Happy Birthday!

the Autobiography of My Past One Year
written on 24th April 2006

It’s a morning. Tiny dust particles are carelessly floating in the beams, alight on which the sun is trying to mystify the gallery of my deserted hostel. And to aromatically catalyze any nostalgic feelings that are naturally bound to erupt under these circumstances, the scent of last night’s rain is all around. So, when nature has chosen to make me feel so intensely, I won’t resist its authority and would rather try to paraphrase my deep emotional turbulences. This, not for the sake of proving myself a romantic writer, but rather for the purpose of getting these feelings across to the ones whom I want to be here with me at this moment when I am feeling so intense and so lonesome.

Empty living places always drive me to longing, of times that are past and will cruelly never return and of times that are future and will even more cruelly never arrive. So, here I am, and here they are, twisting and turning and bashing inside my heart as waves at a desolate rocky sea shore… unheard, untouched, unfelt. And to distract myself for some time from this incessant bashing of these waves, I do hereby tell you my record of past one year of my life. It’s a time-span that starts with the ending of a very significant period of my life, the graduating years at Banaras Hindu University.

Since this textual translation of my feelings is written with a possibility of public display, I will refrain from writing things that are too personal to me. This will, unfortunately, eliminate a large quantity and variety of what happened to me. But still, my being a social animal ensures that a lot of my public stupidities are following, to be read and enjoyed. Those who are especially interested in being entertained by the omitted portions of my personal life should try the danger of becoming personal friends of mine.

It all starts with the time that is symbolized in Gregorian calendars as May 10, 2005. I leave the college after completion of my last semester exams, which is a day that everyone impatiently waits for all along but at the same time it’s a day which everyone detests for arriving when it does. Leaving the college, I was very well aware that I was going to miss it entire life and that it would be the sweetest gift if somebody gave us an option to stay there a year more. As parting gifts, I received a poem written in glitter ink, some smiling photographs in spite of the fact that many people’s faces will have changed beyond recognition by the time we will meet next, a Banarasi Pan as a gift from my female classmates, several pleasant feedbacks from people who forgave my not-so-deserving behaviour and most of all a very very heavy heart that would again and again tell me that I am not a ‘robot’, a term I often used to analogize sum total of my behaviours.

Next significant happening occurs when within 10 days of leaving the college six of us Chembonds (Chemical Engg. IT-BHU Class of 2005) meet again in Varanasi. Event: wedding of elder sis of one of us. We roam about in Varanasi streets once more and then depart for Chhattisgarh, the venue of the wedding. We loved being together again. This meeting sure acted as a shock absorber in two ways. Firstly, the parting pain on the10th of May was damped because we knew that we will be meeting again within as soon as ten days. Secondly, it served as an example to give us a hope that such happy re-unions will be recurring in future. It took me this one year to realize that the second was just a pseudo comfort to the soul. Many a times we act while parting. We pretend that since we will be meeting and/or talking frequently enough, there is no need to get sentimental. All this time, we are blatantly acquainted of the fact that it’s a deception.

Amidst sister’s wedding, I call up IIM Lucknow to know that the Second Waiting List, where I had been hanging around, had finally confirmed my seat at that awe striking center of learning. I was happy… for a lot of people had huge expectations from me. I had seen days when none of my other five calls converted. This was the only thread which I was hanging on. I returned home. My campus recruiter had called at home to ask my whereabouts. I ring her to tell that I was not joining the company with an intention of pursuing more of studies. I sometimes wonder why people sacrifice their half a life, only for the purpose of making the remaining half better, which in any case is going to be forfeited for their children’s half lives, as that of their parents was for theirs.

There was something to be done to spend the huge vacations ahead… art or science. I had casually painted a few canvases during my school and college times. And under the influence of a harmfully bad habit I gifted them all away to my friends who are long lost now. I am happy they are fond of the paintings and through my painting I am a pleasant piece of their lives. Having not painted a single painting in past couple of years, I had accumulated loads of pending ideas asking for expression. And thus, I decided to utilize my summer vacations in painting my masterpiece. It would essentially be a contrast of light and darkness as my inspiration for the painting had told me. But, how? Unanswered.

