T.N.Seshan Joins Great Lakes as a Permanent Faculty

T N Seshan, the fiery former election commissioner of India, has joined Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai as a full time faculty. He took his introductory class on January 21.Mr. Seshan shall be teaching a course on Leadership at Great Lakes called Leadership, Influence and Managing power from February.

The 10th Chief Election Commissioner of India, T.N. Seshan served in office between December 1990 and December 1996. Born in Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, he is known for his introduction of many electoral reforms and his uprightness. Prior to his stint as the CEC, he served as the Director, Ministry of Atomic Energy; Joint Secretary, Ministry of Space; Secretary, Department of Agriculture; Government of Tamil Nadu; Member (Personnel), Oil & Natural Gas Commission(ONGC), Additional Secretary, Ministry of Space, Cabinet Secretary and many other posts.
During his stint as the CEC, he came in confrontation with many politicians because of his strong desire to ensure free and fair elections in many parts of the country. He contested for the post of President of India in 1997, where he lost to K.R. Narayanan. He was awarded the Magsaysay Award for Government Service in 1996.He has been active even after retirement, founding the Deshbhakt Trust, an NGO devoted to social reforms in India.

The founder dean of Great Lakes Dr. Bala Balachandran was present at the occasion of Mr Sheshan’s introductory lecture.

At Great Lakes there was a palpable excitement among students and all of them were looking forward for the course to formally begin. The introductory class was listened to with rapt attention. The Lecture can be heard at this location on the web.

Whom do you want to be today?

" I am walking on Dalal street on 6 months and the next 6 month in New york. I ski in the alps on weekends after working 20 hours a day 5 days a week, catch the flight back to new york to resume this excercise. I crack 2 big mergers and acquisitions in a year. I will bring Virgin Airways to sign an M&A with Captain Gopinath and become a multi millionare. Investment Banking is in man....."

"I will change the way marketing happens when it comes to selling soaps and fairness creams. I will tap rural India with innovative advertising, and target the local stores with a cost cutting approach to get contecxtual advertising and make sure that stockists and retailers are given better incentivised targets to create larger sales. FMCG is the way to go!"

"The construction Industry is the best industry to get in, with the real estate boom. One should take a cool package in the excess of a million and work hard in learning new areas working on the learning curve and create newer ways of impactful marketing/advertising in the Construction/Real estate Industry"

"The Radio industry is so cool, I should look at a sales/marketing profile to understand the emerging radio market in India. Probably I should look at a lesser salary and a better profile, as the job is interesting and work should be fun"

" The social media industry looks like its too nascent, is it worth betting on it and takiing an offer or is the IT industry better for minting money and flying abroad? But flying abroad and living abroad, has never been my fancy! Hmmm..... wait on"

These are the various moods I find myself today, where I start dreaming whenever a company comes for Pre Placement Talks and starts off on its mission. In between the presentation, I visualise myself working in the company, and a flying career, and a promotion and a fat salary....in the respective field and profile,until the next company shows its wares. The problems are there are too many such dreams and I better start sticking to a shortlisted few so that I make a decision that will help my career in the long run! The Placement season has well and truly rubbed off on me at Great Lakes

Salsa, Statistics and Stifler

Week 4 at B School

This is the last week we would be having with only 3 subjects on us, as from next week we have 5 subjects. We stll haven’t managed to keep up pace with these three subjects as pre reading and case study’s still take a lot of time. We are still in the incipent stages of being a B schooler. Well if one does a lot of hardwork, should’nt there be some way to let off steam.

At 11 pm, when most of us at Lake Veeranam(A seminar hall at GL) are studying, some decide to break the monotony by playing Cricket 2007. An hour later, I see almost the whole hall playing Cricket 2007. The deadly virus has made its way into our study and the guy who propagated the virus is supposedly staring at his Karma(that’s me) and basking in the 16 degree air of the airconditioner proud of his effort to propagate his love for cricket. Cricket seemed to be a religion that night, with every one converting to it in a matter of an hour. Vivekanda’s theory of religion propagation was practically preached and practised and Vivekananda’s speeches no more lulled me. I started re reading the previous chapters with a new found zeal, before an alarm rang to remind me of the pending statistics case study.

I opened up my statistics book, and was just learning the ropes of how to play around with statistics on excel, when a few intelligent guys, bored of playing cricket had every one in the room to the count of 3…..every one hands up…. No Robber Policeman here, but the hands were immediately up, at the suggestion of American Pie 5 ,when it was announced what movie to watch at night.

