The tale of 3 Holis and 3 New Years

Yes its a real tiger. And yes thats me. But lets get back to it later.

It has been about a month since I reached Bangkok, and I have already had 5 days of holidays, apart from the weekends. Thailand celebrates lots of festivals just like India, and whats even better is that they have a concept of compensation holiday. If a festival/holiday happends to fall on a Saturday or a Sunday, the subsequent Monday is a holiday. How wonderful! In short, I have had a lot of free time, and there is no dearth of options. Thailand is an exotic tourist destination and is wildly popular among world's travelers. And for good reason too, as I continue to find out.

I celebrated New year with the rest of the world on 1st of Jan ( New Year # 1) this year, nothing special about it. Then came the Holi at IIM A(Holi #1). Holi in any college is always fun, and this place was no different. Dripping colours, over-head sprinklers, tanks full of coloured water, keechad, gujiya, torn clothes hanging on tree tops, music and rain dance - how can it not be fun when 200 people come together for a celebration. I went home after completion of my first year, since I had 3 days gap before I had to reach Bangkok. Now 6th April is a Thai national holiday (some Chakri Day), so I was duly informed that 7th will be a holiday, and I got to spend one more day home. 7th April also happened to be Ugadi, the Telugu New Year (New Year #2), and so I got to enjoy yet another of mom's delicious festival special meals.

I reach Bangkok, 4 days in office and suddenly, we have 4 days of holidays. Thais celebrate "Songkran" during this time of the year, which is their biggest festival and it lasts for 4 days. The festival commemorates the ushering of a New Year (New Year #3), and the whole country brightens up during this time of the year. It also incorporates a Thai version of Holi, where people splash each other with water and apply chalk on each other. The only difference is they use only water, and chalk is only white. Kids, teenagers, adults all armed with latest water guns are found on the roads, ready to splash water on any by passer. And its all taken in the right spirit, as it is supposed to cool u down in the summer heat. One fine evening, we dumped all our mobiles and wallets in hotel room, took little money in a plastic bag and reached Silom area of Bangkok. What a sight! Close to 10000 people, mostly youngsters, gathered on one stretch of road splashing water and putting chalk on each other. Not an inch for the vehicles to move, with people crawling like ants in straight lines. It didnt take us 5 mins to get totally drenched (Holi #2), and we saw how a real community festival is celebrated. With two fire engines stationed on either end of the road with their hoses open to the full, it was an unforgettable day.

We went to Pattaya the following weekend, one of the most famous beach resorts of the world. On reaching there, we found out that there is a slight difference in the days when Songkran is celebrated in different provinces of Thailand. To our dismay, Pattaya was celebrating it that very weekend. Again, we ended up totally drenched (Holi #3). Thus, within the first 4 months of 2008, I have already celebrated 3 New Years and 3 Holis.

After having explored most of Bangkok, we started going to other places in the country. So last weekend, we decided to explore the Kanchanaburi Province. Their in lies the famous World War 2 site "The bridge over River Kwai", which also happens to be the backdrop for one of the best hollywood movies ever. This is how the bridge actually looks today.

While the story of the bridge itself is fascinating, the province makes for a wonderful tour. We later travelled on the Thailand-Burma railway line, considered the most dangerous railway line in the world (I know every place tends to exaggerate about itself), christened The Death Railway.

And that brings us to the story of sher khan above. The last stop of our trip was at the Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua, better known as the Tiger Temple. The uniqueness of this place is that it is a temple cum tiger sanctuary, where tigers are allowed to roam free. These tigers have been raised by the temple monks since the time they were cubs, and thus they are tame and more free around humans. For a small fee, they allow visitors like me to get close to these magnificent beasts. I wont lie, I had my heart in my mouth all the time, such was the enormous size of this animal. But as Gabbar said, Jo dar gaya, Samjho mar gaya.

I am still alive, and have this photo as a proof of my daredevilry.

