The curious case of Year Books...!!

Yearbooks are a fairly recent phenomenon in Indian Campuses.Before yearbooks,it was slam books which ruled over all the campuses.Then yearbooks replaced them by collating the information of the entire batch in a booklet.But in today's era of social media,they have in a way have become redundant.Well,this post doesn't intent to discuss the relevance of yearbooks but rather discuss the crazy stuff that goes into it!

In my engineering yearbook,each person had to write about what his philosophy of life is and what he would remember the most about the college.People used to copy some catchy lines from internet and paste it in the yearbooks.Banal statements like "I believe in "Work hard..party harder' ...I believe in "Working hard..honestly..respecting elders..bla bla bla..Strangely such statements used to come from people who actually didn't even work hard or party..just wrote for the sake of it.The design of the yearbooks used to be very rudimentary.In our days,even a guy with basic knowledge of Photoshop used to be dubbed as "Design Guru'.Things have changed a lot these days with the popularity of SLR cameras and social media whereby more people are taking up designing.Using photoshop, people make even a street dog look royal and beautiful :)

The B-schools yearbooks are much different from that of engineering ones.The design is outsourced to some specialized firms who are into the business of designing and printing.As any other activity in business schools,even this doesn't come cheap.It does cost a bomb to design and print yearbooks for the entire batch.The designs are much fancier than the engineering ones but they aren't changed every year.Even the introductory words by the top administration of the institute is the same every year.The content of the yearbook comprises of testimonials that your batch mates write about you.These testimonials are much boring than the content of what you see in the engineering yearbooks.People write the same crap for all!

Girls have starting lines like "She is a happy-go-lucky girl spreading happiness all around her and bailing humanity out of gloom and morose"

Other banal statements would be " She is beauty with brains...don't get fooled by her tough demeanour..she is like a tender child from inside"

Guys would have statements like "He is a honest..harworking and believes in high thinking..low living...most eligible bachelor in the batch....a perfect connoisseur of good food..Tom Cruise looks bla bla bla..."

Slam books in schools did a much better job as the person filling it was much more candor about the person to whom the slam book belonged.When the stuff gets distrubuted with the entire batch,it's when it all starts get boring!

The truth is when you turn the pages of yearbook and go through the pages of your batch mates,they look all the same..like the candles burning at the altar of a church!!

Malai Kofta

Ingredients

For the Koftas:

1 cup paneer crumbled;1 tablespoon maida,a pinch of baking powder,2 green chillies chopped,

2 tablespoons coriander chopped and salt to taste

For the gravy:

4 medium tomatoes,1 cup milk,1/4 cup cream,1 tablespoon kasuri methi,1 tablespoon oil,salt to taste

To be grounded into a paste:

1/4 cup onions sliced,3 cloves garlic,2 green chillies,2 dry red chillies,2 teaspoons

coriander seeds,1 teaspoon cumin seeds(jeeera);1'' ginger piece;2 cloves(laung),1'' stick cinnamon(dalchini)

For the garnish: 2 teaspoons chopped coriander

Steps:

For the koftas:

• Mix paneer,plain flour,baking powder,chillies,coriander and salt.
• Shape it into 8 small rounds and place them on a greased microwave safe plate.Microwave on HIGH for 45 seconds and keep aside.

For the gravy:

• Pierce the tomatoes lightly with a fork,place in a microwave safe dish and microwave HIGH for 4 minutes.Remove and cool.
• Blend the tomatoes to a smooth puree and keep aside.
• In another microwave safe bowl,add the oil and the ground paste and microwave HIGH for 5 minutes,stirring once after 2.5 minutes.
• Add the tomato puree and microwave on HIGH for 5 minutes stirring once in between after 2.5 minutes.
• Add the milk,cream,kasuri methi and salt and microwave on HIGH for 2 more minutes.

How to Proceed: Just before serving,add the koftas to the gravy amd microwave on HIGh for 2 minutes.Serve hot garnished with coriander.

Some of the Pics

Source of recipe: Samsung Book of Indian Microwave Cooking by Tarla Dalal

Besan Ladoo

Besan Ladoo is an extremely simple sweet item that can be made in just a few minutes.

Please follow the steps religiously else ONLY you would be responsible for the gastronomic disaster :)

You would need:

• 1 cup besan
• 1/3 cup ghee
• 1/4 teaspoon elaichi powder
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar

Steps:

• In a microwave safe bowl,add the besan and ghee and mix well.Microwave on HIGH(750W) for 3 minutes,stirring after every 1 minute.

