From 601/MPA/01 to PGP/11/132

These numbers may look strange to many of you, at least one of these to most of you. But for me, these define who I am today and who I will be later in my life. The first of them is my engineering roll number and the later is my current roll number at IIMK.

Roll numbers have a greater effect on a person than a prisoner number. Roll numbers decide whom you sit with in the class, roll numbers decide who would be your group member for a team presentation, roll number decide your sitting position in the exams which greatly influence your chances of passing the course, and sometimes roll numbers end up deciding the person you are going to spend your life with. Actions are also defined by roll number; people sitting in the front row due to roll number behave in a certain way which lucky chaps sitting in the last row don’t need to. Sitting with a pretty girl makes you study for a quiz so that you can help the damsel in distress and score some brownie points, not to mention the sober look on your face throughout the day irrespective of the professor or the course.

But for me, these numbers have a meaning far beyond this. For me these numbers represent the institutions I belong to. A part of me is not Alok, its either 601/MPA/01 or PGP/11/132. I become 601 whenever I see a lathe machine or an engine assembly, curiously wondering why am I not working on this. Opening and closing gates of a metro train remind me of the pneumatics and hydraulics learnt as roll number 601. I still remember that a single phase motor drives a fan or a cooler and why diesel engines make more noise than a petrol engine. I am no longer baffled when I see new inventions around me, I know exactly how rotating things rotate and moving things move. 601 made me a computer hardware engineer expert also making me dexterous in installing new RAMs or adding a friend’s hard disk to copy some nice and new stuff. It taught me to live in a hostel and enjoy with people from different parts of India. It gave me my best friends who are still with me sharing my joys or sorrows.  4 years at 601 made me an expert in writing exams and acing them without slogging hard. It made me a decent presenter and speaker, and it also made me a gossiper. Being 601 was my first head-on encounter with life.

Life as 132 is a bit different. Life is more complex, more hectic and more confusing. But 132 brought some changes in me nonetheless. Sleeping in the classes is something 601 never did but 132 does it almost every day. 601 bunked classes but 132 cant. 132 is more aware of his surroundings and is no longer an easy target for manipulation. 132 fights for what he feels is right while 601 generally did not know what was right. 132 is more mature while 601 enjoyed with the child within him. 132 will make more money than 601 but 132 has lesser friends also as compared to 601. 132 can blurt out gas for hours while 601 could speak on technical stuff for hours. 132 is hollow while 601 was as solid as stainless steel. Teachers still remember 601 but hardly anyone would even recognize 132.

Many times 132 envies 601, for the innocence and the freedom 601 had. And 132 misses 601 too. In the end, it was 601 who made 132 and not the other way around. And hence, Alok will always be an engineer before an MBA, no matter what he does or for what is he paid for.

Memoirs of an year

As the entire class huddled up shouting and cheering after the end of the last session which ironically belonged to HRM, it all came back to me. The first day of first term here was similarly drenched in water and marked by thunders as if it was an ominous sign of things to come. Things came and things passed by; acquaintances became friends; professors came, spoke and went; exams and quizzes became a part of life; in a way things changed, for good or for bad, depends on viewpoint.

The sky is pouring as if it wants to wash away all the pains and miseries we went though over the last three terms, supposedly a year, here at IIM Kozhikode. The rain Gods are pleased to see us through and are making this day as cool as possible for us. It may be the weather only which is making us all so happy on reaching this small but significant milestone. It was nice to see all the supposedly serious and crème-de-la-crème future MBAs forgetting everything and cheering together for that one momentous group photograph. It looked very innocent to see people running and shouting pleading to the camera man to click one photo of them in that one unique and arbitrary pose which they are gonna see 1000 times in their lives and laugh nostalgically.  Even the professors joined the fun and posed for the group photograph in their own unique ways, some even doing it just during the quiz. Never seen a crowd of 66 people running rout in the campus during a weekday right in broad daylight, so much so that we even gave bumps to someone in the administrative block itself…

What is this or why is there so much euphoria on completing just one year when all of us know that the next year will be much more eventful? Probably this has something to do with the belief that all of us now have, “Surviving this, we can survive anything coming our way”. And of course the end of this year marks the end of some of most ridiculous (for someone or the other) courses taught by boring professors who take pride in stretching the class just to show how much they want to give to their students. Whatever maybe the reason, everyone is happy including the rain Gods, so have fun and party…

Life as exponential functions

 

A weird thought crossed my mind while sitting and lazing around; the exponential growth/decay function which almost all of us studied in our high school for the first time and forgot then and there is so much prevalent in everyday life; the effect of which is much more visible in case you are an MBA student. Let me start by defining an exponential function in a true layman language: Anything which grows or decays at an alarmingly fast rate is said to follow an exponential function. We will see the variants of these as we go along.

