Why So Single ???!!!!!

(NOTE: My attempt at satire comedy. All the characters in this blog post are works of fiction, but if you might find a strong resemblance with any particular person living or dead, then give yourself a pat in the back and shut up.)

They say opposites attract, if that is the case all the not so fortunate people with respect to looks and bank account would have attracted the rich and the sexy, but is there any truth in that. The rules of this world are indeed strange. Anyway check out the profile of a guy, a very close friend of mine... Close enough that we are like 2 souls inside a  single body.

Age - 27
Height - 5 feet 11 inches
Build - Good enough to give Govinda a complex
Looks - Mirror Cracking (Phrase courtesy FB or was it Orkut ???!!!!.. who cares)
Hobbies - Like an endless borewell (especially those borewells in Bangalore)
Education - BE, MBA in progress from IIM-B .... (Woohoo... big bucks)
Job - Works for a Korean Tech Multinational...In short is made to work like a dog.
Hair - More than he can handle, after getting to know that this is one of a prime criteria for girls.
Relationship Status - Single since the past 27 summers and counting. (and winters ofcourse)

For an impressive profile as above, the last pointer stands out like a sour thumb. Naturally people including me assume my friend  to be surrounded by attractive females and being actively pursued by countless others. But sadly that is not the case. He has been a single since the day he was conceived in this world. So as a true friend I am trying to analyze what went wrong in his life. Some of the questions people usually ask are....

Is he gay ????....
This is the first question everyone asks when I describe his situation. And people especially stress on this point when I do mention the above comment of  "2 souls single body" crap. But I assure you that is not the case, he is 100% straight and so am I, to set matters straight. There is literally nothing in the closet for him to come out with apart from a pair of stinking socks, which I presume was mine a long time ago.

Did he forget to spray his body a with truck-load of  "Axe-effect" or "bed-wet" ..oh sorry "set-wet""???!!!!!....
 Answer is Nope.... He has been a dedicated follower of all these thesis and effects since those ideas were  broadcast on prime-time television to shock women activists and to the enjoyment of pubescent boys like my friend. Some of these boys growing up in a conservative South Indian family, were made to cover their eyes, while others were downright threatened by their parents for ogling at these images with an open mouth. But my friend was one of the few who understood the underlying hidden truth, "Axe डालोगे थो..... Even Angels Fall !!!!!!"

Is his outward presentation a problem ???!!!!
Well as a matter of fact "hardly". He is one of those maniacs who shaves twice a day, once in the morning and once before going bed, I guess he  somehow got this confused with brushing his teeth, which he still does only once in the morning. Always trimmed hair, ie military cut hence exposing those big brains 24x7, man this guy is just short of being a total show-off.  His dressing style is top notch and this guy even wears pink to show his feminine side. Easily the heights of desperation.

Did he not try to patasify any girl ???!!!!!
Well not really. His policy in life is to be like a street lamp, attracting all the mosquitoes and bugs in its own right. Further he imagines himself to be a peacock, with all those colorful wings and dancing in front of females in order to attract them. Just imagining this scene gave me 3 sleepless nights. Awwwwhhh !!!! the humanity.   

Doesnt he "like" the FB posts posted by attractive females ???!!!!!
He religiously does this. So much so that he doesnt even look at the actual posts before liking them. He even liked a post by a girl which was "Lost my beloved Bow-Bow today..Sad. Sad Sad :(:( " and he was promptly removed from the friend list by that girl. Even after this incident he has never learned, just like Bow-Bow 's tail. May the soul of Bow-Bow rest in peace.  

Is he shy ???....
Not really..He is one who gives everyone his piece of his mind when the situation requires. But unfortunately when he comes face to face with an attractive girl his knees go weak and he starts acting like a mentally challenged person. People start hearing only monosyllables during that time, similar to the signals generated by a Morse code machine. Girls start feeling pity and all the initial attraction they had towards him goes down the drain. Hmmm, atleast some progress. Might be he has to improve on this point. 

Finally people might ask why I am  taking so much pain to solve his problem. Well frankly speaking I have a hidden motive in this. Now imagine all the expenditure my friend might have to endure to maintain his high maintenance girlfriend, movies , restaurant, petrol expenses and so forth . Imagine if they get married they would have to buy tons of gold,  marriage halls rents, food preparation costs and million other things. Imagine if they had a baby and the expenditure they would have to endure to put that kid into school and then higher studies. Now imagine that kid finds someone and starts his own family... The loop is infinite. And if you were not sleeping in your economy classes you would have listened that increase in expenditure/consumption would increase the GDP of the country. And increasing my countries GDP is what this is about. Hence I am doing all this for my country and not my friend. Mission 2050 and for this my friend is the first stepping stone.. WOOHAAHAHAHAHA (evil laugh if u didn get it).. I am a genius.

Now imagine what would happen if my friend stays single for life......

P.S. > I know d ending sucks. but couldnt think of a good one. Suggestions are welcome :P

Passage To Home, The Push Of A Lifetime :P

This post of a satirical take on the recently concluded bike trip to Ladakh, ( Passage to Ladakh, The Ride Of A Lifetime.) with the similar sounding title.