• Reduce the power to 70% and microwave for another minute stirring once after 30 seconds.Remove and let the mixture cool completely.

• Add the elaichi powder and sugar and mix well.

• Divide into 10 equal portions and shape it into laddoos.

You can then garnish it with pista badam or anything else as you find suitable.

Source of recipe: Samsung Book of Indian Microwave Cooking by Tarla Dalal

Newfound Hobby--Cooking

Out of terrible "Vellapanti",I have discovered a new found hobby Cooking.It's extremely easy to cook.Cooking a great dish involves 3 simple steps:

• Google for some delicious recipes like Paneer Tikka,Besan ladoo etc.
• Follow the step by step approach as outlined.Don't use your creatively in tweaking the proportion of ingredients else that would be a recipe for disaster!
• Enjoy the delicious food with your friends and family :)

In the next few blog posts,I'll share some of the mouth watering recipes of dishes that I have tried myself and have proved to be a great success :)

Invictus

What I really liked about this movie is that it bears a clear testimony to the brilliance of Nelson Mandela as a Leader.Morgan Freeman almost flawlessly plays the character of Nelson Mandela.The movie is based on the backdrop of Nelson Mandela serving his first term as the president.Even after spending 30 years in prison,he wasn't myopic to favor his black countrymen over the whites.He had a clear vision of seeing South Africa as one of prosperous countries of the world.For that he would need the support of the whites.Although the whites were the minority they controlled the majority of the South African economy.Instead of single mindedly focussing on creating political goodwill among other countries of the world,he chose something(Sports) which had the potential to bridge the divide between the Blacks and the Whites.He strongly backed up his country's rugby's team and shared the secret of his success with the captain of SA's rugby team,played by Matt Damon.The success was finding inspiration among other things and inspiring your team to exceed their own expectations.It was his inspiration that helped his country's rugby team to beat the mighty New Zealand in the finals of the world cup and achieve the impossible.What followed was what brought tears in the eyes of Mr.Nelson Mandela.He was moved to see the bonding between the whites and the blacks while celebrating the success of the country's rugby team,the team that was written off at the start of the tournament.

It was the compassion and the ability of Mr. Mandela to forgive the whites for the greater goods of the country that played the trick for him.Compassion,Forgiveness and Inspiration were the pillars on which the leadership style of Mr.Mandela was based upon.

This was indeed a refreshing movie for me after series of movies on insider trading,NDA and collapse of wallstreet in 2008.

MBA from rearview mirror [Part 2]

In this post, I’ll focus on the non-academic aspect of MBA.

B-schools are a very different place than engineering colleges. There are a lot of festivities, DJ parties and lots of other recreational activities. There are numerous interest committees which most of the people take, not because of interest but because of C.V value. There will be a committee for every damn little thing from finance to cleaning bathroom!! In every committee or in every group assignment, Pareto principle can be seen in practice.20% of the members would be doing 80% of the work.

You would find three classes of people in a B-school.

Class 1: Over enthusiastic guys, may be, haven’t participated in any extracurricular activities in their undergraduate college and want to make up for it or have been the same over-enthusiastic in UG days and want to carry the same form in B-school.

Class 2: Do everything for the C.V value. Even if they give “bakshish” to the mess worker or bathroom cleaners, they would do so for the intention of C.V value. Even if they help a blind person cross a road, they will immediately come back to their room and update their resume with this.

Class 3: “Care a damn type”. These classes of people are usually the intelligent and studious ones and think such activities as sheer waste of time. They would have talked to some close friends in their senior batch who dispels the myth that involvement in committees has no C.V value and quote examples of numerous seniors who walked away with the most coveted jobs on campus without getting involved in any extracurricular.

The truth is that one should be involved in an interest committee only if one has interest in that else it would be a recipe for disaster!

The culture at a B-school is very open, much different from an engineering college. Students as well as some of the faculty members use slangs with a lot of freedom. Ironically, for some slang is a litmus test to know if someone is cool or not.

B-school is a place where everyone preaches honesty and ethics but almost none practices it. I seriously feel the pedagogy for subjects like ethics should go for a complete transformation. Such subjects are indeed extremely crucial in today’s world of greed but I feel it’s difficult to teach such thing to grown up people. Such value system should be instilled in school else we land up with the current scenario where everyone talks about in public in fancy conferences and lectures but none put to practice. Such state of affairs is indeed pathetic!

Although B-schools is a place of intense academic rigor, they are a great fun place too! It’s an amazing finishing school!!