We immediately had a movies club formed where one guy would use the projector in the room to air a movie. Each guy’s claim to fame was when he lent his laptop for the screening of the movie on his laptop. Generally the projector would be used for studying some general case study at night, when some thing needs to be explained to many people, but considering all of us were tired, that night Stifler seemed more important than Statistics. (Preferring Stifler over statistics would decrease our karma assets and thus liabilities in pending case study would increase on the balance sheet as on 3 am on that day.)

Statistsics seems to be the most interesting subject so far in term 1, beating Eastern Philosophies and Principles of Management. Our Statistics Professor Mr P.K.Vishwanathan, is an amazingly enthusiastic professor for whom teaching is like conducting a music sympony. His knowledge of the subject is excellent and so far, and his vibrant interest for math and statistics seems to attract even the last bencher who would have otherwise invested his time to doze off.

Apart from Statistics , last week’s attraction was obviously the salsa classes, which a group of folks had evinced interest to learn. More than Salsa, we ended up learning jive and Tappankuthu- A Chennaite would know this inside out.

Salsa classes happened on three days, more so eating into the weekend. We had roughly 2x males and x females, so when the dance was on, we would invariably have x guys who would be on “bench” waiting for their turns. Now the guys on bench would have guys of both types, the one’s who know how to shake their legs, the others were the one’s who were not so good at shaking their legs to the beat. The smart and shrewd ones kept a keen eye on the competition and tapped the guys who had a chick dancing. There were times when there would be advance booking for a girl to dance with upto three people waiting. The ones tired of competition would go around wandering just to see who gets free.

The girls had no choice, they had to keep on dancing. They rarely had a break as they were lesser in number. The only thing that the girls could do, to beat the sweat was to purposely dance in such a way that their body along with their partners moved to a place right next to a wall fan or air conditioner, which had to be competed along with the free loaders who specialised in admiring the beauty and the grace of some couples dancing.

The Salsa is all about dancing to the beats, and the initial “1, 2,3 ….” Steps were basically meant to teach the beginner to move their legs, more than acquire perfection in dancing. The one’s who really rocked were the one’s who were innovative in their steps and danced with gay abandon. The one’s like me, were more focussed on watching the leg movements and getting the steps right invariably got it all wrong and had to think twice before wanting to embarrass any girl with those dance steps.

Salsa was an advanced exercise in social networking beyond Orkut, and it did help most of break the ice between us. The guys who were tired of waiting for getting a girl decided to amuse themselves and dance with each other, and the comical thing was both the guys did the guys steps so the harmony was lost as every one thought thought the movements from the Male’s perspective, and when both of them realised what went wrong with their dance, they unconsciously switched to the female perspective and againt went wrong. Geez!!! Two hands are indeed needed for a clap!

There were a couple of tamil guys who were silent spectators, but when the Tappankuthu dance number’s turn came, these guys were into their elements. Learning Tappankuthu can also be fun, as the steps are easy to master and having them on Kollywood a hajaar times, that’s some instant respite for folks like me.

Learning dance, though largely unsuccessful can be a great mentally stimulating experience as it is charting through unconquered virgin territory that throws up a few challenges that initially can be embarrassing. It’s totally a mind and body game that can easily be a personality enhancer as the grace that a salsa gives to the dancer, apart from the applause is worth having.

So that was week 4, with a mix of Statistics, stifler and Salsa

Keep Tuned in for more updates….on my life at a B School.

All the Salsa Video can be found here

Good Old Summer Holidays!

These are times, when you thoroughly start missing school days. School days in April and May were synonymous with eat-sleep-play indoors-eat-sleep-play outdoors-tv-sleep. This schedule was practised day in and day out till we were exhausted. When parents used to come back tired, we laughed at them for not being able to enjoy life and being too worried about their workplace and managing naughty kids. I as a kid often wondered why are my parents not interested in coming home quickly to watch the Sharjah cricket matches that would end by 7 pm( 93-97).Why would they not be as enthusiastic in playing with us kids? so many questions then, but now, the answers seem to fall in place as tables have turned. I know how tiring and sapping work can be, especially if you have a troublesome boss(who’s boss is a God anyway?).On top of that is the hour long commuting jostling for space to ply on the roads and when you reach home, there are a 100 things that need your attention like a leaking ceiling, bad tubelight and a plethora of house hold troubles.