Sa-wat Dee Bangkok

The much spoken about, much feared and much hated fachchadom (first year) at IIM A is finally over. Oh yeah, its definitely a moment to celebrate. No more surprise-quizzes-at-1430 hrs, no WAC-runs-at-1625 hrs, no 0845-classes and no more hearing "Muggo-fachcho-muggo" shouts. Though there wasn't enough time for champagne n stuff, but a birthday at home after almost 6 years did compensate for it. Happy birthday to me :)

Next up on the agenda, the summer internship. Way back in November and months leading to that were spent in the yearly ritual called the summer placements. Sitting through company ppts, preparing resumes, praying for Day-zero slots, multiple rounds of interviews - I finally ended up with an internship offer at ING Asia Pacific. I got what I was looking for - Day-zero finance company with foreign location. Can't complain. Subsequently I came to know that I will be working with ING Life Thailand in Bangkok. Like father like son, insurance beckoned me. So I spent the better part of my birthday and Ugadi shopping and packing for my trip to Bangkok.

I landed in Bangkok 5 am in the morning, and there was the ING driver waiting holding a placard that read - "Vamsee Krishna - IIM Ahmedabad". I always used to wonder when someone would do that for me. They had a nice service apartment waiting for me. Saurabh had already arrived the day before, and he was put up in the adjacent apartment. I dumped my bag, changed and off I was for my first day in the corporate world outside India. Lots more on that later.

This being the first time I crossed any of the seven seas, I did expect to see a lot of different things. Had it been the US or UK, things would have been different since the sitcoms and Hollywood movies give one an idea of what to expect. But Bangkok was unchartered territory, we being the first interns ever from IIM A here. Its been almost one week, and some things I have observed about this place.

1. People here are shockingly polite. Am yet to see a heated conversation anywhere in the office or the road. One is always welcomed with smiles everywhere.

2. Traffic is excruciatingly devoid of horns. Drivers have a lot of patience, and I doubt if any of the Toyotas (they are the only cars one would see here) here even have a horn built in.

3. They consider themselves a traditional society, and it shows in the way they interact. People have immense respect for other. They greet each other with the traditional Wai, which is exactly like our Namaste, even in the corporate world. And everyone transaction has to end with a “thank you”. They are also very religious, with beautiful temples in front of almost each and every building.

4. Ironically though, the Thai dress very modern. Specially the female. “Aggressive” is the word one used to describe their dressing sense. They do it pretty smartly though. No wonder fashion brands and cosmetic industry are flourishing here.

5. Thai people eat out A LOT. You find food stalls absolutely everywhere…shopping malls have food sections (that’s plural) on every floor, plus a wholly dedicated floor only for food; the side-walks are full of food vendors selling all sorts of things imaginable. Believe me, within 5 min walking radius of my office, there are more than 150 places where you can eat. And I am not exaggerating.

6. Strikingly though, Thai people are very fit. The average weight of a Thai would be a good 15 kgs less than that of an Indian, if not more. I wonder how.

7. A surprising low number of people are well conversant with English. Communication can be a major struggle, sometimes even inside office. Poor Saurabh has already resorted to dumb charades. It took him a good bit of 20 min to explain the receptionist that the bathtub-plug in his room was missing.

8. Bangkok is a beautiful city, and extremely clean. Case in point, I polished my shoes the first day to office, and till date I haven’t even had to brush it again.

The next two months are going to be really interesting. Meanwhile, am just glad that won the third test match against South Africa. Dada rocks :D

Vindicated!

I proclaimed in my last post that "Nothing good ever happens on Valentine's Day". Well, today I stand vindicated. The point was that one big reason I missed out on exchange program was due to the fact that it was scheduled on that (un)fateful day.

The big-wigs of the college went on meet on a later date to mull over increasing the allocation limit. New day brought new luck, and lo behold; lets make it 100 students going out. And guess who was the first person in line this time around :D . Things fall in place, and finally Norway it was. Me and Quaddro will eventually end up at the same place, the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, Bergen. The company of Landy-boy and papa will only make the trip more interesting.

Look out Vikings, here we come!

So close, yet so far

This is my third Valentine’s Day post. It goes to show two things. One, my blog has been in existence for such a long time. Two, nothing good ever happens on Valentine’s Day. I seem to have some sort of a “chattees ka aakada” with the day. Case in point, look what happened this time around.