So while I was trying to figure out an answer of how a contrast of light and darkness can best express a painter’s emotions and devotions, I felt like first being sure that I hadn’t forgot painting in these years of gap. So I started with a practice painting, one that I would use to sharpen my skills on continually merging shades of two different colours. So I assimilated a dark blue sea, a green island, a small boat, a sun half submerged and an evening sky on handmade paper. Nobody can rob the Sun of its fires and the approaching Night is no less a mystic lady. So when she tries to embraces the sky in its dark veil there is an inevitable war of colours of these two mighty warriors. They have been madly in love with this since billions of years… Why else would the sun let the night cover him every evening and the night would softly lift her veil every morning…

This practice painting tried to capture a single instance of the war of colours. It gave an immense opportunity to fine tune my art of painting gradual variations of colours. The painting isn’t with me anymore. Thanks to my gifting it to a friend. Well, now I was well armed to paint my masterpiece. I considered myself a very exquisite artist, no less than Leonardo-da-Vinci, and hence my masterpiece would have to be very very truly a masterpiece. But I hadn’t discovered my meaning of the contrast of light and darkness and I would not copy anything for it. I knew I won’t pick the brush up until this masterpiece would promise to be very true and reflective of something deeply and truly inside me.

Time passed and my vacations ended. I joined IIML as one of the greatest events in my academic history. My parents are happy. I feel significant that my being in an IIM adds to their respect. Thanks that my hometown is a relatively rural place called Gorakhpur. It’s fun being extraordinary just because there are not many to compare. When undergoing personal interview for entrance to IIML, I was warned by a professor, “If you come here, you will fail.” Well, that was not so extraordinary a remark. Anybody could have guessed that by looking at my academic graph. The professor teaches us Quantitative Aspects of Management and therefore I am apprehensive. If he is too good at Correlations, his prediction may prove accurate and thus bad for my academic career. There’s a very fair probability for anything. And whatever side I fall, it sure will be the greatest event in my academic history.

Nothing more about academics, I have always hated that topic. Though I have promised my well wishers to change my habits and become a good boy the coming year. And I was as serious, when I promised this, as I am when I make promises.

“How to Eat Food and Influence People”- a New York Times best seller. Don’t be so sure that you have already read this one. No, this isn’t a Dale Carnegie’s book misspelt. His bestseller was ‘How to Make Friends and Influence People’, an inspirational book that I read back when I was relatively a child and wanted to be a leader when I grow up. But the prior one I named is a book that can be written if you had observed the new entrants’ feeding behaviours for the first week at the IIM. Typically smart looking guys, of whom each one is well aware that he is the most handsome hunk around, and typically elegant looking gals, of whom each thinks she is the most sought after in campus, are no less a curiosity to observe for a nature lover as I am. The time that I had wasted back at home, accumulating non-profit knowledge of animal watching, bird watching and human watching, had raised me to an altitude from where I could observe the biology of those living beings that had just entered this new zoo. Here is an account from my observation-diary, of the digestive system running at the lunch time. A typical diet of a male would start with around 100 handshakes of which 80 fortunate ones will be with female members of the community. Added to it will be more than an hour of oral communication on the dining table that he will utilize to introduce the most handsome hunk in the campus, which is invariably his own humble self, until the stomach says “No more!! No more!!” As a dessert, a guy will push into his digestive tract, no less a dozen exchanges of numbers. Typical diets of a female is evident from the above discussion, where the ‘male dominating’ society has decided that each female, no matter how attractive, no matter how repulsive, will get huge male-following devoted to women atrocities. I ask pardon if these descriptions are derogatory to any sub-species. They must be read in light of a scientific observation of nature. Since it’s a rule that the observer should be out of the system, I had to sacrifice my own nutrition for the purpose of observing feeding habits of these mammals. Though I missed the handshakes and the oral supplements and the numbers, I was content that I was honest to my profession. Devoted scientists often have to sacrifice their social life for the scientific progress of the society. And I had to teach a few of group mates ‘How to Eat Better and Faster’ on the lines of what I learnt from Norman Lewis’ ‘How to Read Better and Faster’ so that I don’t have to wait for their coming along, when they are busy hunting and gathering for their dietary supplements.

As a scientist aspiring to be a manager… a little out of place, I begin my academic year. The seating arrangement was done alphabetically and so I got the seat which anyway I would have fought for and occupied. My ‘V’ starting name ensured I will sit at the back corner seat. So my year started with coming just in time, avoiding sleep and understanding a little. Back then, I didn’t know that the day was not far when I will be coming late, sleeping all the time and understanding nothing.

If I don’t say that weekdays were stressful it will be a treachery to the IIML community who has built the brand image based on that very single asset. Though the classes consumed very small part of the time, the major burden was the loads of work that would keep pouring in through class announcements, notices, CRs, phone calls, word of mouth, e-mails, messengers or even self-implied channels. It was all stressful for me too. Watching my dear group mates slog so much, even carrying out my part of work, can be stressing at times.

