Friday, March 20, 2009

Stay Hungry,Stay Foolish!

At the onset, i must say I am a voracious reader and I enjoy most books.....most!Now I have done very few book reviews and this is the first one that I'm doing online. So here goes...

To start with, I liked the title of the book, I believe it instantly connects you with what you are expecting the book to be..a gritty, candid collection of success stories of passouts from one of India's best educational institutes. It wud be unfair not to admit I wasn't impressed. Ms. Bansal gives the book a great start with a typical MBA touch..classifying the entire group of entrepreneurs into three categories!! Nostalgia, anyone?? Anyway, first few pages dealt with Mr.Bhikchandani from naukri.com who I believe must be getting a lot of business from the MBA comunity itself,given that campus placements have taken a toss. So i found the treatise quite engaging.

But the more I kept delving through the pages, three things kept disturbing me.On finishing the book, which took only half a night, I realised that the three points that kept disturbing me were in fact recurrent in every story that Ms.Bansal had to tell.

First of all, each and every entrepreneur had the same backup plan for themselves...the IIMA tag. They believed that if all else fails,they could always go back and join an MNC and rake in the moolah necessary for not just survival but also their seed capital. My point is, of the approx 2 lac students who appear for CAT every year, only a handful make it to IIMA. Does that mean the rest of us carry a bigger risk of not getting through a gr8 company even if our venture fails only because we do not carry that tag with us? 

Secondly, even for those entrepreneurs whose chose to stick with their ventures, most of their emergency capital funding came from VCs who were either  IIMA alumni or knew someone from the insti..either a Prof or a batchmate. So what lessons does this hold for me as an MBA from some other insti?? Also where is the entrepreneurial spirit if all you do is call up ur ppl u kno are goin to give you the funding necessary for ur venture.

Thirdly, almost all the entrepreneurs have talked about the years of struggle being the most crucial and important years of their lives. That is when they discovered their metaphorical "entrepreneurial spirit"My point is.. Is it always a crisis that makes one realise what one is capable of? Is it when you are thrown off a buliding that you may realise you can fly?? Also, one of the key elements of entrepreneurship is the constant need for innovation within your venture as the times change. But in this case, most of the changes seem reactive rather than proactive. Is this the case of the boiling frog syndrome in its crudest form?? These are some of the questions that have rattled me since I've read this book.

Don't get me wrong, it is an amazing treatise for those who will and have faced simliar situations as the ones mentioned in the book.I believe this book will be a great boost for an insti that churns out dozens of potential business leaders but very few entrepreneurs. I have the highest regard for ppl like Sharath Babu and Gaurav who chose to take their own path and are probably happier than their batchmates in the investment banking sector today.

But all said and done, the book glorifies the insti though in a very subtle manner. And for the millions of young entrepreneurs out there I believe this book could de-motivate them from starting out on their own. I quote one of my friends who after reading the book remarked, " The best result that you could possibly hope for from the book is to see fewer IIMA grads taking up jobs in MNCs and concentrating on buliding their own ventures." I sincerely hope the book does what it claims it can do and makes a difference to the lives of all IIM grads who are stuck in the wrong job.

Peace

Pappu Ke Paas Hai MBA(almost!!)

Next week we have our farcical exams after which hopefully I will become a Post Grad.Now its one thing to study for an MBA exam, a completely different story for our very own Christa!!

Take for example content... Bullet em down, use words from ur "best-in-the-line" books and u r seen as a master of the subject. Plus presentation. Make ur paper look like a runaway circus clown and u have a winner. U might even get a distinction because you were "well-prepared"!! (Read-armed with array of material u wud normally take for craft class)

Secondly the question papers themselves... well the less i say the better. e.g. last time we had a case study for our mid-terms askin us to define true friendship. I must admit i ahd a hard time suppressing my grin in an otherwise boring exam hall.

And the fines!!!!!!!!!!!! I promised myself not to use any expletives ona public forum. So will try to censor it down. The frupping coll wants me to shell out 1000/- for not bein present on 3rd Jan 2009 failin which i will not be allowed to write my exams. 3rd Jan was a Saturday and was the first weekend after the New Year. Lemme ask you "Who the hell expects a student to turn up for one class thus ruining his one holiday he can spent with his family after a year?!!" Not me thats for sure.

So anyway, thanx to some very proactive students who went the very next day to pay the fine, I am now poorer by a 1000 bucks :( And thats not all, the clerks at the office also expect us to wait for the receipt till they are "free"! I mean gimme a break.... U might as well ask me to come with a pair of gallishes on my shorts and a water bottle around my neck sayin the morning prayer on the field and keep a finger on my lips during class.

But wait, there's more.. Apparently we have our convocation on the 31st of May and failing to turn up will result in a fine of 1000/- more.I have to join my company on June 1st, Mumbai so that makes me poorer by 1000/- bucks again. Not only will I be missing out on my convocation, I will be paying a fine for it too.All i can say is ,"Gentlemen, if you want more money just add it to the fees.Do it in the name of charity.  Don't make me write hate-blogs about my alma mater...."