Let’s start this intellectual discussion with Exponential growth function. Many things follow this growth function but I will limit the scope again to life in a B-school. The capacity to complete assignments just before deadlines, the capacity to present a presentation which you have never seen in your life before, the capacity to be prepared for a quiz are very simple examples of this. When you start in a business school, an assignment due next week is completed at least 2-3 days before the deadline. Similarly, when you know that there is going to be a presentation which you are supposed to make in front of the class/teacher, you at least look at it once before going to the lecture. A simple 5 or 10 marks quiz would have generated some interest in the first term. Now the assignments are done Just In Time, the presentations are made On The Spot and the quizzes are taken Business As Usual. There are some other things which may follow an exponential growth curve, some of these might be debatable and highly person dependant. Ability to doze off in the class, ability to ask irrelevant questions in the class, ability to gossip, ability to get up just in time for the morning class, the attraction towards the opposite sex (among the sample available in campus), the desire to get out of the B-school with that elusive job; all increase exponentially as you progress from Term 1 to Term 3. The ability to be practical in life would increase exponentially once you are done with your summer internships is one thing seniors have told me though I need to verify it myself.

A few examples now of the exponential decay function. Just notice the number of people studying in library in term 3 and compare it to term 1 or compare the number of students attending the morning class or the number of student actually reading the case/chapter scheduled for a class; they all follow an exponential decay function. The library looks deserted and the morning class resembles a morgue with half empty seats and half seats occupied by sleep deprived zombies, though only 1% of these zombies actually lost their sleep over some constructive work. Other things following this function can be the level of tolerance, the respect for fellow mates, the respect for system, the inhibitions about the three letter word, the fidelity towards your “already engaged” partner. Again, these are effects that are highly person dependant.

So if you see, I have classified almost everything people do and learn in a business school by means of exponential curves but still there are some things which don’t follow this function. And if by chance you noticed, I did not classify “the actual learnings of an MBA” anywhere, neither in growth nor in decay. For some it’s learning and for some it’s destruction of common sense and logical reasoning and I have no intentions of hurting either of these two groups. You see, one more thing follows an exponential growth function, the art of being tactical and diplomatic

 

 

The burden of past

The biggest question in life faced by almost everyone is how and when to forget the past and move ahead in life. How long somebody is ready to carry the burden of his/her forgettable past and people who made that past is totally a personal question which nobody is comfortable facing or answerable. People for the sake of being or showing courageous and strong, pretend that things happened in the past are gone and they totally have started to live in the present but, is that totally or even partially true? Most of the normal mortals unwillingly go on carrying the burden of their past which either they invented themselves or was gifted to them by someone else.

This burden of past goes a long way in making sure that the individual suffers a lot in the present thinking about people and things that were a part of the past and are no longer a part of the current and future picture. He keeps on thinking about the possible ways he could have reacted or behaved which could have modified the past and may have been more beautiful. He thinks and tries to analyze the possible reasons for a particular behavior of his or of someone else which affected the normal functioning of his daily life. Doing this, he generally goes overboard and ends up scratching the uncalled for moments in the history and more often than not, too strongly.

There is no doubt that the mistakes done in the past are the best possible way to learn about yourself and improve your life unless you are a compulsive repeater of them and can’t breathe without doing them again. The only caveat in this self-learning cum introspection is that people generally over analyze things and ultimately end up making things more complicated in the present. It also happens that if things in the past did not go too well, people may altogether forego that particular action once and for all which might inhibit the natural instincts that a particular person possesses. The fear of repeated failure makes them take this path of abstinence, again making their present life pay for the past.

I am not giving any arbitrary gyaan about some random topic without a reason. When to chuck the fear and inhibitions imposed by the past is a question most of us find unanswerable. What should be the best possible way to forget it, I don’t think there is a particular correct answer. Had there been something of that sort, life of millions of people would have been better who otherwise continue to suffer burning in the fire that something or someone set them on sometime back. I wish there was a rewind and delete button in the human brain that would have made this possible but since that is currently impossible, is there another way to get rid of the past??