With this I'll put an end to the series of posts on Business schools,guess I had too much of it :)

MBA from rear view mirror[Part 1]

During my two years of MBA,I always felt that one needs some considerable amount of time for self-introspection and to be in total control of the situation but MBA doesn't gives you that privilege. Now time has taken a complete U turn.MBA is over and you are grappling to find something worthwhile to do at home. I do realize that it’s going to be the last "long" vacation of my life. One has plenty of time to look back in time and understand what MBA was all about!

In this post I would only look at the academic part.

Before joining a Business school, the three most important parameters for any aspirant for judging a B-school is

• Placements
• Industry Interface
• Faculty

Almost all B-school rankings are a mere mockery and are in some way "paid listings" just like the paid ads that you see in the Google search page.

Every aspirant craves for loads of industry interface but when on campus, he’s bogged down by the sheer quantum of alumni talks and other CEO talks held in campus.

Before joining a B-school, every guy who thinks he has some grey cells aspires to be an i-banker and makes up his mind of majoring in finance. In the very first term with much fanfare people register for CFA exams. Registration for CFA exams is a sure shot way to be christened as a "fin stud". The fear of failure for some make them go underground and register for it secretly, fearing that they might lose their reputation if they fail, as if they have lot of it!

But only a couple of terms are enough to hook people back to the ground. Floundering grades and diffidence gets people on dusty ground. CQPI maximization becomes the only goal in life. People take up subjects to maximize grades even if they have no interest in those and learning is almost zero!

As a rule of thumb, be it engineering or MBA, always the sub-standard faculty bestow lavish grades for hiding their incompetence and winning the confidence of the students. Students give them good feedback in return for generous grades and the incompetent faculty survives at the institute with ease. This is a huge lacuna in our education system.

Whether grades are important or not in B-schools is a million dollar question. Seniors drum it into your heads that running after grades is a waste of time and extracurricular is what matters. Summer placements are like a trailer of final placements. After summer placements and having more information of final placements, somewhere in term -3, most of the students are stupefied to know that grades does matter in short listing. They start to panic, curse their seniors and take up papers which are of no value other to maximize grades! In final placements, apart from a couple of firms, none of the others shortlists only on the basis of grades. Your class-10, 12 and engg. Academics matter much more! Situation in top 5-6 campuses might be different where management consulting and i-banks come for recruitment, which categorically looks for the toppers.

Some of the firms even go for random short listing. Even a guy in bottom 5-6 percentile of his batch and no great pre-MBA academic record or pedigree finds his resume shortlisted and a guy from a top notch engineering college with an enviable pre-MBA academic record and work-ex is shunted from further evaluation. This might be boon for many but definitely not a scientific way of selection!

In placements anything can happen. Toppers' dreams might be put to dust while the underdogs might walk away with the most coveted jobs on campus. I believe placements are not completely in your hands but what you learn in 2 years is something on which you have control. So, the focus should be on learning. After all we are in a knowledge industry and we are paid commensurate to the skill set that we have!

Getting placed in a big brand with differential profile and pay is worse than getting into a not so exclusive brand company which treats you in league 1.It's the nature of work that you do that matters and not the company for which you work for.

If you track the career of any of your former classmates or any other acquaintance from a premier institute, you would find most of them end up fighting their way to the top. Campus placements are just a launch platform. One has got the maximum bang for his bucks only he has maximized his learning.

Cheat sheet to survive the rigour of a Business School

Here is a cheat sheet which encapsulates few ways to survive the rigour of a business school and yet come out of the journey satisfied and rejuvenated.

• Most important of all..don't worry too much about final placements...they just happen..you can't plan it out.If your peers sneer at you,show your middle finger,ignore and keep trying.

• If you feel you are in the bottom 30-40 percentile of the batch..don't worry.You have higher chance of landing yourself with a envious job than the toppers.

• Randomness is the truth of life.When a Professor gives you random grades..never question it.Nature has been designed that way.The job that you get,the first crush that you have,the girl that you marry and the way you'll die is highly likely to be a random phenomenon.

• If you haven't landed up with a cool summer internship...there is reason to cheer.A small analysis of historical figure will prove that in general the guys to be placed last in summers are the ones who are the first to be placed in final placements.

• If you don't have the skills to do DCP(Desperate class participation)..don't panic.People doing DCP rarely top.Go to the last bench and watch these monkeys performing and have fun!

• Don't have too many attachments with worldly objects.Have a peaceful 10 hours of sleep everyday,go for 4-5 kms of jogging and do what you feel like.