10-15 years back, I never cringed playing cricket in the sun. My Mantra then was to put a cap on and field near a friend’s home, from where I could have regular doses of water during my playing stints and these days, I moan, groan and throw up hands if I need to do an errand in the hot Chennai sun.

I never was so worried about sweating then. Today when I go for my morning walks, I have all my attention on my walkman, not getting any sweat seepage from my body or worse....head for the AC straight after a journey in the sun. Those days, in my Adayar apartment(Chennai), taking a breather meant sitting on the corridor, talking endlessly with friends, playing carrom and trump cards and never complaining about “how hot it was”.

Even I have to play cricket on my computer, I look at my worried face refelecting on my laptop, which seems to say"Do you really want to play, when you have a statistics case study, A 180 pages of pre reading and an emperical project to get started?" In short, I have started to question indulgence and measure indulgence in terms of opportunity cost.

I want to break free, play cricket everyday, plan strategies to beat the opponent, watch cricket matches in the morning and night, while doting on cricketing statistics provided by The Sportstar. At evenings, I would love to sit and feel the breeze from the besant nagar beach, even as neighbours sit down and advise me on the benefits of attending some math classes during the holidays,while my mind wanders on going on a nice summer vacation. That’s exactly what I did every year from 1990 to 1997 after which life was never the same, as I shifted places, friends shifted places and life became lifeless.

All these thoughts flood my mind as I see my kid cousin sisters who’ve gone to my grandma’s place to spend some time.

I long for going there, but to be frank, I have a lot of other things to do at B-school that need my immediate attention, and if I didn’t end up doing that, the guilt within of indulging would eat me. Its confusing to decide what to choose, but right now I hope I am making the right choice, as I cant complain too much. The B school is basically a conduit where your inputs decide your output, so I am making sure that I use the resources well enough for a year. But….even as I see family life and socialising slipping away, I guess I need to figure out a way to revive that too, as I hardly meet any old acquaintance or cousins.

I some how get the feeling that ambitions in life are more so like the proverbial wave that tries to outdo each wave that hits the shores. After a wave disperses on the shore, it comes back with renewed attempts at bettering the distance to which it can wet the sands slowly but steadily. Every attempt of ours makes us speculate deeply and we try harder at every attempt to grow better. As a wave, apart from hitting the shores, the other waves hitting the other end of the shores also needs to be looked so as to see if any improvement can happen. In the process of hitting the shore, the waves must make some time out to see the wonderful life that exists below it in the depths of the sea. That’s exactly synonymous to our life, where we sometimes fail to see beneath whats visible. In fact sitting and typing this is a good break from longer reading hours. Its not that I am complaining about life in a B school, but just the notion that I get into a nice rhythm that has time for everything, so that one doesn’t get to miss out on this lovely thing called life.

Even as I type this, I am thinking of a 5 pm quick dash to my grandma’s place sparing 3 hours in the evening, which would have to be compensated in other ways.

Phew...

The last few days have been lethargic, and I managed to buy a Laptop, after my so called search ended at HP 2214TU Pavillion. Great Lakes, generally gives Compaq laptops, but I decided to cut costs by going for a model which seems good value for money.The downside is of course a RAM hungry Windows Vista, but lets see, how things work out(I have 1024 MB RAM). All through the week, its been a lot of visits to the bank to get the loans procesed, with all the paper work,which has left me quite tired and mentally fatigued. Last night was a long one with a few classmates coming home for a movie meet up,which went in to the wee hours of today morning(4 am). I still did not feel sleepy, and wanted to take a early morning walk after two back-2-back movies, but Arvind's 10 minute lecture on Credits and debits made me fall asleep, before all of us got up at 7 am.

I have a colleague's marriage function coming up in Chengannur, but am mulling over whether I should plan a holiday somewhere close by in Malluland. But given the fact that I have been unemployed and without salary for over a month now, I guess finances would not allow me the luxury of a costly holiday.I guess a holiday along Coastal Karnataka is a lot cheaper in 100-Rs-a Night lodges. I have not planned a holiday yet, but If i make feair headaway in Businness Mathematics and Micro economics, I can look at a quick 2 day holiday, before I get down to a B schoolers life.

My Course starts on 20th, and I need to finish 3 books for a test on 21st.(Micro Economics,Biz Math and Accounting).