Indians and Politics

This may be a very contentious issue to be tinkered with but what’s the point in trying to tame a meek goat when it would be much more fun to fight with a raging bull. So let me try to control this bull with some logical points which may not go down so easily with everyone, and for the rest take these words with a pinch of salt as is generally done with Tequila shots for reasons know to everyone.

The linkage and affection of politics and Indians is almost as old as that of earth and sun. As no one can comment on “Who came first, chicken or egg?” nothing conclusive can be said about this issue also. The recorded history shows Rama being sent to exile by the political Keykayi, this may be the first instance of politics ever played but who knows what happened before that. The affection of Indians with politics can be attributed to many reasons some of which I would enumerate here.

1) 1) Inherent tendencies to think: Right from our childhood we see people fighting and politicizing against each other, day in and day out. An innocent child learns politics from his mother and grandmother politicizing against each other, the father and his boss politicizing against each other. He grows up in such an incubative environment that it is difficult for him to resist his newly developed instincts from trying on people around him on the first chance he gets to use.

2) 2) Extreme amount of free time: Plenty of people don’t have much to do in their day to day lives. Result, they start thinking laterally, on issues which don’t affect them, issues which are irrelevant for them. Twisting and bending each fact becomes a source of enjoyment in their otherwise boring and wretched lives. The fun to do something wrong to an unsuspecting person is something which they strive for. Rumor mongering is a favorite pass time of good for nothing people who can otherwise do nothing constructive in their eternal free time.

3) 3) The tendency to have an opinion on everything: How many of us don’t think that they can be a better prime minister than Manmohan Singh or a better cricketer than Sachin? Almost all of us believe that whatever is happening is wrong and could have been better if they were allowed to pour in their invaluable contribution towards everything. This is not only true for bigger things like these but also for much smaller and inconsequential things like student body functioning or even the working of a non-profit volunteer club. So awesome people try to become more awesome by criticizing the lesser awesome incumbent members of each organization.

4) 4) The tussle of mediocrity and meritocracy: Again a live wire to touch, but people who are mediocre and more importantly themselves believe that they are mediocre try to fight merit by the only possible way which is the political way. Equitable distribution is their slogan since distribution on merit is something which would leave them starving and naked on the street. Result, targeted political attacks on people who don’t even need to be political, their merit would take them places they want to reach, places which these people can only day dream of.

The truth of these statements is reflected in the amount of tussle for every student body election in every university, be it at graduate level or post-graduate level. These tussles sometimes become very poisonous as seen every year in DU elections with violence marring the democratic process. The love of politics and power is so ingrained in each one of us, that we make sure to live up to them even outside India. A simple look at other universities outside India would show the manpower we have in their student bodies. This may be good or bad, that is an issue we are not debating on. The issue is the preference this thing takes over primary academic activities. Some people might argue that had it not been the case we wouldn’t have had so many politicians, after all almost all of them started their political career from DU only. And who knows, it may have been better for our country.

Nobody could escape the ever growing sphere of influence of politics and politicians. If lord Rama couldn’t escape the politics played by his own mother, who are you and me to even think of escaping it. I have poured in my opinions about this issue in front of you, after all you see; even I have an opinion about things. Think twice before liking them or hating them, for this is a total non-political effort in putting in my opinions.

Adios 2007

One more year passes by itself. One more eventful year will soon be past. It would be remembered and mentioned to as last year, something as a part of the history of everyone’s life. Many things happened this year, to many people, people I know and people I don’t know. I would not write about things that happened to me here since this a public forum. That, is a part of my life and remains in my diary, for me and only me.

The year started off with children being killed by a pedophile in some village near Delhi again showing the true face of the intelligent and sensible species called homo-sapiens. Nothing could match the barbarism of the act, I believe it was more gruesome than Gujarat riots since over there some people could still argue about “Who started it” but here there is nothing like that. Poor innocent children were sodomised/raped and killed brutally. Look at the beauty of the system, the case hasn’t even started its trial and the accused may even go scot-free. The only possible way for people like these is the way adopted by villagers in Bihar where they simply killed the accused themselves. No point in waiting for monsters like these to be given a chance to go away. This may be termed as lawlessness in itself but I guess that is the only possible way out.

