The week that wasn't (Part 1)

Well time sure does fly. And here i am, at the end of another week at XLRI. But its not just another week at XL- it has by far been the best week of my life. One that i won't forget till my dying day. But since i don't have much confidence on my mental faculties to register every possible feeling associated with the past one week, and the way it has just zipped through without giving us a chance to ponder about it, I've decided to "immortalise" the last one week by just blogging about it. (Those of you sincerely wondering whether i have better things to do in life- i DO...:p... I'm crunched for time even on this weekend, but in the larger interests of the society (lol.. who am i kidding???).. i've decided to jot the happenings down). Another Disclaimer to XL folks n my batchmates and seniors: In the event that i may have to utilise a specific example for ease of reader understanding and may have to take a name, i'll try managing with "initials", but even then if anyone is offended, don't kick my ass- just ask me to edit my blog. And the characters in this blog are anything but fictitious. And at the same time i don't wanna leave out important facts that is nothing but "history in the making"- For me and my batchmates at least. Anyways here i go, setting the time back to a week ago. Happy reading.

P.S. : grab some popcorn - i must admit- its looooong. Or keep some glucose at hand. I don't want anyone passing out before they're through.

16/6/2011 (The S.S.B.):

"Dude, i read somewhere that they're gonna throw water on us and drench us after we wear formals", blurted MJ. He made sense somehow. And i picked out from my wardrobe the crappiest shirt and trouser that wasn't even ironed- it didn't matter to the water if it were falling on a Louis Phillipe or a crappy "Shanivari bazaar" shirt. Well, we did look like a bunch of idiots dressing up in full formal fashion, tie et. al. at 10:00 pm to go for a supposed GBM (wat the heck was a GBM now) at FPH ( the Father Prabhu Hall, a big enough rectangular hall to accommodate 250 odd poor souls time and again for all the various wrong reasons. Examinations and boring diatribes to name a few. The place has more security cameras than the PMO continuously monitoring GOD knows what. ) Entering the FPH, i half expected the seniors to be loafing about in short pants n laughing at us lame-o's as we entered in full business attire, but was surprised to see a grim atmosphere in FPH. All the seniors meant business. The projector was started and then we were shown a ppt and bombarded with abbreviations from all sides: SSB, ILF, LDC, GBM and though i don't recollect exactly- all that might have stuck on was WTF and GTH. We were then all made to stand up and greet a Prof. who was the faculty head of this thing called the S.S.B. (Students' Steering Body. Remember this name. Its gonna have some say in the end). All of rushed to our feet as the harried prof. walked past in. We could tell he had better things to do this part of the night than to be addressing a bunch of students, and if he was trying to hide it, he didn't do it well. Now the "President" of this SSB, a senior of ours, kept describing the activities of the said SSB. One glance at the President, and we were taken aback. The heroic face of an Obama or a Bill wasn't what greeted us. He asked the prof to say a few words, being the faculty head of this SSB and so forth. Prof. walked to the podium to address the junior batch, starting with, "Its my pleasure to introduce you to XLRI, as you all know I'm here to inaugurate the first GBM of..." He turned to the president, "what's it now??". "The SSB. The SSB", shot back the embarrassed president. "Oh yes! The SSB. The SSB.", continued the prof., as a very amused junior batch looked on wondering really how often this SSB met up all year long. He wrapped up the speech surprisingly fast and then excused himself out. What followed was another session of random alphabets, in the form of organisations, being tossed about us. We were also informed that we'd have sessions every night to cover up the subjects that we were clueless about. The president, bringing his right hand, palm down upto his chin to show that we were "here", then raising it as high as he could over his head, told us the professors who taught us were "there" and they were trying their best to bridge the gap. Fine. So this wasn't an elaborate ragging session. Another thing in my life that i haven't experienced, and by the looks of it, probably won't. The session lasted about an hour so, no one actually remembers, and then we headed to our hostels. Another day at XL over and out. Buzz abounding from all sides about this new turn of events.

