My Ramblings

About to meet the Legend Himself: Dr. V Kurien, The Milk Man of India

2010-04-07T02:42:00.008+05:30

Its been 10 months since I joined IRMA as a ruralcoolie (word coined by Mr. Joseph Kalassery) and what better way to start my second innings at blogging than to talk about Dr. Verghese Kurien and our meeting with him scheduled for 8th April 2010.

Popularly known as the Milk Man of India, Dr. Kurien engineered the White Revolution. He was the founding chairman of the NDDB and also set up the GCMMF (better known as Amul), the Institute of Rural Management(IRMA) and various other institutions.

Being the founder of IRMA and also the chief architect behind the growth of Amul and the white revolution, the name was mentioned every now and then, in lectures, case studies, normal gossip sessions etc. etc. etc. To be frank, it is then that I understood the respect commanded by the fellow mallu among people from various parts of the country, with varied backgrounds and work experiences. The admiration for him was bound to build in me, as with any other ruralcoolie.

Another thing which was developed was a strong loyalty to AMUL. As an alumnus of the institute puts it, an IRMAN will seldom eat an icecream other than AMUL(I still remember myself and Ajay fighting with a shopkeeper in Shahada, Maharashtra for not giving us Amul Milkpowder and cheating us with Nestle Everyday).

The current batches at IRMA have been pretty unlucky in the sense that by the time we came into this place, the exodus of the great personality from the board of IRMA due to what I understand to be differences of opinion with the rest of the management at GCMMF as well as IRMA(as the media would like to put it) had already happened. So we have been deprived of the opportunity of interacting with the legend and gain from the ocean of practical knowledge that the man is. Much more saddening was the fact that he fell ill in June last year, and had to be hospitalised in Mumbai, the city which gave birth to Anand and the Anand model of co-operatives. From then on, we were always on the dark about any opportunity that might arise to have an interaction.

It is "dream come true" time this thursday evening at 5:30 at the Amul Auditorium when we, PRM 30, share the same roof with Padma Vibhushan Shri Verghese Kurien.

More updates on that after the meeting.

PS: I know this is a very badly drafted post but what the heck? I don't care if you read this or not.....

Come Back !!

2010-04-06T03:15:00.003+05:30

Hi all,

With this post, I mark my return to the blogosphere.

In the last one and half year or so, the only time I blogged was when I had to post something on blogspot for grades in the Collective Action and Cooperation course here in IRMA.(http://www.collectiveactionandcooperation.blogspot.com/)

All this while, I have been feeling really bad about not being able to continue with my blogging. I'm not sure if I can keep the promise of regularly updating this blog, looking at what happened with world famous blogger and my namesake friend "Abhijith" once he joined IIFT.

Hope to have some fun in this innings of mine.

Cheers

Tag Maholsavam continues..

2008-08-01T22:51:00.005+05:30

Ladies and Gentlemen !! I sincerely hope that this post would mark an end to my hibernation in the blogosphere. Thanks to Abhi for the tag !!

So here I go

1. LAST MOVIE YOU SAW IN A THEATER: Om Shanti Om . Seriously !! But this doesn't mean that I don't watch new movies. Why else am I paying Rs500+ p.m to BSNL?? Hope to go for a movie atleast this week .

2. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING: It's Not About the Bike by LANCE ARMSTRONG . It's his autobiography and is the story of his inspirational battle against the odds. Really an awe-inspiring tale of immense courage and will.

3. FAVORITE BOARD GAME: None as of now . Trying to master a bit of Chess b'coz almost all my colleagues are masters in it and it really is boring to do nothing when they are playing.

4. FAVORITE SOUND: Well, This one depends on my mood. But right now, it's the throaty roar of a four cylinder Honda engine revving away to the redline with all its might.

5. WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD: When I couldn't convert some of my B- school interviews.

6. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE: Will my tea be hot ?? Or has it turned cold ??

7. FAVORITE FAST FOOD PLACE. Thatt kada at PMG junction .. Van kidilam sthalam aan.

8. FUTURE CHILD’S NAME. Ever since I read some Russian kids book when I was a kid , I've wanted to name my daughter Natasha , a character from the book.

9. FINISH THIS STATEMENT.”IF I HAD A LOT OF MONEY I’D...Buy an YAMAHA MT-01 and go on an all- India tour ! Alone !!!

10. DO YOU DRIVE FAST? No , I don't .. Coz I still cannot drive a car. But I do ride my bike a bit fast at times. Not too fast , mind you!! Is 70kmph through Pattom- Keshavadasapuram at 5PM too fast ???

11. DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL? : No.

12. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CAR? Yet to buy a car (Heck!! I haven't even learnt how to drive one . That reminds me to join the driving school tomorrow.)

13. FAVORITE DRINK : Soda Naaranga Vellam with both sugar n salt in it . Vodka with Sprite would be a close second.

14. FINISH THIS STATEMENT, “IF I HAD THE TIME I WOULD… travel a lot, blog more and maybe read more .

15. DO YOU EAT THE STEMS ON BROCCOLI?: I haven't seen this thing properly , leave alone eat it. And I don't think I would eat the stems.

16. IF YOU COULD DYE YOUR HAIR ANY COLOR, WHAT WOULD BE YOUR CHOICE? : Somewhere between Natural Brown and Burgundy.

17. NAME ALL THE DIFFERENT CITIES/TOWNS YOU HAVE LIVED IN. :Thiruvananthapuram aka Trivandrum. Haven't lived anywhere else though I've visited a few of the other cities.

18. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH.: Formula 1, Cricket (once in a while) , Tennis , WRC .

19. ONE NICE THING ABOUT THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU. : Doesn't seem to have jada proportional to his size.

20. WHAT’S UNDER YOUR BED? : Some of my photostats of some of the etxts I had to study in S6 . Yes, I had exams till yesterday.

21. WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE BORN AS YOURSELF AGAIN? Not at all . I need a change.

22. MORNING PERSON, OR NIGHT OWL? Was more of a morning person till sometime back. Now slowly moving towards being a Night Owl.

23. FAVORITE PLACE TO RELAX? Beach is the place to be when I need to relax . Sanghumugham beach after 9pm, to be precise.

24. Of all The People You Tagged This To, Who’s Most Likely To Respond First?: Sreehari , I guess.

I'm tagging Sreehari and Sandeep.

Dilemma ..

2008-05-06T13:24:00.000+05:30

Life doesn't take you the way you want it to take you .

One moment, I knew where I was going .. I had a lot of company .. But now suddenly something is missing ..Did I take a wrong step somewhere ?? I don't know ..

I've no clue about what I'd do , where I'd go or even which way to go ..I'm stuck at this intersection in an unknown land with no means of knowing what lies at the end of each path in front of me ..

I know every step I'm gonna take will define my life . One wrong step and it could be a different story altogether .

I've two options in front of me .. One : To take the beaten route which most of the people take .
Two : To take the road less travelled by .But then there are a lot of roadblocks in this route ..

I plan to take the second route ,without anyone to guide me . I'll be on myself , open and susceptible to all the dangers that lie on the way .

Am I right ?? Am I wrong ????

Only time will tell ..

Tagged

2007-09-21T15:39:00.000+05:30

It’s been sometime since I was tagged by Abhi … All these days I couldn’t post due to lack of time . Atlast got a holiday and here I am typing away to glory …

This tag consists of 18 questions which we normaly don’t get to see in tags ..

Here you go !!

1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it:
Well, the most prominent scar on my body would be the one above my right eyebrow (which is not so prominent).. I got it when I was around 7-8 years old (??) when I hit the open door of an Ambassador car parked in front of a painting workshop which used to be near my home . I was walking home with my brother from school , poor little me turned back while walking and then BANG … Luckily there were no stitches ..

2. What does your phone look like?

It looks like a Nokia 5200 . Obviously being a 5200 , what else would it look like ??

This is how it looks ..
3. What is on the walls of your bedroom?

A calendar from our Resident’s Association . Nothing else .
4. What is your current desktop picture?

A photograph of the overcast sky shot by my friend during our tour last week at Hyderabad ..

5. Do you believe in gay marriage?
Nopes …

6. What do you want more than anything right now?

At the moment , I would like to get an admission in IIM-A more than anything else .. But since that is a really far shot , I would be content with either a Mitsubishi EVO X or Yamaha R1 .

7 . What time were you born?

I don’t know and I’ve never asked my parents .. All I know is that I was born on Monday , the 23^rd of June , 1986..

8. Are your parents still together?

Yes . PERIOD.

9. Last person who made you cry?

I don’t remember crying for sometime now . But I remember tears welling up in my eyes when I saw some senti(Ultra heavy stuff ) movie 2-3 years ago . Don’t ask me which movie . I forgot .
10. What is your favourite perfume / cologne?

I use AXE and I like almost all their fragrances . The one I’m using right now is the CLICK .