The story begins long long ago, circa October 2004. My first visit to IIM A in the company of GA, Ram, polie, quirky and gang. The occasion – SPIC MACAY west zone convention. While it was more memorable for the incident of my first nap in a classroom at IIM A, I also distinctly remember us looking for a college senior of ours who was in IIM A at that time. We came to know that the guy is in Turkey, on a student exchange program. Tintin (D-12 was it?) went on to explain the funda behind exchange, and we were fascinated by the whole concept and wished we could do something like that! Cut to April 2007, when I came to know that I would be going to IIM A and I told my mom, “Looks like I will finally get to use my passport”. I was really looking forward to my turn to go to Europe on a “three-month vacation”, as they call it.

Once on campus, tuchchas (seniors at IIM A) went to tell me that almost everyone who wants to go to exchange, gets to go. So things were all hunky dory on this front. Then came summers, and when ING offered me an internship in Thailand, came the first hurdle. How? Well IIM A believes in the concept of equal opportunity, and hence they have a rule that for allocation of exchange school, first preference will be given to those who have never had a previous foreign exposure. Now I knew that my options are going to be very limited, but the tuchchas still maintained that Europe is still within reach with more than 82 seats in Europe alone. Out came the ranking list according to which allotment was to be done, and I stood at 121, thanks to my foreign internship. But with 126 seats on offer in total, and also the fact that most people tend to opt out eventually put me on the safe side. History was also on my side, with allocations last year happening till rank 160.

The first danger signal for me was when it was decided that the allocation was going to happen on 14th of February. It was a bad omen for me. Then one fine day, someone unearthed a tit-bit from The Constitution of WIMWI which reads “Not more than one-third of a batch can go on the Exchange Programme (refer to Appendix 13)”.That meant a maximum of 87 students. Still dry grounds, but something that started to bother me. Yet the still was enough hope.

Now I and Quaddro (my next door neighbour) were separated by just two ranks, and there was a good possibility that we would end up at the same place. So we began our research and come up with a priority list. Thing to consider – location (travel wise), academics (who wants to study on exchange), attendance (bunks are essential for travelling) and reputation (the thing will be going on my CV). It took 6 hours, 2 chicken sandwiches and some coffees, and we had a pecking order ready by bedtime (5 am).

Come 14^th February, Valentines’ day was marked by a very distinct red tinge to people’s attires. We attend morning lectures as usual and eagerly waited for process to start, scheduled at 3:30 in the afternoon. We were sitting in our rooms, armed with laptops and our excel sheets with all our calculations. Updates started coming on Dbabble and we started crossing off b-schools from our list. As expected, the top rankers began with US B-schools like Stern, Columbia and Chicago GSB and then started the European parade. And as usual, some people opted out at the last moment and all was going as planned. 60 ranks and 48 seats gone, it followed the last years’ pattern and opt-out rate was set to increase.

And then things started to go really wrong. HEC, ESSEC, ESC-CAP (all France), Cologne, EBS (Germany), ESADE (Spain) went as expected but the trouble began when people gobbled up Bocconi (Italy), Vienna, Solvay (Belgium), St. Gallen (Switzerland), Nice, Toulouse et al. in absolutely no time. These were the schools we had bet on based on our calculation from previous trends, and they started disappearing from the radar. And the more serious problem was we were getting too close to the magical figure of 87. The countdown began, 40 ranks to go and only 28 seats left. It began to feel like the end overs of a cricket match with the team chasing getting iffy. We reached to the exchange office only to find out that the whole of Western Europe is done. 12 ranks and 8 seats left, people began to gamble on Canada and Scandinavia. I and Quaddro could see our exchange dreams disappear. 6 ranks and 4 seats left, one guy suddenly opts out. Quaddro let out a whoop, “I am in!”. And then one more guy opted out, “We will be taking till rank 120 only”. Disaster struck, and I was left stranded with nothing in hand!

It simply couldn’t get worse. So near yet so far. There I was, dreams shattered, thinking what a great blog entry this will make. Aussies believe 87 is bad luck because it is 13 less than 100. Now I knew why. And I slowly walked back to my dorm, with only one song in my head:

“दील के अरमान आंसुओं में बह गए ..."