• No point running after girls if that's not your core competence.Stick to what you do best...be it sleeping..watching movies..reading..coding..researching etc.

• There are numerous ways to earn pocket money while your still in college.Instead of killing all your time doing non-value activities,look out for part time work or other free-lancing opportunities in your cities.It's a cool way to have industry experience and make enough money to have a lavish lifestyle while still in college.Other way is to win competitions but then not all end up winning the big ones!

• Always remember its about 16 years of education that matters,not just 2 year of MBA.What you are today is the culmination of the quality of school and engineering college you have attended.B-school is just a finishing school.

Disclaimer:Try at your own risk :)

NIT Hamirpur(H.P) campus

250 acres lush green campus of NIT Hamirpur(H.P) ...arguably the most beautiful of all engineering campuses in India.

All is NOT well!!!

Term 6 of MBA is the most awaited term for any B-school guy.You get placed and the feeling of

having successfully survived the rigour of the B-school and landing up with a cool job gives you a

high...bole tho on cloud 9.Like any one else,I also had planned a lot many things to do in term 6 like sleeping 12-15 hrs a day,2-3 movies a day,atleast 2 trips a week etc.But from the day I am placed,nothing going right.I am extremely satisfied with the job that I have got but all my electronic gadgets seem to have suddenly revolted.

The first big gadget to have given me nightmare is the one with whom I spend most of day and night,to whom I am committed like no one else...that's my laptop.But my laptop ditched me with infidelity.Just when I needed it the most to watch all the sitcoms and movies,the sound stopped coming either from the inbuilt speaker or the headphones.My laptop didn't support windows 7.At first it really looked like a chronic driver issues but it was not.For the next one week all I was doing was to download the drivers and trying other various version of windows and ubuntu.(linux).I had in a way gobbled up all the threads of forums which discusses sound issues on compaq laptop with windows.Even linux proved equally unfaithful.It wasn't a sound processor issue as the drivers in device manager looked ok.Finally I upgraded my BIOS and went for some tricks like removing laptop battery discharging the laptop completely and then plugging in again and reinstalling the drivers.Now this step worked! Though my speakers didn't work but my headphones did!I was relieved! But again after a few days,the holder of LCD cracked and I had to patch it with a leuckoplast...a typical home made desi solution! Don't want to shell even a single penny on my laptop...till buy a new one!

The very next day my one of the prized possessions,my android device,Samsung galaxy fit GT-5670 gave in.It's just 6 months old and it's been infested with hell lot of problems.It faced a charger problem and I had it replaced from the service centre.Just a week after that again I faced a similar issue.Now this time the service centre guy gave me a shocker.He said the mother board needs to be replaced and it would cost around 75% of the cost of my Samsung galaxy fit.After talking to the manager,I finally was assured the replacement would be done free of cost.But its been close to 3 weeks,I haven't got my device back.The service centre people are grossly unprofessional and have no service metric in place to judge how efficient is their customer service.Till now I have been a very well behaved customer but I guess its time to change colors.

I had been pick pocketed twice in 2 year in Mumbai in which I lost 2 cell phones in 2 years,too much for poor software engineer.It needed a lot of guts to buy a smartphone in next 1 year but again it proved to be piece of junk! I had got it from from letsbuy.com at a discount of 10% but the experience till now has been horrible.The most satisfying experience so far has been that of Nokia 1208.

Really simple things in life are beautiful and faithful.Just like human beings,so in electronic gadgets all that are flashy and a piece of beauty eventually ditch you!

IT industry ain't bad!!

It's a fad in B-school to look down up jobs offered in IT.In the first year,every one wants to join an i-bank or work for a fmcg major or work for the management consulting biggies!!

But then everything that you want is not what you get!

Lets face it! More than half of the engineering and management graduates would be jobless had there been no hiring in IT industry.It's more of a fad than a conscious decision to work in a given industry or a given profile.Most of the people don't have the leeway and privilege to work in their dream profiles and companies.

Seniors are like preachers and juniors are like disciples.They blindly take whatever is thrown at them from their friends,seniors or some distant relative working in some profile and industry

and making big money.

