Sunday, August 24, 2008
Fair chance nobody is reading it, but still, with heavy heart, I have to announce that no posting will be possible till mid November. Oh, how itching I am to type for the whole day, telling you about the famed and overkill ‘B School life’, and about some really ‘noteworthy’ profs. Alas, survival comes first. Fair chance I may flunk the minors, or even the degree. I have no qualms – just the thought of what the folks would think pisses me off. As far as I see, I was totally right about Management education. Worst part is, I am in the middle of it, battling for survival in the dog eat dog world. And I got to take the Civil Services Main exam in midst of this. So for now, take care.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Live from Life - B School Blues
This is my first post form my new location, and hopefully my location for the next two years. ( I say hopefully, because there are chances that one fails the programme and drops out – I don’t know the time period for that evaluation – maybe one semester or one year: in any case, it is going to be my location for the next 5 months – or as they said in the orientation, 14 weeks.) The location is Jwalamukhi Hostel, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (known ‘affectionately’ as IITD ). I have enrolled here for the two year full time MBA programme, and lasting those two years seems to be a priority concern for now. This post had to be coming this week – I had so much to share. This being my first weekend at IITD when I have not been pestered with more existential tasks ( like paying the fees, getting hostel rooms, depositing the required certificates which need to be transferred half way across the country.) So here I am keying down my report of my ‘B School Experience’ – in fact, a few days ago, we had an official opportunity to write about our ‘B School Experience’ for the official forums, but I could not do that – the deadline was too short for a person down with serious influenza and viral fever to meet. Besides, what’s the fun in writing for the official channel, where one has to keep only the sweet memories, and manufacture some if not present already! So I prefer this uncensored version – my own ‘Snapshots from Hell’.
My interaction with the IIT system began a few hours later than planned, because my train, which was supposed to touch New Delhi at 8 o’clock did so at 12 o’clock. So all my plans of relaxing at the Lothian Bridge Rest House for a while before proceeding for meeting the unknown vanished, as I hastily tried to lug the whole lot of luggage across the NDLS to get an auto to the Lothian. Here again, I was met with the same old ‘Delhi behaviour’ – how so ever much I try to like Delhi – it is the capital of India, the home of Virender Sehwag and Delhi Daredevils (my next favourite after the Kolkata Knightriders), and most probably my home for the next two years – Delhites come to bite me back. Here the autowallahs, when asked for the fare to Old Delhi, demanded sums as obscenely huge and inappropriate as Rs.200! They must have seen a sweating guy in distress, with a laptop on the shoulders, and made their move! It was after a very long search that I did manage to find some one to go for Rs.60. Once at Lothian, I barely had chance to change a bit and moved out in ten minutes. Hailed another auto, at Rs.150, and moved to the IIT. Well, though it gives an impression of being within the city limits, IIT Delhi is really far from the main railway stations: unless you are loaded enough to be flying in, IIT is going to take time to reach. Once there, it took some long walk in the sun to reach the institute building (the ‘insti block’ of FPS). Here the guys like us who were yet to receive their hostels formally, were given the letters for the same, and then I walked the long walk to Jwalamukhi – stopping for a few drinks and stuff here and there – it was too hot. Reached the Jwalamukhi, and the stark realization hit me – be it Pantnagar or be it IITD; the officialdom has a love for paperwork. I was handed a big wad of papers to fill up – lots of them with photographs and stuff. Then I realized I did not have a pen, and since I did not know any place nearby (only 10 meters away), I walked a kilometer to the Bersarai market to get the stuff. Well, the job was done in some time, anyway, and I turned in the paper to the caretaker, a small, friendly looking guy – too young to be ‘authority’, and he assigned me a room – D-89. A sweeper was deputed to show me the room – who left me halfway through the ground floor with the instruction to climb to the top floor and get into the first room from the stairs. Well, I did that, and found myself looking into a storeroom of sorts – cupboards, chairs, bedsteads, and kitchen sink (!!) all lying pell-mell. It obviously had to be a mistake – a big one. I went back to the caretaker, who came with me this time, to the foot of the stairs and showed me A-89, marked ‘Deluxe Room’. He said my room was the ‘Deluxe room’ on the 3rd floor. So, it was no mistake – this ‘Deluxe Room’ was my room for the next year. Well, quick decisions had to be made – how to live here. All my engineering insight told me the room could be made into two operational halves – and it also told me that the side which was further from the door was a better deal in privacy, whatever limited part of that a person could have here. So I got down to hard work, pushing and pulling the chaos around to give it some semblance of a room for two. A job, when finished, looked decent enough. Now came the problem of marking the territory – how was I, in absence of my luggage and bedding, to take the far side as my own? I did it by locking the cupboard I had pushed into that corner – after all, if my new roomie arrived behind me, he would go for a cupboard that was not locked – and his civilization would flourish around that cupboard. Anyway, I need not have worried too much. My new roomie arrived when I was there, so that I could formally ‘claim’ my side of the room. Then I started back to Lothian to get my luggage. This autowallah, though not overcharging, was repulsive in a