2 weeks of riding in one of the most inhospitable terrains in the world in our humble 2 wheelers and I had pretty much envisioned all sort of worst case scenarios. Puncture's, snapping of clutch wires, getting stranded in snow, rear wheel coming off during the ride, the engine exploding and so forth (U should at least get a hint of what I was expecting :P) and with the greatest fear of getting stranded in some remote location till eternity. But thankfully nothing of such sort really happened and in the end we had nothing more than a few punctures and a clogged carburetor ( in other bikes of course), a very tame scenario when compared to my so called 'Deja Vu' visions and not a scratch on my Pulsar 180, which came out with flying colors.

But an incident back home here in Bangalore put a huge full-stop on the invincible status of my bike.

The Day:
30 September 2011

The Time:
10 pm Onwards

The Event:
Heavy downpour over the city of Bangalore.

I was returning late from office thanks to attending college in morning and then all of a sudden it starts to rain cats and dogs. Since I am the sort of person who likes to ride in the rain, I continued riding after getting some sort of protection for the electronics with me. But as I neared Lalbagh there was a big rain water pool in the middle of the road. Rode through this carefully and was successful in crossing it. But the problem were to descend upon me only after crossing this. Suddenly the engine was dying , sputtering to a stop. I guessed water must have entered the engine and after waiting for some 5 min in the heavy downpour tried to start it again. Still no response. Now the actual gravity of the situation dawned upon me. I was still around 8kms from my home.

First solution that came to my mind was to ditch the bike, get some transport to home and come back the next day for the bike. But thanks to heavy rain and time being post 10 pm there were literally no public transport or auto's plying on the roads. Now I was left to fend for myself. This is something which I had never imagined even in my worst nightmare , getting stranded within one's own city, just 8 kms from home :P. Anyway since having no other option decided to walk the remaining distance and quite wrongly assumed pushing the bike all the distance wont be problem too. So started the push of epic proportions, in a heavy downpour, almost nearing midnight, with the entire road pretty much deserted and occasionally dogs coming out of their shelter to bark at me and go back.

There were pretty huge inclines to climb and pushing the bike is surely a killer combo. The majority of the roads were filled with knee deep water and vehicles passing by were just splashing it left and right, pretty much no place for me to hide :P. And as expected within reaching half of the distance I was gasping for breath, as if I had run a marathon. But surprisingly (when I look back at what I did) I didn't give up pushing the bike. The primary reason being since I had already pushed half a distance and it would make no sense to ditch it after going through all the pain of pushing all this distance (glass half full concept :P). Finally reached home and flashed a "V" sign when my worried mom opened the doors :). "TASK COMPLETED !!!!!". (Took 1.5hrs for the 8 km dash :P )

After this incident I have truly come to the accept the fact that when the luck of the person is favorable, then it doesn't matter if he is in the remotest corner of the world, or among the deadliest people he will come out without a scratch, but if it is not favorable then the garden of Eden surely transforms itself to hell as it did for Adam & Eve and so did it for me. Luck is a bi**h  :P.

P.S. Anyway it was a great workout and a super-duper confidence booster having pushed the bike for 8 kms :P.

The PGSEM Trailer

Finally we got a taste of a PGSEMers life, a trailer of sorts before the actual movie whose total running length is 2.5 years. A movie which will have sleepless nights, stress, fun, satisfaction, extra curricular activities, competition, learning process and finally the twist ending :P.  The orientation program as illustrated above was held for 2.5 days (some pattern connection with 2.5 years ???!!!!! ) from 27 May 2011 to 29 May 2011.

Even before we were to officially enter the college life we were provided a pre-session assignment to be completed and submitted before the orientation. There were just 5 questions , but those 5 questions really gave an insight of what to expect from the management education. Couple of them were number crunching problems such a balance sheets and so forth. The most interesting of the 5 was the question regarding "how would you promote IPL if you are made the chairperson?"... even though having no basics of marketing it was fun brainstorming on those points. Also we are divided into 4 houses and each was to come up with a name , a war cry and a captain. Our house name was "The One"er-sena  (combo of matrix and the ramayana :D ), an improvisation provided by yours truly and which somehow won the majority votes even after having some stiff competition.

Landed on 27 May morning in IIM-B campus and thus started the initial session with welcome speeches from the seniors students and the PGSEM director Prof Agarwal. This was followed by official inauguration of PGSEM batch in presence of the IIM-B director Pankaj Chandra and surprisingly my companies VP Dipesh Shah, who incidentally is also a PGSEMer. After an inspiring speeches by all the guests the inauguration concluded and this was followed by alumni interaction and they were damn frank with their answers. The below is the gist of the interaction :

• PGSEM doesn't provide immediate change in terms of role or salary. One shouldn't expect a 10x salary hike or become VP of the company after completing PGSEM. For immediate changes one should try PGP rather than PGSEM.
• In the long run PGSEM is very helpful for ones growth and the long run here might infer years together.
• The chances of a PGSEMer to jump to some other domain altogether such as finance, HR etc is very slim. For that a person is better to opt for PGP.
• Not many companies recognize PGSEMers or recruit PGSEMer specifically. If you are competent enough you will get the job.