Hence, Saturdays were fun. Three reasons: One, a week full of lectures has ended. Two, any work on my head can be postponed to Victimized Sundays. Three, it’s Party Time. Every other Saturday was an Insti-party. A party where the institute sponsored premium liquor for those who liked getting chemically off-balanced and Real-fruit juices of varying flavours for those who fall in the category of all-good people. There was huge music, rocking speakers, and a different DJ every time, though my ill-attentiveness could not make out in what way was DJ one better than the other. But, one thing is worth citing, I always felt sympathy with the guys and volunteers who served the drinks and arranged everything on the expense of ruining their own party time. The gaps between the alternate weekends were filled with either Hostel Party or some committee party or with our own group chill outs. Some people weren’t satisfied even with these many parties, and their warming up in a weekday’s work required some chilling out in the evening to get them ready for the next day.

Freaking out, out of campus has its own taste at Lucknow. Now there wasn’t anything like South-ex of Delhi or Marine Drive of Mumbai here in Lucknow, at least until last year. Nor there are the geographical beauties like snow or sea. But none the less I never regretted. It’s a city of great food. For non-veggies it’s heaven. I had heard about Tunde’s kabab back there in Varanasi. And wow! It really tasted more delicate than anything I had ever imagined. There are several of restaurants I tasted through the year. Some of them are really nice. Revisited Imambada, Bhul bhulaiya and the Residency Fort. This year’s specialty included top of the world experience when we went touring the city from an open-top double-decker bus. Our big bang gang had just come out, after a repeat viewing of Rang De Basanti at Waves, when we saw this bus with its inviting hues. I feel sorry that our big bang gang’s hollering didn’t do justice to a newly wed couple that was on the bus to have a fine evening together. Another trip, on Durgapooja, was one great touring when we spent the entire day in visiting Pandals, having booked two maxicabs for this purpose. The evening was spent at picturesque La Martiniere School which is in part relics from the British times. Another freaking out was when we picked up bikes and strayed off villages to villages till we chanced upon hundreds of years old a haweli that was being dug out of earth by the archeological deptt. of the govt. People in search of geographical beauties went roaming around, to beauties of Uttaranchal. I missed out on such trips because of sad personal reasons, a theatre practice being one.

Hostel life was supposed to comprise of 10 hours of studying as the curriculum guidebook expected from us. Study Materials were supplied in volumes that I won’t be able to finish even in my whole life and some extra incarnations. I was really taken aback by a sense of guilt when I saw cobwebs on my bookshelf, to the extent that I had to get rid of the cobwebs if I had to pull a book out. Thanks to the studious public who prepared the cases, so that the Profs get a decent participation from the class. Each room has a balcony to get closer to nature when one wants to. And even if one doesn’t want to get close to it, nature itself used to pour inside in form of insects that were very fond of kissing us. The kiss marks, a token of their love, were sadly too long lasting at times.

Well this was one place which surprised me as the amount of freedom given to students. I had lived at IT-BHU for four years, a total Taliban regime for girls with shoot at sight orders aimed at boys if we were spotted anywhere near the girls hostel. The girl hostel itself was so solid a prison that the only way for a girl to come out post-evening was to act Dead. In striking contrast, here at IIML, there were quite a few people w.r.t. whom it was difficult to make out which hostel they actually belonged to. Delving even deeper into personal matters of others is a forbidden act according to my own commandments of living. Thou shalt not peep.

Gym, table-tennis and Pool were sports that I picked up to utilize some of my spare time and energy. But I had to leave these because of time constraints – I had enough of spare time and these activities demanded too little of it. I have been desperately telling people that I didn’t leave out of shame.

The fun part was the 24 hour high speed net connectivity. Being student of a century old university that was still living in its past, I hadn’t had these facilities prior to coming here. This new place was a digital paradise for me. With our entering, vendors had lined up, and we had negotiated an IBM Thinkpad for a 50 grands, which was a bargain given that the configuration we custom ordered was something valuing 60-65 grands I’ll say. I had thought 80 GB will be able to provide me enough space for hoarding all I desired to. But my estimates were proved wrong, given that I was somebody who was greedy. A LAN, of six hundred attached computers, caused me salivate. Before my eyes was the Treasure of the Pyramids: a whole library of movies that I had always wanted to watch, audio music that converted my comp into jukebox, video songs that won’t let me miss any music channel, and the adulterated stuff that shouldn’t be brought up in literature for censorial reasons, but sure the names of some of them were crazy.