different way. First of all, he was behaving as if he was a bit drunk. Secondly, he was a home grown ‘aviation enthusiast’ – so much so that he stopped on the Safdarjung Flyover to take a look at some small business jet that had made the rarity of landing at Safdarjung. When I insisted that we had to go – time was running short, he made such nice puppy eyes that I could not ask him to leave this treat and come with me. When we finally started again, he bored me all along with his theory of ‘how the airplane flies’ that really changed the rudimentary stuff I had learned in my engineering degree. Anyway, once at Lothian, I took the opportunity to get showered, and lie down in the AC and finish my diary and some paperwork. Leaving the air conditioned two big bedroom suite at Lothian for the hot, dusty, one kitchen for two beds D-89 was one of the toughest decisions I had to make that day. Anyway, once I had reached Jwala once more, and had lugged my entire luggage to the top floor, and spread my bed – it started looking like a raft I had in a stormy sea – a battered looking raft, but still a raft. Of course, the almirah did not have shelves, nor did it have rods. So my suit, which I had bought so affectionately two days before, had to go under the mattress, and in absence of hanger pegs, my chair, which was redundant in the face of the fact that my bed touched the table, was turned to be used as a receptacle for the clothes. As I reclined, alone (my roomie had decided to stay at some friend’s place) and listened to FM music, it was a sleep of a tired sailor who had found land – maybe just a barren island, but still land.
The orientation and registration had other small problems. The orientation was short and objective – unlike the one at my UG place, where they just went on and on and on. However, after the orientation, went straight to registration, as registration sheets were distributed. My name was not in the list of the students of MBA telecom systems, and the person distributing the cards, with the official nonchalance, asked me to ‘wait’. Wait for what? I stood there, and it was purely by chance that I saw my name on the management systems list. Wow, so I had been upgraded to the regular course. But then, another big problem had been created – this upgradation changed my entry number from 2008SMT6575 to 2008SMF6575. Now entry number is a very basic thing in one’s existence at IIT. It is one’s identity, on which one’s room is allotted, on which account the fees are deposited, and lots of other things. So there was this new problem of getting the entry numbers corrected in the registers. Again, there was a problem of much bigger proportion. Soon we came to know that our original JMET rank cards had to be deposited in here. Now I had not brought the card with me – to Delhi. I remember that halfway through to Patna from Sonpur, I had realized that I had not packed the rank card. But I had brushed it off with the thought that they had not included that in the list of documents required. Also I had wanted to avoid inconvenience of getting the card fetched from across the river. How wrong was I! Here I realized that these guys wanted the documents they wanted, and it did not matter that the item was on the list or not. I had to call Dad, who had to send the card by train, across the states, by booking a person, and spending helluva money for it, so that goes for avoiding the inconvenience part. It is very hurting on the inside to be a 22 year old man, who has spurned a decent enough job to stay a student, and to go crying to Dad for some small problems – unfortunately, life does that sometimes.
The experience within the Department of Management Studies was a bit better. The welcome was short and good, the snacks better – the time table the best – 4 days with 3 off, though it is a matter of seeing whether it stays that way. The registration was easy, being online. The classes, as they began, had their own characteristics. Some, like quant or Accounts and Finance, or Managerial Economics are water tight, with a clear idea of what to study, and what would be expected in the examinations. Some are not so – creative problem solving, systems thinking, marketing management etc are, so to say, like talking in the air – trying to form theories about really complex and abstract things. It is like the question of Adams – the life, universe and everything. So it is really hard to study – at least to study in the conventional sense. Then, another peculiarity of the system is the sadistic reveling in misery – people talk about assignments for the sake of assignments, running hither and thither for the sake of it. One prof. does not give his powerpoint presentations to us as soft copy, but expects us to get them copied though a long proper channel. Leave alone the profs – even the seniors are in to it. Enjoy suffering – they tell us proudly about the hours they have to toil, and the meals they have to miss, and the late nights they have to put in, for a pittance, as if they are describing a holiday on a cruise ship in the tropical seas! Oh, I do miss the seniors of my UG place, who always told us to take it easy – don’t worry, be happy. Both approaches are extreme, and life takes a middle path, but still the latter advice soothes frayed nerves. In the profs, we have the extremes – One Dr.HC is the ultimate genial prof – his lectures seems like a visit to the shrink – what do you like, what are your dreams, your goals etc. ( And for those who start thinking he is some quack who has nothing better to offer, he is an IITK, IIMB product and a top consultant ). On the other hand, we have a Dr.VSG (another luminary, former Head, DMS, founding director of IIMK and the lead figure for the setup of IIMS ) – whose full class we are yet to have, but a 10 minutes encounter has really assured me I am not going to take his electives. For those from my UG place, multiply Rocky ten times, and you begin to understand what I am talking about – don’t wear T-shirts, behave like executives, behave like adults, and a lots other areas of dressing down for no apparent reason. I really dread the next Thursday!