17/6/2011: (The GRIND):

The morning saw a rush of people grabbing a last minute bite as they hurried to their classrooms. Another day of preparatory lectures to transition into life in a B-School. We slept through a special yoga session arranged for us at 7 in the morning. A wise, harried looking soul, came up to us later, telling us we were really lucky we weren't there. Unfortunately for him, he was right behind a mammoth of a guy in the yoga session, blocking his entire view of the "xl ki kudiyan", and if that wasn't bad enough, the guy almost passed out in the "pavan-mukt-aasana"- a green signal to all "farters" to do what they love the most publicly without anybody having to judge them. Well, now THAT's a crappy start to a day if ever there was one. All these years of laziness was finally paying off for me- at least i didn't get "skunked" on. The day lectures taken by a particular prof seemed reminiscent of my engg days, for we had 3 hours worth of "matrices". Yes Matrices. Who thought the crappy thing we learned in Engg school, which was, if u got to see, the closest we engineers ever got to arranging numbers in "pretty" little square that was aesthetically appealing as well, was actually going to be an important tool in Business schools. I'm still not convinced of its B-school utility. I mean i can't see Kotler or Covey or Buffet sitting around in a circle in a team poring over a funny looking square trying to arrange numbers to look pretty enough and at the same time worthy of predicting the next global recession (Boy have we had enough of that already!!!)

In the evening we were informed of our next rendezvous with the seniors- this time they meant business. At about 10:00 in the night we all gathered in the FPH and had some serious kick ass stuff on economics and accounting. The clock ticked slowly by- 1 am. Then 2am, then 3 am. Here we were, after a hectic day, getting our asses kicked kindly by the supposedly helpful seniors' lectures. Somewhere between counting the o'clocks, happened an incident that i'm not very proud of, but m still blogging it down, just to prove a point to Garry Podder. (Garry Podder, or GP from now on, is my padosi living below me. We clicked on the first day itself. Its but obvious, Garry Podder ain't his real name, but hence forth i shall refer to him this way. On an unrelated note - GP is the roommate of MJ). SO, GP challenged me to blog this if i had the "things that we play with on the sports field" to do so. So, GP- here- i DO have the "things that we play with on the sports field". Ok, so here's what happened- GP was sitting to my right. Nygil (my roommate) on my left. In front of Nygil sat this PYT ( XL term for pretty young thing), let's call her KalSiUmmm (pronounced Calcium, and yes the "ummm" at the end says a lot about her), who kept fidgeting with her pen and in one maneuver, sent in flying to her right under the chair of the girl on her right and it lay just in front of my feet. After a few seconds of unsuccessful attempts to retrieve the fallen pen, i decided to be the "nice guy" and help her. So i ducked under the chair of the gal in front of me and locked on to the pen, which, to my bad luck, was, at the same moment in her grip too. Call it the weird stupor that keeping awake for 20 hours a day does to you, or watever you want to, i grabbed the pen from her hand under the chair and then handed it to her (after taking it from her in the first place) over her shoulder. Yes- her expression wasn't very sweet, and my loud and nervous chuckle to ease he situation didn't help as well, and all i got was a "don't act smart" stare in return, much to the entertainment of my friends on the right and the left who left no stone unturned in letting the whole TNMR know about it that night. I could definitely conclude that these guys didn't need to learn marketing. The way they marketed this incident throughout XL, each time making me look more and more evil, right upto the point where i swear, the story went something like I was the guy who dropped the pen out of her hand in the first place and tried to snatch the pen and bite her. Garry Podder had a lot to do with this. I'm gonna get back at him someday...:D:D

Just a little over 3 am, the session broke off. I made a sprint for the door. I was exhausted. Drained to the core. Just a little sprint for half a minute and i'd be in my room, in my bed, snuggled and cosy. As i reached the final bend for my hostel, i happened to notice something which i should have but it didn't strike me initially. There were groups of people standing under a few tress on the route and as i reached closer, a few of them rushed out from the trees, blocked the path and said- "Go to the small auditorium. Hurry!". I was livid. The night wasn't going to be over that soon after all. Here was a group of seniors who wanted to "rag" us. My dream of being ragged was finally going to be true, but instead of being happy, i was cursing the timing of this adventure. I headed to the auditorium, resigned to my fate at what was to happen. I waited for Garry Podder, took him aside and told him, "Dude, we're in this together. Just so that we don't make an exhibition in front of our batch, let's wait for some other "bakra" to get shaheed before we do. Since we are compelled to do it, we may might as well have a laugh out of it all"

(we then proceeded towards the auditorium, not knowing what lay ahead of us that night, the following day or maybe the week to come. This was the first thing we learnt from here. Lesson #1: Live life as it comes, without worrying about what was or is to come. Stay tuned to know what happened in the auditorium that night. And the more amazing stuff that followed in the week to come, is definitely gonna make for amazing reading. Signing off for the night. Stay tuned.)

