Karthik calling Karthik

I just finished watching the movie :).I watched the movie even after hearing almost from everyone that it was not worth to watch.Still,I watched it.Its because I had heard it's based on schizophrenia,a mental disorder.I find it interesting because I like studying different personalities and analysing them.And moreover,what everyone dislikes,I tend to like that a lot.I watch a movie and have an opinion of myself on it.And I liked KCK.I dont care much what others say and like to explore things myself.People would say the story is just rubbish but they actually fail to see through the story.The phone call was just a medium of portrayal here but this disorder might actually happen with some of us we never know.Its rare but not impossible.I liked the first part of the movie much more than the latter.Specifically,the first lesson to learn to 'Say No' .Sometimes its absolutely necessary.Even I have this weakness of not being able to say 'No' to people which is why most of the times I suffer.The first half teaches a lot about self confidence,self esteem, independence and simply being yourself.Life is an inverse function.You can live it forwards but can only understand it backwards.

Psychology always fascinates me right from childhood.Each one is unique and our minds are different in ways of thinking .Some people are biased by their environment and some by stereotypes and tend to project that in their mind.In B.Tech 1st Year,we were taught a subject Industrial Psychology which talked about various aspects of mind,personality,intelligence.I used to love studying it.Moreover,my mother teaches Psychology so I had a natural instinct towards that subject.Our brain is too powerful and can imagine anything.Everything is stored in the subconscious mind.Mood swings is quite a common phenomenon.I have come across two persons at home too whose personality I keep trying to understand till date and keep reasoning out their behaviours.Again,telepathy and coincidences - why do they ever happen and how does that happen are all inter-related.I introspect a lot :) .I like analysing personalities a lot as to why one did something or why one did not do something. Well,till date I havent read any book on Psychology though my mom keeps telling me to go through some of the books in her rack but I was lazy to bother.After watching this movie,I am again reminded that I should start reading some such stuff or some research papers on personality disorders and also telepathy because it happens with me a lot:P In the later years of my life,I wish to be a free lance psychiatrist or counsellor.

Delhi Again ..

I will be travelling to Delhi again tomorrow.Its going to be hectic as I will be returning to Pune in the evening.I will have to pay the fees of FMS as the deadline is on 16th April and IIM results are not yet out.I was so happy I will be meeting one of my best friends but she had to go for her project work to Ambala.As it was a week day,no friends would be free to attend to.I have planned to do my work at FMS and then go to airport straight after having lunch.I have planned to finish a novel I am reading these days- iCon(The Biography of Steve Jobs) by Jeffrey Young and William Simon.I am also excited about my only sister's wedding coming up :) ..Going to sleep now.

IIM Calcutta PGDM Interview

IIM Calcutta :) I wish I had converted IIMC .But I believe whatever happens,it happens for our good.
IIMC was my first MBA GD/PI.It was scheduled on 22nd March,2010 (World Water Day) at 2:00 pm in Mumbai.
I reached the centre around 1:00 pm and as I entered the waiting room for IIMC, I started feeling jittery :)
Soon,we were called for verification of documents and then taken for Group Discussion.It was a group of 11(9 M +2 F).
GD Topic: Every problem has the seeds of solution in itself.
(Quite generic topic,discussion tended to be a fish market,points on terrorism,naxalism,finance,cloud computing,women's bill,education cropped up..at last each one was asked to summarise).
Time: 13 minutes
Personal Interview: I was second in the roll to be called in.
Didnt have to wait for much time (Thats the best part).
Panelists:Three Profs(1 Lady)
Q.Have you submitted your payslips?
A.Yes
Q.Relax . What did the guy who went first tell you about us?
A.Just that he was asked about me and education stuff.
Q.How many students have scored above you?
A.4.36 percent ..
Q.Say 2 lakh students have appeared for CAT ,then?
A.4.36/100 * 200000
Q.Tell us something which is not there in the form.
A.Told
Q.What do your enemies think about you?
A.Told
Q.You are good at drawing and you like to read novels,why didnt you go for Arts Stream?
A.I am good at artistic subjects as well as technical side too .I have won in many olympiads and member of technical clubs in my Institute.
Q.What are your career goals?
A.Told
Q.Dont you think you should have scored much higher in CAT when we compare your excellent academic scores?
A.Yes Mam,I expected to score above 99 ptile but I am happy that I have got so many calls .I had given my best.Rest I wasnt able to evaluate myself where I went wrong because I didnt have the question paper because of online CAT system.
(Prof): Yeah,you raised a good point there.
Q.What is it in teaching that excites you?
A.Innovation,out-of-the-box thinking,can think beyond the books..blah blah
Q.From where all do you have calls?
A.Told
(Prof) You are a good student,a good daughter but you talk a lot.Think more and then speak ,that will create a great change.You will do good wherever you go.
A.Thanks Sir.
Results out on 10th April,2010 : Rejected :(
I forgot to mention that I was allotted mentor from IIMC after my interview got over :)
Anyways,it was just the start of the chain of interviews of the hectic month.

this too shall pass.....