The hostel life at IITD has its upsides and downsides – perhaps more of latter. One can cite many reasons for that – smaller campus (it is the smallest of the seven IITs, not counting the new ones, as their campuses are yet to be built), lower endowment funds from alumni etc. But for ones who have been dazzled by hostels 12 and 13 at IITB, Jwala is going to be a rude shock – especially if you are supposed to live in the ‘deluxe room’. The only redeeming feature for Jwala is the mess – the food is good, and that is when speaking from the point of view of a seasoned veteran of hostels. The menu is richly varied, and the delivery is efficient. Apart from that, the hostel has little to offer – the old walls look dilapidated, and the patchwork fails to hide the decades of abuse. The loos deserve a special mention. For a big population, it has just three WC’s. Now that would be misleading – one is a Western Style without the jet or the paper holder, or an alternative sink. God knows I don’t know how to use that one! The next is the normal Indian style thing, that bears the abuse of the whole of the D – Indiresan wing. The masterpiece, however, is the third one. Open its door, and there you find no pan, in fact no floor – a sheer drop through to the ground floor, like an elevator shaft – what is it that they were trying to do about it?? I have an idea – put an elevator car with a shitter in that. Market the idea as – ‘When you have to go on the go!’ I am not worried about much for myself – I have two years to stay here, and anyway, the JMET did not require much preparation from my side. Nor do I have to ‘do’ the MBA – for all I know and hope, I could clear the Engg. Services and leave. But I do care for the B.Tech undergrad population – these guys have invested two to three (or more??) years of their lives trying to get through to this place, and now they are living like chicken – cooped in a rooms, three to one in a room hardly meant for two!
I might have been getting too negative and bitter in the last paragraph. It so happens that whenever I think about my prospects here, my heart does sink a bit – I am not an MBA enthusiast, so it’s like fitting into a suit not cut for me. For long times in lectures going overhead, where I am wondering WTF, the guys are putting up their hands and asking questions from the professors. Yeah, mostly it seems like they all are bluffing – trying to create a place for them in the social hierarchy. So all are behaving like competitors now – good corporate competitors, who are suave and polite, with their ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and refined language. I guess it will require the first minor to happen before the hierarchy is defined naturally, and guys put the masks off, so that true friendships can be formed. Only then will the college life truly begin, and the negativity will go off.
My interaction with the IIT system began a few hours later than planned, because my train, which was supposed to touch New Delhi at 8 o’clock did so at 12 o’clock. So all my plans of relaxing at the Lothian Bridge Rest House for a while before proceeding for meeting the unknown vanished, as I hastily tried to lug the whole lot of luggage across the NDLS to get an auto to the Lothian. Here again, I was met with the same old ‘Delhi behaviour’ – how so ever much I try to like Delhi – it is the capital of India, the home of Virender Sehwag and Delhi Daredevils (my next favourite after the Kolkata Knightriders), and most probably my home for the next two years – Delhites come to bite me back. Here the autowallahs, when asked for the fare to Old Delhi, demanded sums as obscenely huge and inappropriate as Rs.200! They must have seen a sweating guy in distress, with a laptop on the shoulders, and made their move! It was after a very long search that I did manage to find some one to go for Rs.60. Once at Lothian, I barely had chance to change a bit and moved out in ten minutes. Hailed another auto, at Rs.150, and moved to the IIT. Well, though it gives an impression of being within the city limits, IIT Delhi is really far from the main railway stations: unless you are loaded enough to be flying in, IIT is going to take time to reach. Once there, it took some long walk in the sun to reach the institute building (the ‘insti block’ of FPS). Here the guys like us who were yet to receive their hostels formally, were given the letters for the same, and then I walked the long walk to Jwalamukhi – stopping for a few drinks and stuff here and there – it was too hot. Reached the Jwalamukhi, and the stark realization hit me – be it Pantnagar or be it IITD; the officialdom has a love for paperwork. I was handed a big wad of papers to fill up – lots of them with photographs and stuff. Then I realized I did not have a pen, and since I did not know any place nearby (only 10 meters away), I walked a kilometer to the Bersarai market to get the stuff. Well, the job was done in some time, anyway, and I turned in the paper to the caretaker, a small, friendly looking guy – too young to be ‘authority’, and he assigned me a room – D-89. A sweeper was deputed to show me the room – who left me halfway through the ground floor with the