Oriented blues

16/6/2011

If the orientation/ preparatory session is any indication of what the next two years is going to be, then well we are all in for a sorry surprise. Neither is it helping my "blogging resolution" in any which way. Yesterday the server was down the whole evening for some reason. Thanks to the jam-packed schedule on day 1, i couldn't manage to get a new local number and since Vodafone has no network (none watsoever) in XL, i felt, for the first time in wat seemed like ages, isolated from the outside world....:(:(

But thnx to some new-found frnds from BM, it wasn't that bad. Yesterday, for the second consecutive day, my room was turned into the XL version of the COKE studio, audience included. Another guy from my class, a good guitarist, helped me entertain the folk from not just the TNMR (rfr prev post for the TNMR story), but also the adjacent hostel too. The so-called "jamming" lasted over an hour, after which we hungry souls hoarded into the canteen in such a hurry, as if someone had setup an actual COKE studio downstairs. Food again- homely!! (My mom has one more reason to fret. As it is she thinks that all i miss about home is the food. Well. not anymore)

In a surprising first- i for the FIRST TIME EVER did my own laundry. Well, i took help, and plus the front-load washing machine seemed even more complicated than it looked. Taking well over 90 mins to wash a single set of clothes, i was obliged to keep-awake right unto 2 in the morning. Totally worth it!! Job done successfully with minimal "attiral" damage. all smiles.

The first day of the preparatory course: 16 June, was the first time i entered into my XL classroom. Lecture Hall 8. The HRM and BM batches are divided into two sections- A and B, with me in HRM-B. The classroom is not unlike the "well" at IIM-A. Only difference being the rotating chairs fixed to the floor. U feel partly like an executive sitting in them, swinging round and round. Partly so, cos unlike the "real" executive chairs, these are still wooden...;).. The first lecture on case-study analysis and the last lecture on "Labor laws, PM and IR" were quite absorbing. The latter taking up almost the entire alloted session of 90 mins, w/o me, (yes ME) looking at the watch even once. The work-ex guys seemed to get thrilled after learning about a few laws and kept asking doubts after doubts, seeking a way they can get back at their former employers. The proffessor, though being of a very obliging nature, kept the discussion super-ficial w/o getting into the intricacies of every doubt. The guy was right. This was after all a preparatory course. Not "solve all your former corporate problems in class" day. Inspite of this, we freshers still were hooked on like a 2-year old kid to "kinder joy". I might actually have found my to-be interesting subject for the semester.

Anyways, got time to get a new sim card today. Not surprisngly a TATA Docomo- it was TATA's nagar after all. Rains maintained an on again-off again relationship today. Rubbing us the wrong way and hindering every possible plan to escape the XL campus for a while. That didn't stop us - me n my roomie- from taking a rather wet n uncomfartable ride to the city- to an area called SAkchi market. Grabing hold off all the necessities on our "list", we drove back to campus leaving me an extra half hour to go n blog about my life out here.

A noticeboard on our mess seems quite intriguing to me as of now. Though i'd like to mention in this blog that the day has ended and now m off for the day. But the "intriguing" notice stating that-

"the seniors would like to "interact" us in the "Father Prabhu Hall", so we ought to report in "full formal attire" at 9:45 pm tonight" has gotten a lot of tongues wagging. Let's see what fate has in store. And i hope that whatever is to follow is not too embarrassing to post in my next blog...:):)..

Let's hope there IS a next time to blog about my life here.... Signing off (temporarily).

The Beginning

13/6/2011: (Day1.. Jo hoga dekha jaaye ga)

The morning started with a very groggy, one-eyed look at the time on the cell phone. 10:33 am. After the elapsing of time equal to what my brain took to process the information, I surprisingly found myself in the bathroom, brush in hand, frantically getting ready for the day. And the rush was justified too. It after all was not any ordinary day. It was the first day of the rest of my life. Correction. The first day of the rest of my life at XL. This day forth, I shall be looked upon as an XL-ite. Whenever I’m in the middle of a conversation, I can start something like, “When I was in XL, …blah blah blah…” or while chatting with anonymous strangers and they ask where I’ve studied, I can casually blurt out, ”Nothing per se. Just an HR degree from XLRI” and then stick out my teeth in a wide grin. After all, the person at the other end has no chance of noticing the “smirk”. And suddenly I was jolted back to reality. 10:55. And I was yet to open the cap off the tooth paste.” Damn!!”, I thought to myself, “You just gotta stop doing that.”

