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.)
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