instruction to climb to the top floor and get into the first room from the stairs. Well, I did that, and found myself looking into a storeroom of sorts – cupboards, chairs, bedsteads, and kitchen sink (!!) all lying pell-mell. It obviously had to be a mistake – a big one. I went back to the caretaker, who came with me this time, to the foot of the stairs and showed me A-89, marked ‘Deluxe Room’. He said my room was the ‘Deluxe room’ on the 3rd floor. So, it was no mistake – this ‘Deluxe Room’ was my room for the next year. Well, quick decisions had to be made – how to live here. All my engineering insight told me the room could be made into two operational halves – and it also told me that the side which was further from the door was a better deal in privacy, whatever limited part of that a person could have here. So I got down to hard work, pushing and pulling the chaos around to give it some semblance of a room for two. A job, when finished, looked decent enough. Now came the problem of marking the territory – how was I, in absence of my luggage and bedding, to take the far side as my own? I did it by locking the cupboard I had pushed into that corner – after all, if my new roomie arrived behind me, he would go for a cupboard that was not locked – and his civilization would flourish around that cupboard. Anyway, I need not have worried too much. My new roomie arrived when I was there, so that I could formally ‘claim’ my side of the room. Then I started back to Lothian to get my luggage. This autowallah, though not overcharging, was repulsive in a different way. First of all, he was behaving as if he was a bit drunk. Secondly, he was a home grown ‘aviation enthusiast’ – so much so that he stopped on the Safdarjung Flyover to take a look at some small business jet that had made the rarity of landing at Safdarjung. When I insisted that we had to go – time was running short, he made such nice puppy eyes that I could not ask him to leave this treat and come with me. When we finally started again, he bored me all along with his theory of ‘how the airplane flies’ that really changed the rudimentary stuff I had learned in my engineering degree. Anyway, once at Lothian, I took the opportunity to get showered, and lie down in the AC and finish my diary and some paperwork. Leaving the air conditioned two big bedroom suite at Lothian for the hot, dusty, one kitchen for two beds D-89 was one of the toughest decisions I had to make that day. Anyway, once I had reached Jwala once more, and had lugged my entire luggage to the top floor, and spread my bed – it started looking like a raft I had in a stormy sea – a battered looking raft, but still a raft. Of course, the almirah did not have shelves, nor did it have rods. So my suit, which I had bought so affectionately two days before, had to go under the mattress, and in absence of hanger pegs, my chair, which was redundant in the face of the fact that my bed touched the table, was turned to be used as a receptacle for the clothes. As I reclined, alone (my roomie had decided to stay at some friend’s place) and listened to FM music, it was a sleep of a tired sailor who had found land – maybe just a barren island, but still land.
The orientation and registration had other small problems. The orientation was short and objective – unlike the one at my UG place, where they just went on and on and on. However, after the orientation, went straight to registration, as registration sheets were distributed. My name was not in the list of the students of MBA telecom systems, and the person distributing the cards, with the official nonchalance, asked me to ‘wait’. Wait for what? I stood there, and it was purely by chance that I saw my name on the management systems list. Wow, so I had been upgraded to the regular course. But then, another big problem had been created – this upgradation changed my entry number from 2008SMT6575 to 2008SMF6575. Now entry number is a very basic thing in one’s existence at IIT. It is one’s identity, on which one’s room is allotted, on which account the fees are deposited, and lots of other things. So there was this new problem of getting the entry numbers corrected in the registers. Again, there was a problem of much bigger proportion. Soon we came to know that our original JMET rank cards had to be deposited in here. Now I had not brought the card with me – to Delhi. I remember that halfway through to Patna from Sonpur, I had realized that I had not packed the rank card. But I had brushed it off with the thought that they had not included that in the list of documents required. Also I had wanted to avoid inconvenience of getting the card fetched from across the river. How wrong was I! Here I realized that these guys wanted the documents they wanted, and it did not matter that the item was on the list or not. I had to call Dad, who had to send the card by train, across the states, by booking a person, and spending helluva money for it, so that goes for avoiding the inconvenience part. It is very hurting on the inside to be a 22 year old man, who has spurned a decent enough job to stay a student, and to go crying to Dad for some small problems – unfortunately, life does that sometimes.