Next big thing was the hoola-boo regarding OBC reservations in IIMs/IITs for this academic session. Doctors protested to prevent their interests, were given some consolations by the vote hungry politicians, but all it resulted in was delayed results for almost all entrance exams keeping thousands of aspirants waiting. Nothing happened in the end, no reservations and the sanctity of these institutes of excellence was preserved for one more year. People died in Rajasthan, some demanding for ST status and some stopping these people. Funny, isn’t it, it’s only in India where we see a race amongst people to show poorer and more helpless and deprived than others. Development is a curse, for it may result in removal of the stigma or shall I call “blessing” of being in a reserved category.

India did sign the nuclear deal with US. I don’t know whether it is good or bad for Indian interests, all I know is that it attracted too much attention than it deserved. Everyone became an expert on nuclear issues overnight and believed himself to be the only sane person around. I believe hungry peasants committing suicides are more important than a nuclear deal. People were brutally massacred in the name of SEZ development. Ironic enough this happened in the state with the strongest leftist connection. And that is why I believe CPI was and is quite over this otherwise they have a habit of crying their hearts out at even an itch in their groins, claiming it to be either communal or capitalistic or if nothing else anti-people incident. While people were being murdered there, our sensible politicians were busy debating about the authenticity of Ram Setu and the possible wrath perpetrated by all the Gods if someone touched it. Again, it doesn’t matter whether it is real or not, what matters is the usage of it today. If it can save millions of dollars every year for our country, Lord Rama would be more than happy to destruct it himself, but the issue became an issue of Hindus versus the rest, a communal issue which refuses to die.

Modi won again in Gujarat, this time on the tide of development though. Heartening to see people voting for development and rising beyond caste and communal politics. The biggest surprise was the win of Mayawati in UP. I don’t know after how many years, a single party will rule the heartland of India but it again is heartening. She may have won on caste politics, but at least the state has a stable government. Congress now needs something different than to yield the Nehru-Gandhi name every time they see an election, begging for people to vote for nothing but their name. Doesn’t happen this way, not anymore Mrs Gandhi. Politics showed its dirty and opportunistic face in Karnataka where support changed more frequently than moods of a pretty lady. Someone please give some lectures on ethics to these men.

India lost out badly in cricket world cup, failed to clear even the first stage after losing to Bangladesh. But we won the 20-20 world cup, touted by some as a planned tactic to encourage the game in the biggest economy of world cricket for all the commercial reasons. Don’t know if that is true, may be or maybe not, but it really pumped up everyone’s adrenaline for almost 3 weeks. India won against Pakistan in the home test series but is currently struggling against Australia down under.

Ash got married to Abhishek, a story covered with grandeur by all news channels 24 X 7 for days. They covered everything, I think except the honeymoon details. A new pretty lady came on screen in the name of Deepika Padukone and Kareena finally had some success. Shahrukh returned twice only to shock people both times, once for his character and acting in the movie Chak De and once for his artificial 6 pack and nude dance in OSO. The movie gave the best dialogue of the year, “Ek chutki sindoor ki keemat tum kya jaano Ramesh babu……”

Going global, US subprime mortgage crises was proved to be much bigger and worse than everyone expected. US economy would most likely go into recession and with it possibly Indian too. Rising rupee has already wrecked many industries looking to be ominously strong going forward. Pakistan finally going to have elections, how fair would they be is a different issue altogether. Bush not ready to accept his mistakes, in fact, escalating the commitment in Iraq. Other mundane issues like global warming, terrorism and communal violence remain like they always have been.

It has been quite an eventful year, filled with both good and not so good memories and happenings all around each one of us. Hopefully next year would be better with a higher proportion of happy ending than the heart wrenches. As Shahrukh said, till the time there isn’t a happy ending, the movie is not over my friend…

The Curse of Mediocrity

A recent discussion over a stupid 10 marks quiz being held again on the request of some students who couldn’t score well in the first quiz triggered this debate which I am going to elaborate with some more dimensions added to it. To summarize the entire debate which lasted for 2 days and died its natural death, let me just write that it was a debate between meritocracy and mediocrity. Some people might take some offence on this statement but, doesn’t matter to me.