Things were moving slow. Got one of these huge ricks from here. Back there in Gujarat, I’d have called them “chhakdas”, but not knowing what reaction that term will have on the local townsfolk, I decided not to get vocal about my knowledge. The good thing about one of these is, that people travelling with luggage, and I mean loads of it, as much as 99 Kgs in my case, can lug their “luggage” around quite comfortably.

The Jamshedpur near my hotel was, to put it lightly, dis-spiriting. With people on either side of the road fighting for every inch of the footpath. The aforementioned ricks a.k.a “chhakdas” hogging the most of the road and vehicles behind it inching along while the hot Jamshedpur sun cruelly toasted their exteriors. The roads, not very promising too, with potholes strewn randomly to give the extra “Indian-like” feel to those visiting from abroad. The moment you cross a particular round-about in the city, it seems like you’ve secretly touched upon a portkey in a Harry Potter book and have travelled into another city. For across this particular round-about, there’s greenery as far as the eye can behold. Not to mention spick and span footpaths and vast regions of lush green lawns, with buildings thrown about sparsely. The roads- broad and clean and well maintained. (So, THIS is the supposed Jamshedpur that holds the record for the “seventh cleanest city in India”). A vast expanse of green lawn, as big as a small village in rural india is actually the famous “Jubilee Park” that surrounds XLRI on one side. Touching XL at another end is the “mother and father” of sport gymkhanas in the country- the Tata sports complex Jamshedpur. An Olympic size track with almost all facilities I assume. The view picturesque. Even as we enter XLRI, it is nothing like the the website. Nothing like the photographs you see out there. Its bigger, in fact much better than what you imagine seeing the vast collection of online photographs. My room, nt too bad. Being on the first floor is an added advantage- you don’t feel the heat top floors feel. The rooms are spacious too. Even though you have to share it with someone, (in my case a genial Punjabi guy, born and brought up in Calcutta-Navjot) you still have ample of space. And coming from me- a guy who’s lived in penthouses all through the engineering days- its not that hyped up after all. Each floor has about 8 rooms. Ofcourse, like all hostels, there is a common washroom- not too bad, not too good either. The good thing though is that each floor is equipped with their own washing-machine. And on our floor- a front loading one. (all smiles… cos, front load = dryer clothes = lesser time hanging them like decoration in your room… ie. Hostel room doesn’t end up looking like a cheap roadside clothes sale)

Another tech-savvy thing worth noting is this weird apparatus outside every door, actually just above the niche where the door is bolted into, which looks like a remote control, but only because there are numbers on it from 0-9 and a large doorbell shaped button in the bottom center. Many ideas were pitched, some said it’s a door intercom. Some said it’s a device that counts the times you enter and leave the room. (weird!!!). Some even said its an automatic shutter that locks you in if you don’t leave the room on time (weirder…;)…!!!) To top it all, someone cracked a joke about faculties locking us in, in case the assignments weren’t submitted. And then the laughter turned into a frightened grin at the thought of such an even actually happening. Only later were we to learn that it’s an electronic lock. The number which unlocked it, was known only to the two occupants that shared the room. This saved the hassles of locking and making sure the keys aren’t lost, or worse still, locked inside with us standing outside. Man, XL had some perks- though an A/C in each room would have been a much better way of showing their tech-savvy-ness, it was nonetheless a welcome gadget.

14/6/2011: (Day two of the honeymoon period)

After a harried day spent in the loan process, with a surprising amount of success, I left my dad off at the station. So, it was for the first time- a totally new city and me alone. I drove back to the hostel. First things first. I’d been dying to log into facebook and plus the connection speed at XL- always been much hyped about. Starting the wi-fi, I wasn’t disappointed. Hmmm… so this is wat it feels like to study in an Indian ivy-league. Again, I was jolted out of my reverie with a knock on the door. In came a troop of people, hardly seeking an invitation, introducing themselves one by one. My head felt tizzy. All I heard was the first one and the last one, the “in-between” ones were more of a rambling. Even now I can’t remember the exact number of people OR even who was in here. Damn!! I really need some “Human Resource” management. It’s a good thing I’ve come here. So, the story goes something like this- the entire last evening, the entire inhabitants of “The Nilima Acharya Men’s Residence”