Good ol' Sunday television

After completing my second term here at IIM A, we had what was easily the biggest break of first year. 10 full days at home, doing more or less absolutely nothing. On offing was the exciting prospect of India-Australia test matches, and the Sydney test match turned out the be fantastic. This I say despite the result and blatant "Aussie-ness" on display. Every matchday, I was up at 7 30 in the morning, which gave me 20 min before post-lunch session started for all my morning ablutions. And then, there I sat, in front of the idiot box till 2:30 pm, when Harsha Bhogle finally said

"Thats all we have for you today. Join us tomorrow morning for what promises to be another day of exciting test cricket".

Yes he said the same thing every day. And that was cue for me to begin my normal life.

This was the period when I realised how useless TV has become now a days. Television the rest of the day became extremely boring. Yes, there are more than 80 channels to choose from, but what can one do if each one of them doles out the same thrash. Every one of them tries to please the same audience leading to absolutely no variety. Soaps are shit (I hate Ekta Kapoor), news channels cannot be watched for more than half an hour (Syed Kirmani and Nikhil Chopra are called cricket experts!), cartoons are not funny at all (Japanese Anime dubbed in Hindi is the only option) while discovery/history channel are also telecast in Hindi, where I need to spend half my energy in deciphering the complex words that they try to substitute. A friend of mine took 3 days to figure out that a "Saanganik" was actually just a computer.

I still remember the old days when DD 2(or DD Metro) was something to envy about. Chutti-chutti was something to look forward to in holidays, while Alif Laila, Surabhi and Byomkesh Bakshi kept our week nights interesting. However, Sundays were by far the best. Stuff like Ducktales, Talespin, The Sword of Tipu Sultan, BQC, Chandrakanta, Jungle book and many more. Here's a small sneek peak of what used to be.

DuckTales

Malgudi Days

Mahabharat

Jungle Book

Surabhi

Vikram Bethal

Giant Robot

The sword of Tipu Sultan

Gosh I miss good television.

Holiday atlast

Phew! One week into the second term, and what a week it has been! Considered to be a “chill” term (wonder who made that classification), I was looking for a nice term ahead with an opportunity to do all the non-boring (read everything other than studies) stuff that I generally enjoy doing. But so far, there are no signs of the same.

Start with the best thing that has happened to Indian cricket in the recent times…the T-20 world cup. I can safely say I didn’t miss even one match of the tournament, what with term break coinciding with the schedule. And what a way to announce your entry to the world of Indian cricket captains…way to go Mahi! As the popular joke goes,

“Abdul Kalam’s dreams have finally been realised – India becomes a super power in 2020”. J

And poor Sachin – A world cup victory was the one thing that would complete a fantastic CV (Why the word CV? Long story…hang on for a bit). And just when he decided to skip one tournament, India goes on to win that one. Now all he can do is sit in his room and “congratulate the boys”. Destiny can be so cruel.

I for one had an awesome time watching the tournament, specially the way India managed to make every match interesting (old habits die hard), and contrary to popular script, managed to eke out wins. It only adds to excitement, one would say. Whatever. But it was reminiscent of the 2003 world cup played in the very same grounds, and history was repeating itself. I was actually glad we ran into the Aussies in the semi-finals itself, which was always a better place to kick their butts. After extracting the “South African Badla”, it set a mouth watering Indo-Pak world cup final. Every organiser’s dream come true (prolly why Carribean world cup sucked big time). I remember the last time (2003) where I followed every match with 150 other first year SVNITians (my engineering college) in the smallish Bhabha Bhavan TV room, and the agony felt when we lost miserably in the finals. The excitement of watching India win with 100 other fanatics in the same room is exhilarating, and I thought I will never get to see India win a world cup final in such an atmosphere. And lo-behold, thanks to one smart ECB official who had a flash of brilliance over his shot of Brandy, the opportunity presented itself again, and this time India went all the way. The team nicely adores my desktop now.