The experience within the Department of Management Studies was a bit better. The welcome was short and good, the snacks better – the time table the best – 4 days with 3 off, though it is a matter of seeing whether it stays that way. The registration was easy, being online. The classes, as they began, had their own characteristics. Some, like quant or Accounts and Finance, or Managerial Economics are water tight, with a clear idea of what to study, and what would be expected in the examinations. Some are not so – creative problem solving, systems thinking, marketing management etc are, so to say, like talking in the air – trying to form theories about really complex and abstract things. It is like the question of Adams – the life, universe and everything. So it is really hard to study – at least to study in the conventional sense. Then, another peculiarity of the system is the sadistic reveling in misery – people talk about assignments for the sake of assignments, running hither and thither for the sake of it. One prof. does not give his powerpoint presentations to us as soft copy, but expects us to get them copied though a long proper channel. Leave alone the profs – even the seniors are in to it. Enjoy suffering – they tell us proudly about the hours they have to toil, and the meals they have to miss, and the late nights they have to put in, for a pittance, as if they are describing a holiday on a cruise ship in the tropical seas! Oh, I do miss the seniors of my UG place, who always told us to take it easy – don’t worry, be happy. Both approaches are extreme, and life takes a middle path, but still the latter advice soothes frayed nerves. In the profs, we have the extremes – One Dr.HC is the ultimate genial prof – his lectures seems like a visit to the shrink – what do you like, what are your dreams, your goals etc. ( And for those who start thinking he is some quack who has nothing better to offer, he is an IITK, IIMB product and a top consultant ). On the other hand, we have a Dr.VSG (another luminary, former Head, DMS, founding director of IIMK and the lead figure for the setup of IIMS ) – whose full class we are yet to have, but a 10 minutes encounter has really assured me I am not going to take his electives. For those from my UG place, multiply Rocky ten times, and you begin to understand what I am talking about – don’t wear T-shirts, behave like executives, behave like adults, and a lots other areas of dressing down for no apparent reason. I really dread the next Thursday!
The hostel life at IITD has its upsides and downsides – perhaps more of latter. One can cite many reasons for that – smaller campus (it is the smallest of the seven IITs, not counting the new ones, as their campuses are yet to be built), lower endowment funds from alumni etc. But for ones who have been dazzled by hostels 12 and 13 at IITB, Jwala is going to be a rude shock – especially if you are supposed to live in the ‘deluxe room’. The only redeeming feature for Jwala is the mess – the food is good, and that is when speaking from the point of view of a seasoned veteran of hostels. The menu is richly varied, and the delivery is efficient. Apart from that, the hostel has little to offer – the old walls look dilapidated, and the patchwork fails to hide the decades of abuse. The loos deserve a special mention. For a big population, it has just three WC’s. Now that would be misleading – one is a Western Style without the jet or the paper holder, or an alternative sink. God knows I don’t know how to use that one! The next is the normal Indian style thing, that bears the abuse of the whole of the D – Indiresan wing. The masterpiece, however, is the third one. Open its door, and there you find no pan, in fact no floor – a sheer drop through to the ground floor, like an elevator shaft – what is it that they were trying to do about it?? I have an idea – put an elevator car with a shitter in that. Market the idea as – ‘When you have to go on the go!’ I am not worried about much for myself – I have two years to stay here, and anyway, the JMET did not require much preparation from my side. Nor do I have to ‘do’ the MBA – for all I know and hope, I could clear the Engg. Services and leave. But I do care for the B.Tech undergrad population – these guys have invested two to three (or more??) years of their lives trying to get through to this place, and now they are living like chicken – cooped in a rooms, three to one in a room hardly meant for two!
I might have been getting too negative and bitter in the last paragraph. It so happens that whenever I think about my prospects here, my heart does sink a bit – I am not an MBA enthusiast, so it’s like fitting into a suit not cut for me. For long times in lectures going overhead, where I am wondering WTF, the guys are putting up their hands and asking questions from the professors. Yeah, mostly it seems like they all are bluffing – trying to create a place for them in the social hierarchy. So all are behaving like competitors now – good corporate competitors, who are suave and polite, with their ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and refined language. I guess it will require the first minor to happen before the hierarchy is defined naturally, and guys put the masks off, so that true friendships can be formed. Only then will the college life truly begin, and the negativity will go off.
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