 The love for mediocrity is not new in India. It started the very day reservations based on any factor were introduced in education, employment or any other field. Don’t confuse me with someone who is not in favor of giving equal chance to deserving but deprived section of society, what I am opposed to is the wastage of these chances over people who are neither deserving nor deprived. Economic reservation is justified but I am totally against the concept of caste based reservation. Somebody doesn’t become eligible to sit and talk with an intelligent person just because he/she is from a particular caste or tribe. This system has been grossly misused. First, the father was given reservation and he became an IAS officer, then the elder son became a doctor based on his caste and now his younger brother wants to reuse this to get into an IIM after wasting an engineering seat at IIT. By no means does he or his brother deserve this since they were given all possible facilities to study during their schooling. But they are given the chance and the seeds of mediocrity are sown which promise to pollute the entire system in the long run.

The second factor for mediocrity comes from the shoddy and “chalta-hai” attitude of people around. People are not ready to take responsibility for their actions. But they all want equal rewards as if the person who puts in efforts and takes responsibility is a fool. When somebody deserving wants to assert his/her right, beautiful words like selfish, perverse and self-centered etc etc are used. I want to ask one question, who stopped you from following the paths of the so-called selfish person at the first place? If he/she can do it, why can’t you? Are you not capable enough? Or were you so lazy that you didn’t care to think about the outcome in advance? If yes, then you are neither lazy nor casual, you are simply a fool fooling yourself and none else. You may get a second chance here since it’s just a training ground, but believe me mate, life doesn’t give second chances. A person who is better will always be better than you, he will always think ahead and foresee the consequences while you may be busy boozing around living in your own sweet dream world where everything works as you want. It doesn’t happen this way, and I pray to God for it to never happen this way.

Third factor is over emphasized love for social service, society and feeling of benevolence. These are noble feelings and should not be used for the sake of using them. Be benevolent to old, be kind to those who are hurt, be generous to the needy ones but be equally harsh to undeserving people. I don’t believe in the theory of “God made all equal in terms of thinking power and self control and deserve equally”, even if He did, the chaff is separated from the wheat very early in the life. People going to same school end up very differently, one may be a billionaire industrialist while the other may just end being his employee. What caused the difference, they both started together? The difference lies in their dedication, commitment and self regulation. One of them took responsibility of what he did while the other waited for somebody to feed him thinking that it’s the other person’s duty to feed him. Again, this doesn’t happen in real life. A person who feeds always remains superior to the person being fed.

I don’t know why people are so averse to hearing that whatever somebody does is for himself and for no one else, however disguised the actions maybe. Somebody who has put in many nights and days’ hard-work to setup a factory wants returns. He doesn’t care about the employment generated or the contribution to the nation a bit. Go and ask Ambani or Tata about why they started their empires, I bet on my life if they give the answer you want to hear. Nobody does anything for others for free. I am not talking about saints or God who are different; I am talking about poor mortals who are driven by desires of food, love and power. If somebody is in the illusion that the world will be generous to a lazy, irresponsible and undeserving bum, he is doomed for his life today or tomorrow.

I don’t know how many of you have read Ayn Rand but will like to say that thinking about yourself and your good is not perverse. What is bad is doing the same on someone else’s expense. Putting in hard-work to achieve what you aspire for is not being selfish; in fact it is the other way around. If you believe that someone else should come and give you what you want, then it is being selfish (you are living in a fool’s paradise is a different matter altogether).

My sincere request to everyone; think about what you want, try hard to achieve it and most importantly learn to take responsibility for your actions accepting failures on the way. And, there is no harm in thinking about you first!!!

Disclaimer: All the views are personal and not meant for anyone specific. It would be an utter misfortune if some people take it personally and feel offended.  

Ek raat: Chai, maggi, madira aur 6 dost

What do you do when you and your friends achieve what they have been longing for a long time? This can be anything, what is more important is the feeling of achievement and happiness you all have. They know they have put in so much hard-work and smart-work and you know that you also have been anxiously waiting for them to do the same what you have done and have been waiting for them to cross the line and be on your side. So when all of you are on the same side of the equation, you enjoy, you celebrate and you have fun. This is a story of 6 people and one such night. I am not counting one or two more people as they did not fulfill the minimum qualification to enter the circus. They at best can be counted as guest appearances. For our ease let’s give names to these people, A, M, G1, G2, N and A2. To make the story more interesting I will surely exaggerate a little bit here and there, but most of it will be true. And I will surely try to explain people’s behaviors in technical terms, so bear with me.

