The Time Machine...

Everyone’s retracing the string of memories to the point where it all started. BIT Mesra. The name that spells magic, flooding my heart with images so grand and nostalgia so intense, I wish I could turn back time. And even so, I decided (notwithstanding sincere efforts of some of the more loyal alumni of the institute to coax me) not to attend Convocation 2009. Now, with my Google Talk list proudly announcing the likes of “Back to BIT” and “Khalsa Calling”, I ask myself why. And I swear on everything I hold dear to me, I have no idea! Yeah, my gang is not dropping in at the good old canteen to say hello. The names on my not-so-miniscule list of crushes have no intention of showing up either. And the recession halfway across the globe painfully shows in my salary account. But I had made my decision at the back of my mind, long long back, so long back that I fear I’d offend someone if I bluntly blurt it out here. Five members of the infamous G9 will make their presence felt nevertheless, and I wish them all the very best of counterstrike, Kingfisher and chicken afghani.

My heart swells up with pride in belonging to an institute which is a household name in at least two states of our country – Jharkhand and Bihar. My eyes moisten to recollect the whiff of autumn on those roads laden with a million trees, peeing under which was the purest bliss of life. My ears yearn to feel the uninhibited excitement of “abey server chalu hai!” … the sincere simplicity of “sutta pila na”… the unnoticed rhyming of “saala bho****wala”.

But no, I’m not going there… not again… never again.

Leia Mais…

Hell Down Under? Really??

It took scores of screening videos scattered about on my hostel LAN, and a hard-earned television bought when I was nearly penniless, to get me hooked to MTV Roadies. I am only one among millions who take to watching this show so casually, and then end up religiously watching its repeats, repeatedly!! The screening rounds were an absolute treat – the khool dudes andhawt gals portraying what they imagined could be a probable Roadie, while the bad bald twins so mercilessly peeled off every layer of pretence to expose what they really were. Imagine portraying yourself as someone else, on national television, while your friends back home watch you do the faking act. And then, all of a sudden, your true self lies obscenely exposed, and your friends laugh their asses off at you. It’s worse than being naked on TV!! And voyeurs of my kind absolutely love it! Next time I accompany mom to her favorite temple, I’ll sincerely pray for some known faces to show up in a Roadies interview sometime soon.

At the end of the interviews, while a couple of smart people did make the scene, most scraped through with little promise. And what started off as a search for entertainers for idle devils, the bald twins only had a bunch of idle devils in their hands. Not that they deserved any better! VJ Ranvijay (who incidentally, is a Roadie himself) kept chanting the mantra of ‘Hell Down Under’ while our Roadies travelled all over India collecting cow dung and imitating folk dances. And as these so-called tasks broke every little promise the interview rounds had made, one could only see a crotch-hitting championship and an assortment of verbal obscenities (which our dear country’s lingual diversity makes possible) as a desperate attempt to seek attention.

Well, some of them did make it to Australia, and survived a face-saving two minutes in a ring with firangi wrestlers. But what remains to be seen is whether Indian television can successfully live up to the hype it’s creating over reality shows of this genre. Or will the voyeurs of the nation go back to watching Fear Factor on AXN instead.

Leia Mais…

SPIRITually Speaking...

It was nothing close to what guys want their first time to be like, and every bit of what the first time invariably turns out to be. No, no, not that first time! It was on an unassuming summer evening that I gulped down my first mug of Kingfisher Strong. The taste was far from pleasant. The smell didn’t bother me much, but I did freak out at the thought of it bothering people back home. So much so, that apart from double-brushing my teeth, I took extra effort to make sure it didn’t linger in the washroom after I was done peeing!

