Its that time of the Year- L'Attitude 13 05

A year and a half back, the sequence of numbers 1305 made no sense to me until somebody pointed out that 13 o5 was the latitudinal location of Chennai, and that was how the name stuck for Great Lakes annual B school fest. Preparations started 4 months before towards end of July, and that's when things were looking really hazy. The man core committee was chosen on the basis of how people had contributed to some of the intra event that had taken place in the first three months at B school. Obviously some were happy, some were peeved that their name didn't figure, but guessed right that irrespective of whose name is there or not there, the ones wanting to contribute always would.


It was remarkable seeing the way things unfolded on the day of the event, which underlies the hard work that went into making an event like this. Commitment, they say is when you work when no one is watching and that was imminent all over the campus, as you saw a bunch of people in one corner deciding on how could we make the poster, what theme should we go about with, who would fix the venue, what size of backdrop do we want? A thousand questions spread across a motley crowd of 20 odd people, and the challenge wasn't to just cut through the chaos, but to preserve the quality of work, even as chaos surrounds.


Just as the pace of work increased, came September and October, where internships took a month of our time, and to come back after that and start was the feeling of starting from 0, after scoring a hundred in the first innings. Though it was tough to resume work all over again, thanks to some amazing teamwork, we were able to put in double the amount of effort.But as D-day neared, people who were no where connected with the event started helping out, and the events committee started to make internal events to drive the festive mood home. It was tough playing jekyll and hyde, with one part of your mind is on the festive mood, and the other part of your mind trying to meet deadlines with subjects and assignments. As the proverb goes, cometh the hour, cometh the man, we had enough adrenalin to cope up with the barrage of educational rigour thrown at us, to emerge victors. I guess words can only sum up little of the times then. Even though I was not somebody who worked tirelessly all though, I do know the core team that worked its heart out to put together a great show.

I'd suggest you have a look at a video that we made, which would aptly summarise "The Making of L'attitude 07". L'attitude 08 , the Annual B-School fest of Great Lakes Institute of Management is happening in Chennai on the 20th of December 2008. To know more click here and read the L'attitude blog here

Sutta Na Mila!

Heard this song when some of my juniors sung this full throated at Flames,Le-Meridian. Found it after 4 months on Youtube. Great Music, Great Video and "Hummable" lyrics. Reminded me of a certain "Abbey" in M.B.A. "Abbey" would be coming to campus on september 2nd as part of the HR summit! Wish I was back at campus to see that guy who wrote the incredible book M.B.A(Mediocre But Arrogant). There couldnt have been a more precise book on crazy B school life in India.

Go ahead! Scream "Sutta Na Mila" :-)

Philip Kotler at Great Lakes!

This happened a couple of years back. Came across it in Youtube. I guess the next time I visit college, must ask the library copy of the whole talk

The Mumbai -Great Lakes-Alumni Chapter Meet

A week back I had shot a mail to all the batches at Great Lakes, about the alumni meet this Sunday in Mumbai. The city was having dry weather and the rains hardly existed then... but somehow Alum meets in Mumbai so far have had this rather uncanny way of bringing rain along with them. This one was no different.

The attendees were

Kartik Kannan- Cleartrip.com
Srivas Ramgopal- VGSL( VSNL Global Services)
Rahul Khare(Frost and Sullivan)
Pawan Bhawsar( VGSL)
Vipul Singhal(TCS)
Seema Mohanty(Bayer)
Prakritish Buragohain(Bayer)
Nihit Nirmal(Shaadi.com)
Logendra(L and T)


With 20 minutes left for the Alumni meet to start, the skies opened up and caught me unawares. Heavy rains. The 1 pm start was then relaxes to 2 pm, as people slowly found their way to Nirmal Lifestyle, Mulund. This picture was taken enroute Mulund station to Nirmal Lifestyle.



Rahul Khare shares a funny bone with Logendra and Srivas Ramgopal, who till then was the sole guy with the Great Lakes T shirt.