The story opens with A and M returning from some official dinner when other 4 ppl are waiting for them with full plans for a fun filled evening, rather a night which ultimately culminates into morning. So after some initial hiccups with some of them having to attend some useless Peecha-pani meeting with some nice looking seniors etc, all of them reach A’s room with booze and beer. Now all of them being MBA students, you can’t expect things to go smoothly without ego clashes. G1 ordered Smirnoff but for some goddamn reason wanted to drink whisky which G2 was firmly appalled off. Theory of economics: When you have limited resources, you do not like any sort of competition. Before I forget him, there was one guest visitor sitting who was playing the role of moderator and to an extent a role of a spy. Ultimate motive, get some cheap thrill out of 6 drunk people. Theory of marketing: You always try to leak off extra information about your competitors for an added edge. But learning from the theory of adaptive learning, these 6 people let him down and forced him to go back. Important learning, without core competency it’s difficult to succeed only based on insider information.

Moving ahead, these 6 people finish off their spirits and suddenly feel hungry forcing them to eat. Mind you these people are on high and are becoming dangerous to the common man by the minute. They eat maggi and for some god forsaken reason drink tea. People do strange things, right. They all are happy and hence it doesn’t matter. Now, comes the best part. They start discussing Gyaan. Now discussing Gyaan is one thing but discussing under influence of alcohol is different ball game. It can get real heated up and hilarious too. A says something about common people which N and A2 agree too, but G1, G2 and M don’t. A perfect setting for an interesting GD. G2 debates rationally and to an extent agrees to A but G1 continues on his own track. M was always different and continues to be different. Voices becomes loud, patience of all being tested, it becomes interesting. Arguments over difference between arrogance and self-confidence become interesting. Mediocrity and intelligence are compared to each other. Knowledge based confidence and attitude based confidence are also discussed. By this time N has lost his interest and M has made all his points. So it’s A, G1 and G2 who continue to fight. G2 keeps saying, I agree to this entire bit what do we do about it? To this A replies, it’s not my freaking responsibility to teach people and generate confidence in them. He keeps on repeating, until you believe you are better than rest, you can’t be better than the rest. Humility and arrogance are once brought to the table by M who brings in good points to the GD but backs out before discussion actually starts. Things become tense with G1 taking all the airtime despite repeated pleas from A to give him some time to counter others and make a constructive contribution towards the GD. But as they say in Hindi, “Kutte ki  dum hamesha tedhi hi rehti hai”, things continue on the same track for some more time.

N stands up and declares the GD to be over and shows his inclination towards eating something. Group agrees and finally it was M who stopped all that crappy discussion about confidence, arrogance and humility. Looking around themselves, they realize its almost dawn, G1 and G2 for once agree and rush to get their cameras to capture the beautiful rising sun. So now they all capture pictures and leave happily towards their dens, some to sleep and some to write about it.

Alcohol makes you do strange things, some good and some bad. A discussion like that could not have happened without it and could not have been forgotten in the same way as well without it. I may not have been up till 7 in the morning to write the story of those 6 buggers and hence could have missed the beautiful and breathtaking view from hill top. The sun is shining on its full blast now and I feel its time for me also to get some sleep. Even an owl sleeps when sun rises, so happy good night to all of you J 

PS: No offenses to anybody, neither to named people and definitely not to guest appearances in the story. After all, it’s my version of the story and I have some liberty to express my thoughts. And, ultimately what are guest appearances and item numbers for if not to add spice to the story. Attached is a pic of that awesome morning for your viewing pleasure.

Who is more intelligent??? A friend’s dilemma

A friend’s tryst with reality wherein he actually realises what it means to be on the receiving end. Read his story in his own words yourself and don’t stop yourself from laughing;  

How much you think yourself to be a stud at knowing all about certain stuff, all that comes to naught when Mr Knowall personally experiences the situation. All the maturity and clarity of thought goes for a walk as the issues not pertaining to head cannot be ruled by head. but the issue is what to do, what not to do to help achieve the target ? especially since all that you considered as consequential to your “PERSONALITY- strengths” has been put to stake. 

If at all one could disassociate oneself from the present situations and think objectively. Alas once you give in to this temptation the cost you pay is your objectivity, so what’s the next best alternative; go to others, whom you couldn’t trust with such judgment earlier but now feel fraternally linked in such issues as personal experience is what counts not the result. and personal experience is what you don’t have . 