Three sober years later, I found myself sipping White Mischief at one of the seediest places around, subconsciously spoiling the ‘first times’ of two of my best buddies. Little did I know back then, that this place was in reality, the most amazing haven for all the blessed drinkers, smokers and dopers of BIT Mesra. Khalsa Dhaba… where, in celebration of the end of a hard week’s mid-sems , or in mourning of a beautiful relationship gone sour, beer flowed like water and entire cigarette packets vanished in minutes… where the food was far better than the Novotels and the Marriotts put together… where bathroom singers and the worst of dancers united to create some of the most wonderful moments of my life.

The charm of Bacardi white rum lasted a while, the way it sends a momentary tingle of warmth down the chest with every sip. So did the sheer smoothness of McDowells Signature whiskey. The raw heat of Old Monk red rum proved life-saving in sub-zero Shimla. And vodka, together with some good music, was always a hot favorite. But the way beer slowly poisons the brain, progressively beautifying every thought and every bit of conversation, no wonder its magic has clung on to never let go.

And now, the first time, however significant it might have appeared in anticipation, only remains a vague memory and what really, really matters is how special it’s going to be this time, like most of my (literally) intoxicating Friday nights.

Leia Mais…

Plug n Play!!

With little to do and a lot to anticipate for two weeks at a stretch, it was not an unwelcome change starting off with the new hire training. We began playing around with Visual Basic for Applications, dwelt on SAS (Statistical Analysis Systems came as a formidable expansion for an innocent looking three letter acronym), pondered inquisitively upon Accounting jargon, learnt a few neat tricks in Audit Command Language while JEDAR turned out to be too hot to handle.

And that’s where we stand now, till the point I am summing up what has been one of the most enjoyable learning experiences of my life. Moody old professors and their Flip Flops and Schmidt Triggers have given way to good-humored twenty-somethings talking of Assets, Liabilities and Balance Sheets. The technicalities apart, the cab-rides to the E Block at Gachibowli for the initial two weeks of training sessions, with the music systems blaring out incomprehensible cacophony in the morning, and us weaving melodious notes together in the evenings, brought me one step closer to the college days that still haunt me with recurring nostalgia.

A two-day break from unscrupulous orkutting was the Ascend Campus-to-Corporate programme at Novotel. While the workshop received a mixed response, the grand Cocktail Dinner was an instant hit with the freshers. Loads of beer, music, karaoke and some crazy hours on the dance floor… our very first taste of the grand parties Deloitte so lavishly throws now and then.

Meanwhile, our first salary has given us a million more reasons to smile. Everyone’s having a ball, shopping and partying like never before. And it sure feels good to be part of this insanity!

Leia Mais…

The Green Dot

We landed at the beautiful (and windy) Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad, took a 700-bucks cab :( and arrived at the nice and cosy Deloitte guest house at Hitech City. Perfect location, nice food, and wifi connectivity (more specifically, Google Earth!) did us some real good for the first two days; gettin used to the new place was as smooth as could be. So out we went, the Three Musketeers on an unprecedented house hunt, renting an enviable 2BHK close by, though we had to cough up a grand or two more for the place. For, at the end of a day's work, the setting here is just perfect for a relaxing hangout with friends, Pizza Hut, Baskin n Robbins, Dominos, and lots of other eateries just across the street.


The first Deloitte experience was at this hotel called Novotel, one of the grand locations in Hitech City, which was host to our New Hire Orientation programme for two days. A number of inspiring orators took the stage one by one while the audience watched on in awe-stuck admiration. The young hires too (and here, I mean the guys) looked really smart in formals, while we BITians took immediate notice of the substantial number of cute-looking girls around, something we weren't really used to at the institute. By the end of the orientation programme, we'd signed on some 80 pages of documents, including the offer letter and the application forms for bank accounts; hogged like hell and as we Deloitte people put it, 'networked' amongst most of the new hires. The next day we hit the floor, all decked up and enthusiastic beyond the usual implication of the word. How friendly and informal all the people were is something I'll not try to desribe here. But it suffices to say, I fell in love with D Block 2nd floor, almost instinctively. The culture here is, one addresses people by their first names, be it a colleague or the CEO. The buddies we were assigned introduced us to most people in our service line. Darshan deserves special mention here, coz despite being assigned buddy to only two of us, he had almost all the new hires crowding around him in no time. In a few minutes, I felt totally at home. Once our laptops and cubes were assigned, we went around exploring the aesthetic interiors of the building.