And the net connectivity were evil powers in disguise because they bestowed on me new addictions, Orkut being the most hard to quit. I had come to IIML with an Orkut profile just created and a dozen scraps from a score of friends. My current Orkut profile substantiates the rest of the story. It is where I have looked at my face more number of times than I have viewed my face in the mirror and my homepage has been visited more than I have been at my actual home. The irony is that I don’t know half the people of my 300 friends in there and I don’t know a quarter of my over seventy fans. YOU may be skeptical about that. But the innocent and repetitive mechanism is … I will get an add friend request or a new fan… it will be a name that I don’t recognize. I will examine the profile photo… I recognize the face. It is Rhitik Roshan. Fine. Now what? Maybe that chap wants me to analyze his whole profile to let me know who he is. I go to his about me. “I am a cool guy.” Wow! What a unique identification! I control my temper. Read the testimonials… “Ummm…what can I say about him… [some crap]… he is a cool guy … [some more crap]… a nice friend.” That’s when I realized the world is such a nice place to live in…. essentially full only of Cool people, who are all very very Friendly and Helpful. Now what do I do? Somebody help me.

Another addiction on its way was the technology called internet chatting. I wasn’t even able to cope with the ‘Ding’ of the Yahoo messenger when the mighty mighty Google comes with its ‘Dong’. So, throughout the 24 hours that a day contains, my lappy played a rather relentless music of this Ding Dong Ding dole. With most of the friends employed in non-intellectual jobs at software companies I found my ‘friends-forever’ online via technological infrastructure provided by those big companies. These esteemed employers made it strictly clear by their legal warning, in the footnote of the forwarded dirty jokes, that whatever information their employees are transmitting over the internet was confidential and a property of the esteemed company’s own self. So, any time when I was supposed to be free and much of time when I was supposed to work, was spent in this Ding Dong curriculum that I had obtained for myself. All this, I did with a status Busy or Invisible, to avoid my getting disturbed by not-so-attractive residents of the internet.

With all this technology talk still on, I shouldn’t miss something that runs the bread and butter of all the sincere students at IIML. Google is something that I got to know better than the Google CEO knows it. Google is the backbone of academic infrastructure at this place. I am already in awe of this name... something that is making the whole world depend on its monopoly. Take away Google and much of the population will die of starvation. In fact, even before starvation, people like me will die of shock. My Orkut account, my Gmail inbox, my Gtalk life, my search and copy lifestyle… they are too precious for me to lose. Well… all of projects, assignments, case studies and presentations start with the G of Google and end with the E of Google. Once I used to think that love is all around. But No! It’s Google that’s all around.

Now it’s been too much of technical talk and hence, before my non-technical readers start hating me for this, let me come back to arts. But oops! It's technology again. My art entered a different realm altogether with my entrance into IIML, the digital realm. I was recruited as member of the design cell, iNTANGIBLES. The seniors, all studs as they always are, showed a long way to go. And there I got to pick up my latest weapon, Adobe Photoshop. Pretty soon, there were never-imagined products coming out. My multiple selves morphed in one, myself in arm wrestling with myself, fragments of jigsaw puzzles, and numerous other image-editing product were result of learning through evolution... i.e. a method in which I keep on trying a software until I gain more than average dexterity. These casual digital arts were apart from all the serious stuff that I did… Publicity Posters, Hoardings, Book Covers, Brochures, Flyers, T Shirts and Logos. It will be another beautiful year of designing if I pass. Yeh Dil Mange More.

On the side of Analog art, I carved two wood pieces: One that I gifted, again under my bad habit, and other is still with me as a proof that I am improving my habits. I had carved chalk and wax back there at BHU, but wood was a tough thing to do. They had warned, “Avoid stains on your carvings, especially blood stains.” Sometimes I could. Sometimes I couldn’t. In addition, I had begun painting something back in September. ‘But It Rained’ as it was planned to be called, it doesn’t see any hopes of completion from its half painted state, because the mood under which I started it is irrelevant now.

The digital-arts expertise helped me materialize something that had been always in the mind… Designing Ads. The tangible results that showed up were my winning the Ad-Design competitions I participated in. ‘Click’ is one major event of ads design here at IIML. The concept runs so: themes will be announced. A team of three will be given a camera and half an hour to go shoot any number of pictures they want to. The picture will then be returned to them in soft. Teams have to develop ads from the pictures they captured. With over 60 teams participating, we co-won through an ad on anti-smoking. On the ironical side, you need to have a look on the ad in order to imagine what a volume of smoking went into creating this anti-smoking ad. Another ad contest that we won was Adiosync organized as part of a management festival by my juniors back at IT-BHU. They put unimaginably huge efforts back there, with each element hostile, ranging from the babus eating pan in half ruined building of Finance Office to the Chief Proctor sitting in his castle. Adiosync had entries spanning management and engineering colleges across the country. The themes were hypothetical low-fare airlines and Butter. The ads across different themes were collectively evaluated to somehow conclude that ours were the best ones. By this time I had become pretty confident about my skills in Ad Design. I fished for some more competitions, but to the detection that all of them had already slipped by my genuine laziness.