As for CV thing, well talk to any IIM A fachcha over the last one week, and it would be the only thing in his mind. I told my father the other day that I would need to spend atleast 25-30 hrs on my CV, and dad went “Itna kya likhega!”. Gee…I only people knew that these CVs are the sole basis of one getting jobs. Can’t blame the companies, there is hardly much to choose between most of us. This is something called Mayonnaise effect that we learnt last term. The good are good, the bad are bad, but the rest are all the same. Let me tell you, the process of making CV can be a real pain. I have always lauded English for being such a versatile language, but this makes ur life hell when making the CV. There are 100s of ways of putting across the same point, the pain is finding the best one. There is a world of difference between my first draft and the final thing that I submitted after rounds and rounds of modification by tuchchas. As of now, I am just glad that it has all ended.

Lastly, Happy Birthday O father of Nation. If it were not for you, this desperately required and rarely available holiday would not have been possible.

Here’s to a great man…

oops, it’s a dry state and a dry day, or is it? ;)

P.S.: Hey Chimp, time to put me back on that blog roll.

Accounting...Hyderabadi Style

Flashback: 25th June, 2007. First day of class in CR-8 in the new campus of IIM A, the class room of Section -B PGP class of 2009. Its 8:35 am, and our protoganist, Prof M S Shriram(MSS) walks in. 75 fachchas await in eager anticipation, not sure what awaits them. He looks at the clock at the back of the class, turns to his RA and comments, "Shruti, we must take a pic of the whole class with the clock in the background. I am sure I will never again get to see a class full of students at 8:35 am". All smiles. He goes on to say, "Dont laugh, I am serious. There will be marked difference in your definition of punctuality in the second year. In fact, forget second year or second term, I promise a difference post-midterm itself". We were not really sure about it, so we just nodded along.


Cut to date. 6th August.
8:35 am: MSS walks in as usual for his MANAC (Accounting) class. 12 students in the class.
8:40 am: 23 students, RA also arrives.
8:42 am: Sudden increase in the flow of students, MSS observes and smiles from his chair. 38 students in the class now.
8:43 am: another 10 have entered, and trying to settle down at their respective places. People fiddle with their name tags, which have been transformed overnight to the likes of "tanki" (TAnuj SolaNKI) and "surma" (SURajit MAllick).
8:44 am: deluge of breakfast munching, hands wiping, half-running students into the class. The trash bin outside is working at its full capacity collecting all breakfast that could not be forced into mouths in time.
8:45 am: Last minute just in time entries...finally class reaches it full strength.

MSS begins, "Just as I said in the beginning of the term, there goes ur puncutality". Then comes the bouncer, "2T, why dont u start the class". Bewildered expression on my face is a total give-away (how in the world does he know my dorm name?!). "Why are you giving me that look? Aren't you prepared for the class?". "I didnt expect you to know my dorm name, Sir", I stuttered. "I know a whole lot of things which you dont expect me to", and after a brief pause and a wicked smile "which includes accounting." With a sheepish grin, I move towards the board.

He seemed in one of his usual good moods, which almost always spelt trouble for "the chosen one". Today, it happened to me. I started making entries on the board, with the idea that I will write out stuff before explaning them. But he obviously disapproved. "2T apparently believes in opposite of what bhagvad gita says. Gita says, "Karmanyeva adhikaaraste maa phaleshu kadaachana, while 2T is only bothered about the results, and not the karma." The whole class erupts, and I knew I had a lot more coming.

I started explaining all entries. I started in the centre board, which got filled up after which I moved to the one on the left. In the end, there was one entry which I could not explain properly, and when he repeated the question, I just nodded out of sheer desperation. MS laughs, "Thats a very nice way of answering something. Go back to your seat." I thanked heavens that the ordeal was finally over, and while I was about to sit back at my desk, "our 2T will go long way in life". "Thank you sir" was all I could say, resulting in more laughter around the class.

And just when I thought it was all over, he had one last comment to make. He was clearing the board, when he again came across my entries. "2T, you are from Hyderabad na". "Yes sir I am", not sure what that was supposed to be for. "So thats where u picked up the habit of writing from right to left"!

I always though MANAC classes were entertaining, but today I found myself at the receiving end. Not that bad actually.