I read this article on the eve of women's day and wished i had read it quite earlier :).

An Article on Times Life,7th March,2010 by Rajashree Birla

AS a teenager, I recall a tale that has had a telling impact on me all through these years. It has a philosophical resonance that is akin to the Geeta, which is the scripture I lay great store by.
Once upon a time there lived this Jewish king named Solomon. In a grumpy mood, he thought of teaching Benamiah Ben Yehoyada, his minister, a lesson. So he assigned to him a seemingly impossible task. He ordered Benamiah to find him a magic ring with extraordinary features. And that was — if you were happy and wore the ring, you would feel unhappy. And vice-versa. If you were joyous and wore it, you would feel absolutely sad!
Solomon gave him a six-month timeline for the search. Deep down in their hearts, both Solomon and Benamiah knew that such a ring did not exist in this universe. Benamiah prayed hard for a miracle. A little before the deadline was over, and having walked all over for such a ring, he decided to go to one of the poorest places in Jerusalem.
There he saw an old merchant who was spreading out his goods on a carpet. Benamiah was quite intrigued. He thought, “Let me take a chance with him.” Therefore, he asked the merchant whether he had a magic ring that could make a happy person forget his happiness and a sad person forget his sorrow. The merchant smiled. He took a gold ring from his wares and etched four words on it. Benamiah took the gold ring. When he read the inscription he was extremely happy. He felt that his mission was accomplished. He went back to Solomon. Solomon and all his ministers began making a mockery of Benamiah, teasing him as he would have returned empty-handed. Benamiah smiled and offered the gold ring to His Majesty. As soon as Solomon read what was written, he stopped being a tease. The words were “this too shall pass”. Suddenly, Solomon felt that everything in life was ephemeral, and nothing lasts forever.
These four words - ‘this too shall pass’ — have always given me tremendous strength, resilience and a lot of hope. Subsequently, I learnt that the phrase gained global fame when Abraham Lincoln, the former US President, used it in one of his speeches.
A little aside, I believe that if you view life through the lens of a positive prism, you will only be greeted with positivity. I have found that reading books like Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff… & It’s All Small Stuff by Richard Carlson, Joy 24 x 7 by the spiritual Master Sadhguru, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, also help enormously in stoking positive thoughts, which enable us to go with the flow.
(Rajashree Birla is the chairperson of the Aditya Birla Centre for Community Initiatives and Rural Development)

Go Kiss the World

This speech was delivered to the Class of 2006 at the IIM, Bangalore on defining success by Subroto Bagchi CEO MindTree.I really admire this speech of his.

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was, and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep – so the family moved from place to place and without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father.

My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system, which makes me what I am today and largely, defines what success means to me today.

As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government- he reiterated to us that it was not ”his jeep” but the government’s jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep – we could sit in it only when it was stationary.

That was our early childhood lesson in governance – a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father’s office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix ‘dada’ whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed – I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, ‘Raju Uncle’ – very different from many of their friends who refer to their family driver, as ‘my driver’. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe.

To me, the lesson was significant – you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother’s chulha – an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was neither gas, nor electrical stoves.The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman’s ‘muffosil’ edition – delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson.

He used to say, “You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it”. That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios – we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios – alluding to his five sons.

We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply,” We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses”. His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant.

Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father’s transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, “I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited”.

That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper – end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness. Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term “Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan” and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University’s water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination.

Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

Over the next few years, my mother’s eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, “Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair”. I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes. That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, “No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed”. Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes.

To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life’s own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life’s calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places – I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world.

In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him – he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, “Why have you not gone home yet?” Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self.

There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what the limit of inclusion is you can create.

My father died the next day. He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion.

Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts – the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the memetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant’s world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions.

In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking.

Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said,

“Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world.” Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and God’s speed. Go! kiss the world.

FMS 2010 Interview Experience

FMS holds a special significance for me as it was my first MBA GD/PI call as well as the first Convert :)
I had got calls for both the progs MBA(FT) and MBA(MS) and my interview was scheduled on 28th March.
Venue:Delhi
MBA(FT) was in the 9:30 am slot and MS in the 1:30 pm slot.I was allotted the Board-III panel and my serial no in the group of 11 was one. :)
The GD Topic : Unlimited religious freedom and secularism do not go together.(13 mins as there were 11 people).
The GD was a fish market but still ok ,I contributed some points.
After that I was called in first .Had to rush in with my file asap.
Panel: Dean and two Lady Profs alongwith a guy(for psychoanalysis i guess)
As you enter,you are given the extempore topic preferably related to your name .
For me,it was 'Raaga' but I told I am not into the technical side of music so the topic was changed to Sound.Felt I didnt get much time to speak.I had lot more to speak on sound
*A sound mind in a sound body is essential
*The Sound of Music (Movie)
*Various audio frequency ranges
*Sound Instruments,Devices,Missiles
*Sony derives its name from the Latin word for sound,Onkyo derives its name from the Japanese word for sound
Time to speak: Roughly 1 min ..Spoke about different kinds of sound..how sound becomes noise..
Stopped by the Dean.