All said and done, its been an exhausting two years now and given my experiences here I can't wait for my "MBA" to get over. As one of our Professors keep reminding us, "Have you come here to get an M.B.A. or to learn something new that adds value to your life?" Well Sir, I can dare say now that I wud be happy to just get my degree and run, I think I've learnt enough to last me a lifetime!!

P.S. The author of this blog cannot be held responsible for the opinions generated as it is merely a reflection of the general outlook of the entire batch!

Peace

 

Saturday, March 7, 2009

What a Week!!

I guess its just one of those days when God picks up ur name from the lottery bowl.... not to shower blessings but to simply pick on you.

2 weeks of mental bombardment were all it took to make me realise how small i really am in this vast sea of humanity.It started with something simple (at least seemingly)..... I was expected to bring my dissertation thesis to a closure before the 6th of March. Now I don't really have a problem accepting challenges but sometimes life gives you more than you can chew. In my case, life also gives you a heavy bout of intellectual diarrhoea..

Now that I'm done with my dissertation project at least, just got to know today that some idiot from Section C (somehow i kno they'd mess up our already miserable lives again)  went ahead and got us an added responsibility of making presentations for an IB project that we were happy just making an assignment for. As you may have noted in my previous blog on Laziness, these are the exact ppl that i have talked bout (bootlickers)....

Nevertheless i wud have perhaps accepted these circumstances except that they are now coming in the way of my otherwise peaceful personal life. Not only am i engaged in heated debates about wat i do with ppl close to me, I also do not get my share of gaming (read football on my lappy) which is like my survival mantra for this hell-hole.

Hopefully some sense will dawn on that pile-of-factory-residue who requested for the ppt, and the wrath he has brought down upon his peers(now hostile!!) As for me, well it looks like I'm up for another week of hardball and this time hopefully, God will be on my side! 

Kapish

P.S.I'm not a blasphemist.I just enjoy takin a dig at "Him" from time to time

Ostentatiousness or Childhood fantasies?

When was the last time you saw a girl being swept off her feet by a guy, without the ritualistic "show-off" period?I just had a conversation with my best friend on what drives a teenager to lie and make-pretend on what he wants his prospective girlfriend to see and not hwta he really is... Have we ever wondered where this cycle of cock-and-bull stories start?

Our prolonged and heated debate led me to believe that somehow the lack of knowledge about the opposite sex's needs and the understanding of the things she values most is what makes boys believe they can woo their lady love by simply lying on face of of it.She recounted an example wherein she knew a guy who would "compose" poetry to her,which in fact were nothing but rip-offs from some romantic english tracks. When she confronted the guy with this, he retaliated by saying that his previous experience with girls led him to understand that they prefer pretentious acts of love over honest confessions of one's feelings.

Now I don't really have any bone to pick with women in general... But I realised that it is in our nature to constrain our thoughts and actions to incidents that evoke a feeling of well-being and harmony than conflict and confrontation. It is also quite incidental that I received an sms from a dear friend putting the entire essence of this blog in two lines:
" No one is afraid to speak the truth,Eevrybody is only afraid of facing the consequences after the truth is led out"

To all viewers of this blog,if you wud be so kind as to ans this ques...

Whom would you be attracted to/infatuated with at the first sight, a guy/girl who's drop dead handsome/gorgeous with a sharp dressing sense and a nice set of wheels/heels, OR a Plain Jane/Guy- Next-Door with nothing more to offer than his/her undying love for you?"

May I also point out that though age does not diminish this vulgar act of pretentiousness, good experiences from ones past definitely make one see through this veil of  "larger-than-life" images that the person, both boy/girl, create around themselves.

Therefore it is but my honest attempt at making ppl realise that what matters most in a relationship is two ppl willing to work through their problems and accepting the fact that they are not perfect, while at the same time improving  upon the things they can.

Peace

Friday, March 6, 2009

How is being lazy beneficial?

The first thing ppl need to understand is that being lazy is not about doing nothing and wasting your time.Its about saving up your energies for things that actually matter. So the next time somebody says, "Dude,you're so lazy, do them a favor and feed em this info"

Secondly, being lazy also contributes to the well being of your peers.You know, the ones who could never differentiate between an important memo and a shred of toilet paper, but work hard just the same at tryin to prove themselves.You'll find plenty of those annoying critters out there.So as i was saying, with you not working (read saving up your energy!), these freaks could actually work and prove themselves worthy of the position and package they hold (or not!). Hence the afterthought

Finally, being lazy makes you look good because ppl have lesser expectations from you. So when you do get to work on a project, you might get away with a lot less effort than those pitiful wastes of humanity i just mentioned above.

Also it might help if you were born with loadsa grey matter. Otherwise, my sympathies.

Peace