The inside seemed as terrific as the outside promised. My personal favourite?? The breakout area where everyone loves to be for a quick capuccino or latte, and the cafeteria that lures relentlessly till you finally give in to the seduction. Adding to the attraction are catchy names like the Den and Deep Purple for the conference and training rooms. And to top it all, just stand anywhere inside the Deloitte campus for a couple of minutes and you see a dozen pretty faces pass by!! A series of lectures by people in our service area, plus loads of diet coke and potato wafers kept us busy the second day. We lunched at Masti, with some of the senior management people in our service area. The next day was a Friday, when everyone arrived in casuals reinforcing the impression of a shopping mall that the Deloitte office invariably gives us. A short session on business mailing etiquettes later, we walked out brandishing our new i-cards, hypnotised in one week flat by the place where the best choose to be...

Leia Mais…

Airy Tales

I look at my boarding pass and subconsciously sympathise with those who might take hours or even days longer to be back home. The glitzy interiors of the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Airport and the all too familiar smell of Café Day Express make me dizzy. My luggage taken care of and my iPod blinking red, I find myself a cosy nook and wait for the security check. Checking my watch now and then, with rapidly thinning patience, I indulge myself in some short-lived reverie of what has been and what might be. Browse through some cruelly overpriced snacks and reading material. Pay a worthy visit to the clean washroom, a very very rare find in our country. Grab a drink and go back to find my cosy nook taken. Finding myself another seat, I discover I’m running short of ideas to spend the remaining half hour. So I finally give in to the most generic public pastime of the Republic of India… people-gazing. The endless stream of humanity flowing in and out of the huge waiting lounge, makes it look pitiably ordinary and cramped up. An oversized couple struggles with their equally oversized baggage at the check-in counter. A toddler digs at his nostrils with earnest enthusiasm. Casually readjusting his hairdo, a ‘cool dude’ elbows his way through the crowd. An attractive twenty-something pretends to be oblivious to the superlative degree of attention she’s receiving.

An uneventful security check and fifteen more minutes of boredom later, I board IC-205 for probably the last time. Peace-deprived for the past couple of hours, I fall asleep soon after. What follows deboarding is another annoying wait for the luggage to arrive before I finally head home, cursing the painful five-hour timekilling for a one-hour flight. My boarding pass mocks me as I wish I were on one of those trains rushing through plain, hill and valley instead, taking hours or even days longer to be back home.

Leia Mais…

All Play n No Work....

“Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.”

- Robert H. Schuller

Everyone dreams big. But there’s so much disparity in the level of effort people put in to achieve them. I asked one of my acquaintances sometime back, why some people tend to be more hard-working than others. The answer was simple and profound at the same time. Hardships teach us lessons in responsibility. And responsibility is what fuels hard-work. I am still trying to figure out the implications of this fact, and whether I’d always be my blasé self until I encounter hardships.

Notwithstanding the gravity of the discussion, I was reminded at that point, of an amusing classification of students in the college:

1. lame-ass: hardworking underachiever
2. mama’s boy: dedicated note-maker
3. bond: laid back and smart
4. true BITian: play hard; party harder.

During my own bitter-sweet four years of electronics engineering, I’ve met all four kinds and have known them closely, befriended them, admired them, envied them, detested them for their specific idiosyncrasies. People always grumble about unfulfilled dreams…. the ever-seductive IIT, the mysterious CGPA, the treacherous CAT… and all the while, the great virtue of hard-work comes so naturally to a privileged few and remains so elusive for the unfortunate many.

Leia Mais…