Q: When does sound become noise in terms of physics?
A.Told
Q.Audio Frequency Range human beings can hear?
A.20 hz to 20 Khz
Q.Who can hear sounds below 20 Hz?
A.didnt remember told some insects or birds .(bats i guess)
Q.What is the sound above 20 khz called?
A.Ultrasonic
Q.What is Concorde?
A.Dont know(turbo jet powered supersonic passenger vehicle)
Q.Where are sound devices used in ECE?
A.Told about SONAR and its principle.
Q.What is the name of the project by Motorola which had failed and resulted in loss of billions of dollars?
A.Dont know(Big Pond ..music content provider)
Q.Mam interrupted ..Name 5 universities according to priority where you would like to go for an MBa abroad?
A.Harvard,Wharton,Kellog,TepperSchool of Busines,INSEAD
Q.Name 5 PSU's
A.SAIL,NTPC,NMDC,IOCL,ONGC
Q.Full Form of NMDC
A.National Mineral Development Corporation
Q.Dean interrupted and asked name PSU's within 100 km radius of Rourkela
A.Blurted out NALCO confidently
Q.Is NALCO a PSU?(tried to confuse me and I got confused :()
A.No,it is not a PSU(It is a PSU infact a Navratna now)
Q.What are your career goals?
A.Told
Q.Another mam interrupted .Which specialisation would take?
A.Finance or HR
The interview got over then.
I had thought my interview went ok.But alas,got waitlisted at 52.

MBA(MS) Experience:

GD Topic: Indiscriminate tourism will lead to environmental damage.(Same group ..2 were absent).But a typical fish market.I couldnt pitch in much infact couldnt make my point at all.Also,I was lacking points :( Totally dejected after the GD.

PI : Again the first one to enter.Had screwed the GD.Was already sad.
On top of that ,I had not read the third page of TOI(Please read newspapers in full) so had missed out what is earth hour.

Extempore: Topic - Earth Hour.
Managed to speak a minute..told bout saving of 6000 MW in Delhi and Euro-IV coming in also.(Overall dissatisfied because didnt read the thirsd page :()
Q.Why did you not speak in the GD?
A.Gave fundae about listening skills,leadership qualities,compassion for others.(They tried to stress me but countered them,seemed convinced with me)
Q.Who started the concept of Earth Hour?
A.Dont know(WWF - World WildLife Fund)
Q.Who celebrated Earth Hour- India or the World?
A.World( Thank God guessed it correctly)
Q.What is Euro-IV?
A.Told(aGain asked tell technically..Told dont know)
Q.Tell how do you think we can protect Earth?
A.Told eco-friendly ways..blah blah
Q.Do you see TV?Name one co-friendly ad?
A.NDTV Greenathon
Q.No,name one eco-friendly product?
A.Dont know.(Hint about IDea..then remembered.shit..Use Mobile.SavePaper)
Q.What are your hobbies?
A.Reading novels and drawing.
Q.Which novels?
A.John Grisham's as well as non-fiction.
Q.Which ones in non-fiction?
A.Go Kiss the World,The monk who sold his ferrari,who moved my cheese,etc
Q.Summarise the monk who sold his ferrari
A.Told ..i told i like the quote 'Luck is the maariage of the preparation with opportunity' .(Suddenly a prof became interested and asked me to repeat)
Q.What do your parents do?
A.Told
Q.Who publishes TOI?
A.Bennet Coleman and Co Ltd.
Q.Have you got IIM Calls?
A.Yes,all except IIMA.
Thank You,Sangeeta.(Thus ended my MS interview after which I was totally depressed with my performance :( and had hopes of converting only MBA(FT)).

But I guess,thing dont work the way you think and I converted MBA(MS) to my utter surprise.

Results were out on FMS site at around 4:00 am on 1st April..fools Day :)

The 14th of March

Significance of this special date:

1)Pi Day and Pi Approximation Day are two holidays held to celebrate the mathematical constant π (pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14, 3.14 being the first three digits of pi. It is also Albert Einstein's birthday. It can also be celebrated on March 4 (when 14% of the month of March has elapsed). Pi Approximation Day is observed on July 22, due to π being roughly equal to 22/7.
.....Pi Minute is also sometimes celebrated on March 14 at 1:59 p.m. If π is truncated to seven decimal places, it becomes 3.1415926, making March 14 at 1:59:26 p.m., Pi Second (or sometimes March 14, 1592 at 6:53:58 a.m.).

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology often mails out its acceptance letters to be delivered to prospective students on Pi Day.

2) Mikhail S Gorbachev becomes president of the Soviet Congress on 14th March,1990

3)Aamir Khan was born on this day.

4)Japan and Korea celebrate White Day similar to Valentine Day.

5)Besides many more significant events have happened on this date.