Vipul Singhal and Kartik Kannan.....fresh after Mcveggie crunch and French fries


Seema Mohanty, finally breaks her silence :-). Seema looked quite lost in the meeting, and spoke to us about her role in Procurement division at Bayer. Logendra tries to look aghast, into a cross talk session happening on the other side of the table


Thats a serious discussion going on between Rahul Khare and Srivas, as Pawan(greyish green shirt) and Logendra(Maroon) are ogling beyond the Macdonalds window at things more interesting to the eye.

Vipul Singhal on " Why Banias rule in Business", while Nihit Nirmal wears a forlorn " I- have heard -this -so -many -times-because I am your room mate look"

Srivas, Rahul and Pawan listen to how Nihit is making hay while beautiful girls register at Shaadi.com . Nihit camouflaged his web flirting act by using MBA'ish words like " I look into Analytics".

Thats me, with a "Turn me On" Message on the T shirt. Unfortunately the Mumbai girls in Mulund were not up to it,

A couple of hours into the meet, a few Vipul one liners later and a couple of I-am-bored looks from Nihit, Prakritish Buragohain(the guy in the middle joined us). He was spared the bill payment, as he came in late, and Macdonalds was about pre paying. By the way, if you are asking why should he pay the bill? He just got married in Assam, without the help of Shaadi.com (Nihit lost a customer!)


Pawan seems to vehemently argue with some one during the meet. Logi sees humor in the argument.

Some of what we discussed were

1) each alum present's company and role offered
2) switching possibilities
3) Book reviews
4) Meeting up with Uncle Bala when he comes in July
5) How can we make it more productive, by discussing business models in next meets
6) generall chit chat, leg pulling and mud slinging.
7) Which movie to watch at PVR...(we went for 'Via Darjeeling' by the way)

We hope to make future alum meets more productive with more people and a more structured approach to discussing things that mutually help us. That was a quick and dirty update from my side.

Memories! A Fortnight Later

Here I am in Mumbai, getting busy with work, getting used to travelling in crowded trains, hit and bully people into getting my inchspace while travelling. However, as I found some time during lunch into checking some pictures on my mobile, I was reminded of B school life at Great Lakes a fortnight back. I had made this as the final video on the evening of the convocation day.

Enjoy it!




Some of the other Videos made during the year were

Racing to the end!

You know its not going to be a podium finish, but you still run the race like mad, just because you need to be ackowledged that you ran the race. Here I am 5 45 in the morning, doing my last set of presentations, case assignments and tests. The course ends on 23rd, and we have a test on 24th. After that its a briefing session for the next 5 days with our junior batch, and on 30th, we get royally kicked out of college, via a convocation. Sometimes, the 1 year MBA itself becomes a drag, given the number of days that we spend sleepless nights, the 2 year course must be a test of patience. I might flunk in yesterday's FSAV exam, and if that wasnt enough there's Investment Banking's end term tommorow. There's only so many D's and F's that I can afford. I hope I get a D in FSAV, that leaves me affording one more D in Investment banking. 3 D's and I still pass the course.God Save me!

Virus Blues!

Its that time of the year, when the virus attacks and you are left staring at your computer to decide what files are to be copied, what files are to be given the pink slip and done away to rot on the machine, as I would format it. formally 7 more days of classes, and thats the time I would have to format my system, take the most immportant files from peers. I guess, I should buy a portable hard drive to store the data,else keep burning DVD's for the data.

The Last one Year!

Life in the past year has been a roller coaster ride at Great Lakes. Life has seen the joys, the moments of exhilaration, the darker moments and disappointments also. When one comes to a B school, every body comes with the aim of becoming a transformed person who then goes on to make his mark later in life. Transformation- The English dictionary defines it as , especially extreme psychological or character change, as in the context and vocabulary, but a B schooler wants something more. Well to get an idea, how’s this for that something more? Financial transformations on the paycheque from being software engineer to a strategy consultant/investment banker. A Bschoolers life ideally revolves around first getting subscribed to the fact that this one year is going to be a no-pay year, and they would have to keep costs low, and manage accounts well. They are into the second month at B school and their accounts seemed to be managed well so far, until Financial/Management Accounting comes and reminds them that there is lot more to accounting than what meets the eye. They start to pay closer attention to terminologies like CREDIT and DEBIT, by looking hard at their online bank accounts, and figuring out that life could be so much more easier without so much complex accounting. If those were the first instances of troubling your normal life, here comes the killer whale in the dreaded Stats. Statistics, made us realise how important was it to stay afloat on the sea of numbers and formulae, and we all started paying serious attention to that ubiquitous software called Microsoft Excel that you borrowed from your friend. Apart from all this was to wait in Eastern Philosophy for the noose to be hung around your neck when your chance came to answer, and it was in those moments that I discovered my strengths of predicting my probability of answering a question right was far closer to what Aryabhatta called zero, and depended on arbit and desperate participation to get some points against your name.