Continuing with the victories, ladies and gentlemen! Let me present to you the Winner of Index-2005, a six months long marketing competition involving 10 brands and equal number of teams competing for the most coveted prize of the year… “And the winner is team Prachint.”…. My happiness was of maniac proportions. My seniors of the team had titled me as the informal team lead at one stage. The whole project was evaluated in six different stages. This only made the competition more impatient. Neck to neck with a competitor team we had spent an entire half a year gaining and losing in alternate stages. This had made the entire competition more of an emotional than intellectual battle. And this is true to the extent that on the day of prize declaration there were two events that had to occur: go crazy and dance with their legs up in air or cry in salty watery tears. If not for everyone in the team, these two were the only options for me at least. And even before the roar of applauses could cease, we 18 people of team Prachint had mutated ourselves into party beasts. As a souvenir of the victory I have in my possession the cork that flew, as the froth gushed out of the Champagne. Index is one major battle on the campus.
Well, it wasn’t all about fun. There were stages when we had to brainstorm, prepare proposals, conduct interviews and discussions, prepare props for the game stage, prepare reports and give presentations. The major event comprised of a full two day Index Mela in the city, where participants had to forgo their entire two days getting questionnaires filled up, using information solicited from Lucknow junta that is supposedly befooled by the surveys disguised as games. In our arena, we staged a full 20 minutes Sholay remix for ITC Aashirvaad Atta, wherein Gabbar Singh demands wheat flour from Ramgarh people instead of the bags of wheat grains that they used to supply in good old times. This gaming was conducted in order to get their unbiased responses as they move along the story trying to help Ramgarh people. Not to forget a mention that our work was not entirely boring since the pretty consumer segment we had to survey was females of Socio-Economic Class A& B. We all loved the time we spent as a team so much, that we from PGP1s have decided to stay the same team for Index this year, 2006. I feel like fighting for another Champagne cork now.

Something that consumed up my 1.5 months day and night and left me no end-term vacations to spend at home was my role in and as Bichchhoo, a play 1.5 hours long, looked at in awe because the director was from National School of Drama, the most acclaimed dramatics institution in the country. Every year, she stays at our college for the period and directs a play with actors as amateur to theatre world as I am. But I can’t forget the evening of 21st Jan 2006, when I received hundreds congrats and applauses, enough to cause digestive imbalance. This was a show that had its audience encompassing the whole span from the students of different colleges to the respected family members of the faculty. Most terror-breeding Professors gave me personal congratulations and talked to me a cumulative more than an hour. That was too much for a Prof-shy student as I am. It was a big compliment when the PGP chairman herself asked me to safely quit IIML and join the world of theatrics. I always wonder why all faculty at IIML advices me to quit. I was reminded of the GDPI experience too. Anyway, people were also under impression that my stage presence and stretched Urdu dialogues, both of which spanned almost the 1.5 hour of the play, were an impossible feat to accomplish. I wanted to explain it to all, that if you have been doing nothing else than assiduous rehearsals all though a month and half, this performance isn’t a surprising thing to do. Theatre done here was different from what I had earlier in done in BHU in a way that it was more professional rather than a fun involvement. The script was chosen from famous French playwright, Moliere rather than being homegrown as we did at BHU. My take away from the entire association with the play was, firstly, immense satisfaction that I caused more than a thousand of audience to roar and roll with laughter, and secondly, two grade drops that I earned as result of classes that I missed after night long practices. These grade drops may prove suicidal. Results are yet to arrive.