This insightful alumni interaction was followed by some group activities such as antakshari, dumb charades etc and so on and a midnight blog(go to the end of the page) to finish of the first day. Also met a lot of my fellow batch mates, but to remember every one's name was an impossible task. Could manage just 3-4 hrs sleep which became the norm for the next day too :P.

Majority of Day 2 was filled with CSITM workshop, an event not specific to PGSEMers and we had lot of management gurus out there to present their research papers. Some were really interesting and some were outright ridiculous. It was different world altogether for us engineers having never attended a paper presentation other than technical topics. This workshop dragged the whole day and by evening we had sport competitions(with me representing the team in volleyball and badminton ) between various houses. This was followed by treasure hunt which started at midnight and dragged all the way till 2 am. This was really fun, more or less the unofficial introduction to the entire IIM-B campus which we had to explore in the death of night. Searching gardens, lampposts, football grounds, ATMs and what not. Searching the 100 acre campus with very minimal lighting was not an easy task and both the security guards and the stray dogs (who have made IIM-B as their home :P ) were a confused lot seeing so many people running from one place to another in the middle of the night.

After the treasure hunt we were needed to prepare for a  long and lengthy case study, and hence our first official study night out which extended all the way till 3.45 am. In the morning we hurried quickly to attend Prof Murthy's class on how to go through a case study and it really was an awesome class. The entire interaction lasted for nearly 4 hrs and everyone was spellbound and interested till the end. That is the quality of IIM-B prof's, Mr. Sibal :D.

This was followed by some more group activities and in the end our group "The One"er sena had won the house cup by just a very small margin . Great :). Had a 15 hr sleep back home to compensate for the insomniac nights spent in the corridors of IIM-B. More or less it was a stressful , but still a very satisfying experience. Just like my treks or cycling expeditions :P.

Posted below the blog post which we as a group wrote as a hilarious uptake of our first day experiences in IIM-B and also this won the best blog prize in the House Cup. The blog has various grammatical mistakes , highlighting our sleepless plight in the middle of the night. This is the original blog without any corrections or even font change :P.

"

Wanar Sena Diary

Day 1 (27 May 2011)

Disclaimer :  This blog is a plagiarized work of One’er sena. Any resemblance to any other blog, living or dead is not a mere coincidence.

 The virtual eWaner Sena came into life in the IIMB campus. Wanars were looking around for trees in the sprawling campus, when the kind hearted IIMB administration blessed them with executive suites with bed and cupboard with a mirror.

But the happiness did not last long.  Alas!!! wanars were presented with big fat books instead of soft yummy bananas.  If that was not enough, even before wanars could settle down, seniors announced the “3 idiots” who secured the highest marks in the pre assignment. Wanars clapped and decided to move on. When their primitive brains were trying to understand the course overview presentations, they faced the daunting task of remembering the names of all fellow wanars. Little RAM and primitive neural networks of Wanars found it impossible to map all the names with their companies and years of experience. 

When wanars were trying to get a little rest in the cool air of the AC in the cozy environment of the auditorium, seniors offered a cup of tea and snacks. Wanar sena rushed to satiate their hunger, but alas, only few biscuits were left. Competitive fellow wanars with advanced locomotive skills had already snatched away the snacks.

Filled with disappointment and sorrow on their faces, wanars returned to the cozy auditorium. Hunger was taking its toll. Now SAC (Student Assassination Cell) barged in and bombarded with their intellectual messages on the primitive brains of wanars.

Hunger was building up and rats started playing inside stomachs of the wanars. Good news. Lunch was served under the trees. IIMB made sure every wanar gets a full stomach lunch and to the wanars delight mangoes were served for dessert.   

Wanars headed right back to C11 room to meet the chairperson.  Their high expectations were shattered when reality finally dawned on them. Poor wanars thought that the course will make them VPs and CEOs, but were told that they will be lucky if they become managers after the tiresome and grueling 2.5 years of torture.  But wanars were happy that they will get a chance to go abroad in Wanar exchange program. Wanars were given a chance to interact with the distinguished Alumni. Wanars found out how they can transform to become smart individuals.

In the evening, after a sumptuous dinner, wanars were taken for a fun ride.  There were competitions between the wanar groups. Wanar leaders proved their uselessness in front of a larger wanar community. There was passionate participation from fellow wanars. Every wanar was ready to die on a war cry from their leader.

After a competitive memory game, wanars were tested on their singing talent, and movie database.  Some wanars showcased their inherent acting and mimicry skills to earn points for the most coveted house cup. When the clock struck 12 and eyes started shutting down themselves, lightening struck and thunder roared. Wanars were given a task to write this blog.

P.S. : Thanks to all our seniors for organizing the wonderful events. This blog is written for fun and no offence intended

Thanks

Group 2 Team 

"