11. What kind of hair/eye color do you like in the opposite sex?

Hair-It doesn’t really matter . But to be specific I like medium length black hair tied into a ponytail with maybe a bit of mild streaks ..
Eye Colour-I don’t know why but I’ve always had a liking for hazel eyes.

12. What are you listening to?

Manasanilayil from the movie Dhwani .. Just before this, I was listening to Sad But True by Metallica .

13. Do you get scared of the dark?

No . Unless its accompanied by the usual sound effects in RGV horror movies ..

14. Do you like painkillers?

No . I’d rather have a cup of tea . Somehow I like suffering pain .

15. Are you too shy to ask someone out?

Never been in such a situation where I felt like asking someone out . If ever I get into such a situation , I doubt if I’ll be able to ask her without stammering ..

16. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?

Thattu dosa with chutney , rasavada and omelette . It’s been 2 days since I had thattu food .

17. Who was the last person who made you mad?

The Indian Railways .. For making me wait for an hour to pick up my mom from the railway station ..
18. Who was the last person who made you smile?

Sidin Sunny Vadukut .Go through his open letter to Flintoff and find out why .

Anyone is free to take up this tag from me ..

Battle at Kruger National Park

2007-08-13T19:06:00.000+05:30

This is a video that i stumbled upon in youtube today .. An Amazing example for "Unity is strength " ..
A pride of lions attack a calf and the whole buffalo herd groups together and saves the kid ..

High Performance.Delivered

2007-08-04T00:22:00.000+05:30

It all started on 24^th or 23^rd of July at around 2PM when I got an sms from Dhiraj telling that Accenture is coming to our campus most probably on 28^th July. That meant just 3 days to prepare for the first ever job test and interview in my life. 25^th and 26^th (Wed n Thu) went away without any work in this field cos Deepak sir had asked us to submit the abstract for the Seminar. The fact that the topic had to be some very recent one which is path breaking in one way or the other meant that I had to spend all my free time on the net searching for a topic and preparing . By God’s grace, I was able to finish the work off by Thursday and I was free by Thursday evening.

Now comes the hard part, the preparation for the technical interview, which I knew was gonna be tough from my online research about Accenture. Still, being the typical engineering student that I am, I kept on procrastinating till Friday morning. The revelation came quick n hard on me that the amount of knowledge I had about Electronics & Communication was almost as much as a 10^th grader would know (I know I am exaggerating a bit, but still!!).So started out on conquering digital electronics which I wanted to project as my favourite subject. Then realized that I didn’t have a file to keep my documents, so went to the shop to get one. Later, I realize that I didn’t have a recent photograph. I dress up in the formals I planned to wear on the D-day and go to the friendly neighbourhood photo studio. Spend around 15 minutes for the studio dude to photoshop my image (He was working on the shadows, not on me!!!) Get the copies and go back home. By this time, amount of studies =0.5% of what I had planned to study.

By now, I decide to dump EC and refresh C++ in which I was supposed to be pretty good (& I was, in school, 3 years ago.) Started turning pages of a text by Sumita Arora. By 8 ,My brother gets home and decides to test my C++ capabilities and ask me a few questions to which gave the dumbest answers ( Later I found that he was in the tech panel for the recruitment procedure in his office ) . I get completely dejected and started the preps again. But, as usual, I decide that I would study the rest at 3AM .Set the alarm at 3 and hit the sack at 10.

D- Day

Time: 0300 hrs

The alarm rings. As usual, I switch it off and go back to sleep.

Time: 0600 hrs

Wake up to find that I knew zilch about pointers and other crap. Decides that any more energy spent on CPP would anyways be wasted and goes to read the newspaper.

Time: 0700hrs

Takes bath and goes to the nearby temple and gets the prasadam of the Ganapati Homam that was offered on my behalf.

Time: 0800hrs

Tries to have breakfast – Puttu, kadala and pappadam. Nothing seems to go through my food pipe. Stops after eating a minute quantity of it and gets ready to go to college.

Time: 0830hrs

Reach college with Gokul. See some other guys already there and we set off to the PPT hall to get the PA system up and running.

Time: 0915hrs

The Accenture guys [Mr. A (head shaven, HR), Mr. S (CET passout ’95, tech) and Mr. R (HR)] reach the ppt hall. The PPT starts and continues for about an hour followed by a small quiz session consisting of questions from the facts they had mentioned in the PPT. Winners get a pen each from them.

The selection procedure is a 4 step process.