I came to know here that I hadn’t watched some very good movies… and so, I immediately sat to fulfill this need-gap. Some never-before things happened, all of them comparably nice. For the first time in life I cried watching a movie. Forrest Gump that was. Readers with good memory know that I called myself a robot in earlier life. That was not for no reason. I used to believe that nothing can move me. But I cried like a baby watching this movie. Fortunate, that I was watching it alone. It won’t have been pretty sight for anyone to watch me confusingly cry. It is my best loved movie ever. Later, we created an Ad based on the Forrest Gump running episode. The second time I cried, it was Life is Beautiful. Sometimes I wonder if I am undergoing a reverse evolution. I used to be emotionally strong when younger. With time I am evolving into a baby. And additionally, I maniacally repeat-watched the Troy, Andaz Apna Apna and Lord of the Rings, again and again, without getting tired. I can very well narrate these movies from their first dialogue to the last. Influenced by these I wrote small academic-remixes of scripts of the two movies… Lord of the Grades-“One Grade F to Rule Them All” and DisTroy-“Imagine a Prof. who writes his own exams. Wouldn’t that be a sight?” and then, Andaz Apna Apna’s dialogues are something that are into the routine dialect of my friend circle.

My nicks have been equally hopping with time and people. Though none hooked onto me, the list of names and annotations goes as following:-
Supernova – which I had in my e-profiles
Bhaiya – when the session opened, I used to call the seniors ‘bhaiya’. They stressed on being called by name
Artist – some people came to know about my painting and carving and all
Ched Vyas – when I remixed entire Mahabharata plot
Googlewa – when I was most addicted to gtalk
Rehmat – my name in the play Bichchhoo
Aslam – because of my bearded style that I had on me temporarily
Today all of these are applicable. Different people call me by different names. But still, the formal name survives major scale. People have interesting nicknames in here, e.g. Dadua, Shaggy, Daddy, Chaudi, JD, and so on. There was one fundoo senior, Eric Chord. I am sure 80% of the campus didn’t know his real name. At times I speculate: this is an entertaining place to be in, in spite of the little bit of professionalism that ruins part of the fun.

As it happens with anyone who has been a hard working engineering undergraduate, it happened with me. I got the invitation to receive my engineering degree, something that will be my reply to all who doubted whether I will be able to obtain it ever. All BHU people in here started looking forward for a trip back to Varanasi for the convo. But I couldn’t… Because my participation in play had earned me a few grade drops already. A single day off now was a step that will confirm my tickets back to Gorakhpur, my hometown, where I will have to entrepreneurly start some grocery shop, through the front part of my house, to make a living.

Convocation of seniors at IIML, though, was something I could actively participate in. Being member of the display committee, I prepared some sad and formal posters on last year’s performance of the institute. The seniors had completed their course to their utmost relief and were called upon stage to formally receive a written proof of the long desired. I am just too impatient to reach where they stood. Soon, they all left the campus retracing back the same physical path that had brought them here some two years back. The 3.4 km road-sign on the highway which is the hallmark of IIML was looked at for the last time. Remarkably, the representative emotion evident from their faces and words was not of nostalgia, but that of relief.


Let us come back to academics to take a break from the affairs of comic value that used to keep me entertained throughout the day. I will tell you how I spent my working hours. Every morning people will keep waking me up as they will keep passing by my room on their way to class. And then, just in time, I will wake up, get ready (this used to be a pretty small affair) and run for class. Run means run. That’s the secret why I haven’t gained any belly inches in spite of the rich food here at L. Elementary courses in all disciplines constituted the first year of the curriculum. Initially the course looked to me nothing more than nomenclature i.e. I learnt the names of things that I had already an understanding of. Exemplifying, it’s basic common sense that an unfortunate man can’t think of self-actualization or social standing if he is starving of hunger. All I got to know is that this is called the Maslow’s Hierarchy, management’s most iconic topic. But management was much more than this and much more than I estimated. I am still recovering from academic shock.

The classrooms consist of people seated on their benches with their name tags so as to enable the Prof. yell at him directly by name if he is spotted dozing off or otherwise. The student community comprised largely of sincere students who would come with cases read and analyzed, with assignments done by their own selves, and doubts ready to be discussed. This curriculum, compared to anything that we had in graduating times, provided lots of power in the hands of us, the participants. We could ask for anything we felt was needed for the course. Be it additional lectures, industry talks, study material, software utilities or any damn thing. It’s a different matter we didn’t feel any scarcity of these resources in what was already distributed for us. Loads of home work is expected before and after a lecture. Some of it needs to be submitted for evaluation and rest of it is left for your own conscience to decide what to do of it.

Placement was an awe-inspiring process. In those three days I saw three hundred people go through processes of a hundred companies. It was a riddle beyond my thinking capabilities of how is so grand a scale of operations accomplished. But then, it is done, without any errors, without any collision in scheduling of the companies or the students. Maybe revealing the mechanism is a success secret not to be let out, but this remarkable feat is accomplished by people from among us, who toil hard, day and night to bring to the community a quality of placements that this brand IIM deserves.