The truth in most campuses(other than the top 5) is:

• Some big banks come but they hire you in some backend crap profile and market the job as an essential part of the company's existence. Candidates with CFA and FRM or even a major in finance are definitely overqualified for the job.It's really amazing how a person majoring in HR and a person majoring in finance with all the fancy certifications end up with the same profile :)But then as students we fail to appreciate the importance of a job if its not what we studied or lacks any quantitative stuff!But if you closely track the career path of people who have gone in such profile are also doing well because as a manager you really have to manage your people and your project,though in the initial few years getting along with the monotonous no brain type work is challenging.
• Every time there is an alumni talk by a any alumni from sales/finance side,at the drop of the hat they try to project IT job as a "commodity" and "nothing special" type.But not all engineers doing MBA would like selling under wears,handwash,coldrinks etc.In fact majority of them don't.Again most of the people get lured because sales/marketing career offer faster growth and is seen as sure shot ticket to a future CEO post.But then most of these don't become CEO.

The truth is IT is a cool industry to work.Sit in a KT-you have diet coke,imported tissue paper,your favourite cream and butter biscuits.You get to dine in the best 5 star and 7 star hotels during the annual town hall meetings,you get free tickets to essel world and you have 2 days a week off to chill and watch your favourite movies. You get to travel exotic places and get to work in the best work environment.

It's again a myth that if you are in IT you can't break into the CXO type jobs as if you see many cases of IT firms which are headed by people who joined as a MT or a s/w engineer and went on to become a CEO.

It's important to do what you are good at than what you would like doing,just because other are doing the same.Being mediocre one has to fight to remain afloat.Excellence fetches money not a particular industry!!!

The footnote is IT ain't bad...it's just projected to be so!!

"Employees First,Customers Second" approach to business!

The "Employees first,Customers second" is a radical initiative adopted by HCL technologies under the leadership of Mr.Vineet Nayaar,Vice chairman and CEO.

I feel this concept really makes sense and sooner or later is going to be embraced by other service firms,not just limited to IT.

When I joined my first job after engineering,during our induction program,a lot of focus was on drumming the fact into the trainees's head that "Customer is God". But there wasn't any focus on motivating the trainees to treat customers as God.In a service business,the quality of your services is lot dependent on the employees.So,if the employees aren't genuinely happy about their job and aren't motivated enough to serve the customers better,customer centricity philosophy couldn't be put into practice.

Employees are like ambassadors of a company and are the face of the organization.The customer sees the organization through the eyes of the employees.If the employee is well engaged and motivated,his productivity would be increased by a significant margin.Improved productivity would mean greater business for the company.

The employees first approach can be implemented by having an extremely decentralized organization where the accountability and decision making power is pushed down the hierarchy.Every employee has to be feel that he's accountable for his actions and his actions have bearing on the company's topline.After all the biggest assets are the company's employees and they are instrumental in generating the cashflows for the company.

Some random observations!!

Some of the observations that I've made as a student :

• In engineering colleges,being a topper or one of the toppers can be a crime! You are outcasted as an anti-social homosapien and are ridiculed by the victims of the bell curve who live no stones unturned to make the topper's life miserable.Even if a topper is seen peeing in the toilet,one of the below average/average "smart" guys mocks saying "Abe time waste mat kar,jaa ke padh le! ".This might sound amusing,but such incidents does happen!In B-schools,its a bit different though :D
  

• Not the best of students get the best of jobs on campus but then life is great leveller.Eventually,most of the hardworking/talented guys get what they truely deserve in the long run.It's important to turn a deaf ear to sarcastic comments and focus on the task at hand.

• There definetely IS something called as "luck" but then bad luck can screw up things for you only in short run.Life's extremely fair.In long run,your returns are commensurate to your abilities and investments.
  

• Most of the so called "Campus heroes" who are always in the limelight and seem to have an habit of showing off their smartness at everything aren't the ones who fair the best in their lives.Such breed of people are brilliant multitaskers but are great frauds too! They try to compensate for their incompetence/lack of preparation using all sort of unfair means.I've seen many down to earth humble guys maintaining a very low profile on campus doing much better than these "oversmart" guys.
  

Blunt bottomline: "Humility and substance matter"

• Students madly drop years after class-12 to prepare for getting into top engineering colleges but in retrospection it would look really stupid.Most of the engineers eventually try hard to get into top B-schools where you have junta from some ordinary private college to IIT/BITS/NITs and other premier institutes.Also,it's fascinating that in terms of quality,the private colleges chaps are as talented as the premier institute guys and many end up performing much better than the premier institute guys.Surely,no dearth of talent in India!
  

• Nothing goes waste in life.Very often it's said academics don't matter much in life but that's really a misconception.Its true only if one is really gifted and can outsmart his/her peers.But such cases aren't many.Look at the selection procedure of any B-school or any other higher education institute,academics play a very important role in selection process.Needless to mention,many coming to hire in top campuses,shorlist candidates on the basis of past academics.