, may be I don’t get hurt so easily, but then again, people no longer make that much of a difference to me… that’s the whole point! And it’s not a good thing…
Today was my first day on the floor, i.e. I have finally completed my training (unlearnt everything taught in college and started afresh) and have been assigned to a “live project”. The best thing about being in a consulting firm is that every Tom, Dick and Harry has the respectable designation of an “analyst” which sounds awesome even though the job mainly entails a refined version of “cut, copy, paste”. But hey, I am not complaining: Deloitte has been really kind to me- be it facilities, treatment, knowledge sharing, time or money!
Right now I have a workstation at a far corner, sparsely populated, and the kind of work which requires very little interaction with people (which suits me wonderfully) and the nature of work is the closest to what I would love to do for a living: read a lot, assimilate the information overload and analyse it in a simple, precise form. May be it will become boring and repetitive in the course of time, but as of now I feel, well “peaceful and contented”.
But I suddenly miss IDBI- the familiar people, the familiar routine, the easy life and my recurrent banters with my boss! Most of all, I miss Pravin bhaiyya and Anil Kapoor, the two office boys who took very good care of me. I am sure they are not aware of the existence of blogs (especially mine) but yeah, I do miss you guys, the awesome coffee you made and the way you used to scold me if I missed my lunch!