My concern in summer placement started back during second term’s beginning with PPTs (Pre Placement Talks). And it’s obvious that I attended the PPTs only because I really wanted to know about the company’s values and mission and vision and not because there was a fine imposed for absence. Soon, I understood why companies tell the pay packages at the conclusion of the talk. The secret is that if they tell the money matters in the beginning, there will be nothing left to retain the curiosity of the audience. Then came the forms, the mighty mighty forms. Some 4 page, some 8 pages long. Each if them asking me … “why do you want to join my company?” and I would feel like replying “Because I have to join some damn company.” or “Money. What else?” or “because the HR lady was hot.” But Let Truth Derail. So, I used to tell them, from the depth of my soul, that By God, Your company is the one whose values and mission and all are in sync with mine, and so we will make a happy pair forever… something of that crap. Next comes the CV. A format was supplied which had academic achievements to be mentioned on the first page. Hence, my first page was kora kagaz. On the contrary, the details of second page which asked for extra-curriculars would try to outflow and demand a third page. But Page 3 is unadvisable in a CV, and thus, I wasn’t able to justify to those companies how good a painter, philosopher, reader, sculptor, musician, singer, cartoonist, writer and dramatist I was. It’s another matter that these assets mayn’t have sold me in the market. I guess those people wanted future managers and not a one-stop-entertainment solution. So I kept hanging around in the waiting rooms until on day 3, an intelligent company understood my Real Worth and recruited me as its summer trainee. Perhaps they thought my graduation as a Chemical Engineer will help me deliver better in their Pharma business. I am sympathetic. It is the same diligent training that I am utilizing to write this mini-autobiography.

Image of the college is defined by the Final Placements of seniors. It also reflected what we are going to take home one year down the drain... I mean one year down the lane. It was a process similar as the summers, though more stressing because all had to be responsibly placed by the end of those slots. The placements went fine, and I kept on making note of examples where not-so-studious people had cracked nice jobs. It gives comfort to the soul. It was nice to see the euphoria after so fine a placement. I have planned to keep track of the kind of job lives they live, because I want to be very sure of making the correct choices for the final placements. That is, considering the optimistic assumption that I will get non-singular options to choose from.

Something very very serious and tragic happened with the IIML community this year. One of our alumni was shot dead, as a reward for his honesty. As part of his job at a leading petroleum company, he tried to expose the dishonest behaviour of a dealer. And ours is a society where such Dealers supervise God in deciding who deserves to live and who does not. I have watched the news clip where the murderer is giving his statement. He wasn’t even ashamed that he did something bad. Well a life won’t ever come back whatever we do now, and it’s a shame we have built a society that couldn’t prevent it. Though the direct involvement of most students here remained restricted to a candle march, work is being done to prevent a repetition. It was encouraging to see all the colleges, alumni, media and business community across all boundaries coming forward to this cause. The event had certain internal repercussions too, which can safely be ignored as little local weather disturbances.

Time flies by fast, more so when you are in a happening place like this one. Soon, there was a time when the year was ending and I had to decide what specializations to take for the next year. People say I am marketing types. Accepted. Brands attract me. But my love for advertisements is something that I will be forced to be dishonest to, because jobs at advertising companies pay less. There is still a year to decide between love and life. Brand marketing is something that I feel liking, though any marketing job will send me in sales for a first couple of years, where I will have to roam around selling in cities/ towns/ villages… in short, places that I may or may not like. At the same time, marketing is something I will be good at, both as a nice marketer and as a nice student. Finance is the hot choice of toppers who aim at highest paying i-bank jobs and all. Well I know finance is good, but I also know that it were the finance courses that could have been the reason of my sad departure from campus. Systems is Chill. I may take up a marketing role in a systems company. Nice locations, nice money. Selling two three big deals in a year, million dollar ones. Though there is nothing much of my interest, it is a cool life as I find it. So, as always, I am on crossroads of doubt… advertising or not? brand or sales? Systems or marketing? Pass or fail? Money or mazaa? Aaram or challenge? Well the best way I use to resolve conflicts in my life is to keep sitting until one by one all other options get closed and I am left with only the last one. Life is long. Let’s wait and see.