But then when you have put yourself in “okhal” why are you afraid of “moosals”. Its amazing how a clear weather could so suddenly turn so cloudy. The impervious being in you gets brutally and with no regard to self comfort gets dragged, sacked and repeatedly played around with. How much easier could all this would have been with some resource selling the uptodate information to help benchmark the expectations and efforts. But as bad luck would have it the only solace is the pleasure that someone is getting out of it and the only motivation the communication that was beyond senses…… 

End of a Dream

Disclaimer: All characters in the story are real to the best possible extent. Any mistake in assigning the characters with the real life is totally regretted. The case is about a consulting firm based in NY with an office in Gurgaon and having its name starting with I. Read through the case, the name of the firm is given somewhere in the case. Spotters get a box of peanuts as bonus.

How do you react when something you deserve is taken from you in front of your eyes? How do you react to some gross injustice perpetrated on you? How do you react when someone is unable to justify his/her non-sense actions? And how do you react when you face something you never expected can happen to you? Maybe you are confused as to why I am asking you all this. There’s a reason for this. And let me narrate you a story to help you.

Imagine a situation that you are working in a company which is supposed to be very people oriented, very open in its policies and very fair in its review and rewards process. It entices you to work hard, put in everything you have got, think about nothing work etc etc. All this with the carrot that in the end you will be rewarded suitably. So you  being a lesser mortal fresh out of a graduate school you fall into the mousetrap and make office your second home and work your religion. This game continues happily for almost 2 years and I must confess that the company does keep its promise till the end of first year (atleast for some employess). This would be fair and just to add here that all this is done when the company is doing phenomenally fantastic, achieving over 100% growth. Everything and everyone around you is happy, picture is merry and there are all indications that the joy ride will continue.

Then suddenly one day the company is taken over by a BPO giant. You are told that this is the best thing which could happen at this point of time. We will get more clients and more sales and blah blah. Again you being a slave for 30K INR don’t have a choice but to accept and be happy and hope for the best. You continue to slog. You have a hidden desire to become an MBA after seeing your bosses. You try and this time you get admission into one of the IIMs. In the mean time the company has failed to get any clients and 90% of junta is on bench. But you being a senior member, who considers the company as your own, still continue to put in your best. You slog in late nights with no special expectations, expect the fact that you expect recognition of your efforts. Finally you resign and leave for MBA hoping that people at your company will continue to take you in the same spirit as they did when things were good. Then comes the time when your dreams are shattered and reality dawns on you.  It’s the time when things are declared and you are brought to hard truth. You did not complete 2 weeks in the year and hence you do not become eligible for getting the full bonus. Moreover you don’t even get the deserved performance rating. Just because the f***king company doesn’t has the funds to pay you some 20K extra (considering the fact that you were billed at $125/hr when you were there), you are told that this is what you deserve.

You are a person who has always wanted the best for the firm. You are the one who saw the firm grow from 15 to 150, you are the one who is respected most among the juniors, you are the one whose professionalism and commitment to work is unquestionable, you are the one who believed in pure meritocracy and raised your voice against any unethical thing. But in the end, people who cheated in the tests are revered, people who defy their roles and responsibilities are promoted, people who lick the ass of their superiors move ahead and you, the ideal, moral, ethical employee are left with peanuts to satisfy your values.  Just because the company knows you will never come back again they do this to you and on top of it have the guts to say bullshit to explain this.

So in the end, you are an employee who is still respected in eyes of your peers and juniors, who is still talked about, who has an unblemished track record, who finally reach those a**holes can never reach. But you are told that how much ever you may be good, you are not the employee whom the management dreamt about. You just spent 2 years with the firm called Inductis where the average period is less than 12 months, u multitasked between client projects and training people thereby screwing your life, you did what other people can only dream about but in the end you are one who is left wondering what exactly you got from all this. Nothing tangible. Some people may call you selfish but asking for what you deserve is not being selfish. Some may say that you are demanding too much but you also gave too much to a lost cause. And this blame game will continue.

So what do you learn from the story. Never trust a bunch of arrogant MBAs from one of the IIMs who believe that the only to get ahead is via someone else’s head. Never be emotionally attached to you work place. Just do whatever is expected from you. Because in the end, “It doesn’t even matter and it shouldn’t.”

PS: If you are still unable to comprehend the name of the firm, read again. Don’t ask me the meaning of the name of the firm, check wikipedia, afterall people should take initiative and put effort on their own.