(Now there’s an entire story behind this. Apparently, this was formerly a women’s hostel by the same name, and due to some modifications on campus, this now has been converted into a Boy’s hostel. Hence the name. It was so convenient for the XL management too that all they did was to drop the “W” and the “O” from the entrance mettalic hoarding which read “The Nilima Acharya Women’s Residence”. Needless to say, the inhabitants, me included, were sort of irked by the name. After all, try comparing “Fr. Enright’s Men’s Residence” to ours. We sounded like a pansy little dude in half pants standing in front of a macho man ready to beat the crap out of us. It was thus renamed- TNMR. Abbreviating it somehow calmed our insecurities, if any, and from then on, we reffered to our hostel as TNMR”)…

Had come hunting for me yesterday. Apparently someone had established that I was some sort of a musician (I know- stupid ol’ me… what did I expect carrying my entire musical paraphernalia along with me to XL) and they wanted to hear something. I left my un-packing halfway. (… That’s another thing I suck at. I have known times during graduation where I’ve come to college from my vacation at home and then only months later realized that there’s still a bag left to be unpacked…). Anyways, I had to accede to their request to see my “synthesizer”. Another dude across the hall- a Ravi seemed to be ecstatic at the fact that I had got this along and tried his hand at it too. It was bonding at the most elementary level.

8:30 is when the mess opens for dinner, and is when we precisely went for our. A hungry bunch are we, cos there was talks about dinner about an hour before mess even opened for business. Anyways, with the food out here, I doubt I can ever lose weight in these two years. Excellent by “bahar ka khana” standards. It was a motley crowd sitting there at the jam-packed table. People from various parts of the country. A particular guy very vocal about the “xl ki kudiyans” and even pointed at some of them. While we weren’t having a dig at his “enthusiasm”, we were busy trying to make sense of a particularly weird accent on one side. While I turned to the person on my right and smiled and asked him his name and from where he was, he looked aghast for a second and said- “dude!! I was just in your room. Remember? I was the guy who cracked so and so joke”.. and then he began recalling whatever joke it was that he cracked, while I tried to hide my embarrassment and also trying to memorise his face and his name. And now as I write this blog, just hours later, I am still trying to recollect his name. I’d better think of some non-offensive nickname to address him by tomorrow, or else I might have to face something like, “Dude!! C’mon now… Remember that joke??...”. I guess this time round, I just should pay attention to that joke, for I might remember his name that ways.

Our dinner ended and the gang (lets call it this for now, as I don’t know names yet) decided to just sit on the lawn and just muse a while. Random musings about movies ended drastically for a particular “Ravi”, who ended up recalling a funny incident, after which he was permanently nicknamed “Kilimanjaro” (Yes it’s the very Aishwarya Rai Kilimanjaro). The circle kept getting bigger and bigger as random people decide to sit and listen to what they thought was a highly intellectual and deeply gratifying conversation, as a result of which people began getting all the more subdued and silent. They did bring up “Kilimanjaro” again and again, but it seemed to wear off after a while. The random talking and silent conversations continued to fade off upto a point when there was not a single sound from the group for about one long and killing minute. Imagine 25 guys sitting around in a circle with nothing but silence between them. We ended our intellectual conversation by breaking off into smaller groups, thinking of some excuse or the other to justify doing so. Our group decided to walk around campus- and I must say- I was impressed even more, if possible. The GMP residence resembled some swanky uptown society in a metro with a couple of apartments well lit and maintained. We walked and walked. The XL campus, though not as large as many NITs or IIM-A for that matter, was definitely a huge one. Well equipped. Well maintained, and the best part- NO SUPERVISION. We didn’t bump into a single official from XL, not even a faculty on the first two days. The orientation is slated to start tomorrow and definitely there’ll be no escaping faculties there, but apart from that- we’re Lords of our kingdoms (Just one kingdom infact- the aforementioned XL campus). But still, it’s a welcome break from Nirma Jailhouse. Where we had more DON’Ts that DOs. Life in an ivy league was suddenly looking to be a good thing after all. Let’s see how far my optimism and smile lasts. Signing off for today with more twists to the X-Files coming up shortly.