1) Aptitude test

2) Essay (5 mins)

3) HR Interview

4) Final Interview

Time: 1045hrs

The test starts .It consists of 55 questions to be answered in 60 minutes. Plus an essay in 5 minutes about “My college life” .Answers the test pretty decently. Gets reminded of essays in Social Studies in class 10 and complete the one page allotted for the essay in 4 minutes (Pakka kathiyadi). We are asked to report at 1245 with 2 copies of recent photograph and Xerox copies of all marklists. Come out to see that Gokul had already left for home. Poor guy remembers me after he covered 2 kms and comes back for me.

Time: 1215hrs

Reach home. Have the fastest lunch I had ever had. Run up to my room and change into formals. Sms Gokul not to wait for me cos I had to take the Xerox of my marklists. Starts the bike and goes to the Photostat kada. Takes all copies and leaves for college.

Time: 1245hrs

Reach college. Move to the PPT hall. The Accenture people start moving with us and on the way, I befriend Mr. S and find that he is a mechanical engineer from CET. Reach the PPT hall and the team announces the names of the people selected for the GD round. 3 groups are formed for the GD and I fall into the 3^rd group of which Mr. S is the moderator. Shocked to find that many of the probables weren’t in the list.

Time: 1315hrs

The GD starts. Topic “ Should mobile phones be banned in colleges “ .Lots of the usual crap from all of us followed by a revolutionary demand by yours truly that mobile jammers must be installed in classrooms to restore the harmony in classrooms .

Time: 1330hrs

GD ends. All 14 from my group are selected for the interview round. We are made to go to the adjacent room and fill up a form and wait for the interview call.

Time: around 1415hrs

HR Interview (lasts around 15 mins)

Interviewer Mr. R

Me: Good Afternoon Sir!!

R: Good Afternoon!! Take your seat!!!

Me: Thank you Sir!!

R: Tell me something about yourself!!!

Me: Blah blah blah.

R: Who is your role model???

Me (stumped):???

???

Kimi Raikkonen (remembers Saranyan’s dialogue once at IMS)

R: But he hardly won any race last year!!

Me: Sir!! But he tried his maximum. And I’m like him. Even in any hostile situation, I put in 100% effort and blah …. … It’s the effort you put in that matters …… blah blah blah …

R: Do u have any offers???

Me: Nope

R: What happened with Wipro??

Me (sheepishly): Backlogs!!

R: But they allowed 3 backlogs na???

Me: But I had 4, Sir!!! (Njan oru sambhavam thanne!!)

R: And have you cleared all of them now???

Me: Yes Sir!!

R: What’s the proof??

Me: (Shows him the marklists. Poor guy gets confused with sessionals ,university marks and total marks cos sessionals and Uty marks are almost same (40-43) and total marks look as if its out of 100 when it actually is out of 150)

R: Why Accenture?

Me: Blah Blah Blah

R: Would you run away in between??

Me: No sir!! Cos Accenture is the best there is and ……

R: Tell me about your miniproject.

Me (Answers):

R: Thank you!!

Me: Thank you, Sir!!

The guy from Merittrac (They organized the whole thing) asked me to go back to the waiting room.

Time: around 1500hrs (~6 mins)

Final Interview

Interviewer Mr.S

S: Entha Abhijithe Ith?? Kore ondallo (Pointing to my marklists !!)

S: Why so many supplies??? What happened??

Me: Smiles

S: Why Accenture??

Me: Same as before.

S: What is a compiler???

Me (Had learnt the answer cos I got to know that he was asking the same question to everyone.): Answers

S: What is polymorphism??

Me: Answers…

S: You won’t be able to join Accenture if you have any backlogs when you pass out.

Me: Of course, Sir!! I won’t be having any backlogs then!!

S: Any questions??

Me: Asks about how the strengthening of Indian Rupee in the market affects Accenture and how they plan to overcome it??(Courtesy: Some guy in CET who asked the same question to the CTS panel 3-4 days ago ...)

S: Answers in detail (Somewhat)

Me: Thank you sir!!!

S: Thank you!!

Time: around 1615hrs

The Accenture people come to the waiting room filled with anxious candidates. Mr.S calls out the names and hands over the offer letters. After about 6-7 names, I hear my name being called out. Shakes hand with S and takes the offer letter. That's when i found out what euphoria meant .

Spent the evening at Ambrosia wit a group of 7 people and left there at 10 .

In retrospect, I find this day one of the most happiest in my life . The best mix of 24 hours I’ve ever had ….

And thus ends my very first step in the corporate world .

Note : To those who felt like i should be writing an obituary rather than a blog ,

DUDE !! You’ve got a lot of company !!!