Reading habit had reached an all time low. At BHU, I had read 66 novels in my 4 years of graduation. As a shameful comparison, I couldn’t complete even a single one in my entire year at IIML. I know the culprit. It’s my lappy. It consumed each and every moment of my free time. Movies, Orkutting, chatting, digital photo-editing, blogging, and several other means of time utilization proved effective and utilized 100% of it. All I could read were Tagore’s dozen prose poems, that’s it. Well, there was its bright side too; I could get rid of my addiction of reading science non-fictions. Once upon a time, learning about evolution of universe, life and behaviour had been my mad passion and a torture to the ones around me. I am relatively safer now. Meanwhile, I started blogging; but not in the regular sense. I simply used the blog to display pieces of my creation for viewing online. They were digital arts, paintings, carving, verses, prose, ads, remixes and the likes. No daily updates though.

With the year nearing end we i.e. myself and two of my ad-loving highly creative friends decided to solidify an idea that had been floating in our minds since long. And thus, Tangerine Media Communications was born. There are lots of things to be worked out and worked upon and I will keep updating as they keep happening. But sure, an ad agency of our own is a dream that makes me look forward to life. And this is going to be something bigger, a place for total marketing solutions.

The academic year that comprised of three terms ended with March 31. And I had to report for summer training at Mumbai on the morning of 4th April, my birthday. No chances to go home. So total time spent at home was 3 days in a year. For most of the public, this figure was something around 15-20 days. I had kind of kept myself deprived of sweet home and the summer training ensured that I will be refrained from going home next two months. So I got my tickets booked for a train on 2nd. Preparing for my summers, I burned some 30-40 movies and crammed my hard disk with so many more. Utilizing the JIT (Just in Time) methodology taught in operations, I started my packing at a time that wouldn’t leave me any margins. 24 hours of travel, in the warm company of an old friend, reaches me Mumbai. My stay with BHU people in there brings back gossips on the same old subjects: the HoD who wanted to make us disciplined soldiers, the proctor who had given shoot at sight orders for guys found near gals hostel, the females who didn’t understand our feelings and our merit, the dreams to purchase islands, and so on. Well, this time a new major topic was added to the list: cursing about the companies my friends worked in. It’s a funless, moneyless, girlless world out there in front of the computer screen. Almost each of them wants to go somewhere else. Hakuna Matata.

Perhaps dying on one’s birthday is a very unique thing and apparently my friends wanted to make me such a unique man. At least that was evident from their death-kicks. Thus my birthday started with kicks and phone calls. To spoil my day I had to report to company’s office the morning. Entire day went yawning in the induction programme of the 7 guys from different IIMs. I couldn’t help yawning as entire office was AC and Air Conditioning causes me sleepiness (well…so does its absence). We had been provided a computer each but I had taken my lappy along because I feel clumsy chatting through desktop keyboards. I had ensured that internet connection was provided at our place. Actually when I go to a place, I make sure that there is internet to connect to before I make sure that there is air to breathe and water to drink.

The office was ummm… sexy. The whole 10 floor building, with all reflecting exteriors and transparent lifts, gave a nice feeling. The rooftop was a large swimming pool, with a gym at one side. I felt like corporate bigwigs. Many people from the company were reluctant entering our chamberafraid of the big intellectual halo around us. What actually went in the room was Pacman, NFS, Orkut, chat and other time utilizing tactics. But while we were busy exploiting our intellectual halo, work to be done was piling up. As it always happens, by the deadline I had somehow prepared the questionnaire and went for field study inside Mumbai. The field study was bit hateful since it involved relinquishing the AC and meant coming out in the sun and dust. I was visibly two shades darker in two days and was seriously considered trying hands on beauty and fairness products. Anyway, the local field study ended and I was recommend to visit Lucknow and Delhi as the markets for field study.

Junk food had squeezed me thin at Mumbai. So I returned back to IIML campus looking for the good old mess food. And the good old room with the balcony. I have lived at so grand places as BHU and IIML that so dense a place as the apartments in Mumbai made me claustrophobic. I came back to reign the 300 acre campus.

I entered the campus at twilight of the morn. It was all empty and wet with last night’s rain. Indoors, I could smell fresh paint. In the open, it was the smell of a summer morning after the first rain of the season.

It has been three full days since I came to this campus and began telling you the past one significant year of my insignificant life. Telling you about my past was what mainly constituted last three days. And my heart is more tranquil than it was when it had dragged me into this articulation. I hate being alone. Thanks for being with me all this time. I am somebody who had always lived in past, somebody whose nights are full of old time videos from his own past. It’s when I come to write down this, I realize that I have forgotten majority of the days that I have lived. Many of them were not significant enough to be remembered. Many of them, I have forced myself forget. But then, life is long and suicide is sin. There is still a lot to be seen.
The night is lifting up its veils as I watch out of my window. Thanks again for being with me all this time. It’s a morning.