B school life is not all that dull and boring, with exams and pre reads. It depends on how you want to make use of the time post dinner. Dinner at the nearby dhabas became a good networking ground for most folks and conversations frequently hovered upon how one got good North Indian food in Chennai, which would unanimously turn out as the next mass networking joint. When folks were too tired after dinner, and didn’t want to devote their attention to the pre reads that were outstanding from the previous information transaction called Class, a bunch of intelligent folks found out how to form a movie club and play movies in the classrooms that were deserted at night. The MNMC(Mid Night Movie club) had movies of all genres and at times even was the host of many stress breakers like the all night carrom tournament and the Counter Strike networking sessions.While some saw strategy in Kotler and Porter, others swore by Age of Empires. In between the din and chaos of the gamers, were silent souls who in other classrooms would be holding a joint meeting to analyse the case given the previous day even as sleep would threaten their logic and resolve.

3 months into B school, one is used to snooze sessions in between classes (for 15-30 minutes) to catch up on those divine moments of peace, extra snooze sessions in classes, and crazy expectation of profs to accomadate pre reads and case study analyses. We learnt the importance of qualititative multitasking and forming strategic joint ventures, so that the group did well in the next days presentations. We still pride ourselves for becoming detectives at night, solving cases all night, to discover that 10 other groups have done much better than your so-called-solution. I for one started hating the word competition for a while, competition in class rooms, cases, pre reads, and even competition to eat lunch beating the queues. Nirvana for a B schooler is snooze, and some like minded friends to step away into a utopian world for a while, as it relieves the stress of the previous day. Life at Great Lakes has helped us to bond better and fight better, keeping the larger objective in mind.All these interactions have helped us see the corporate world and the possible problems that may arise, and the attitude required to take firm decisions.

6 months into Great Lakes, we braved ourselves for the first monetary and functional competition in the race for internship slots. The internship was a peek into the big bad corporate world and just a reflection to remind you that the world out there is not as linear and utopian as a B schooler starts to think after what he calls his “best strategy” in the cases he used to solve.

9 months into Great Lakes, the Pressure and tension was at a all time high, with heavy courses and assessments, competing with monetary dreams, as placement season looms large. Placement season saw a battle that each one was fighting as an individual and as a team, for that was the most tangible take away from the course apart from the eye opening interactions during the courses. Placement season rained jobs and offers, and once that was over, you hardly have the inclination to put even half the effort into the courses scheduled after placement season. The challenge now is to come to college, and not about offering your 2 paisa worth arbit and desperate class participation.

Now as 15 days remain for the program to end, you realise that all that buzz and activity has now settled down in fine dust, that would leave behind traces of an era that just got over. The Junior Crusaders are passing out... and its time for some new wine in the bottle called B school. Long Live the B Schooler’s Life!

40 Hours to Placement Week

Its been a busy week, which has seen a lot of activity, and we are now down to the final stages of preparation. The Placement committe met yesterday and had a final jotting down on companies that were coming to campus. One or 2 last minute pull outs, some last minute insertions, managing the schedule of slotting companies, and sending resumes. I see people who are tense, people who are cool, and some who dont know how to react, to the enormity of the task at hand, as the tangible benefit of the PGPM course is all set to be had in some 40 odd hours. I myself havent prepared on any subject, and have been trying to figure out, how do i distract the interviewer to ask questions only that I like. I should be trying to jot down some notes from saturday night for some key subjects that I have flaunted as my area of interest in the resume. Its a little easier going into placement week, as I observe that having one pre placement offer, from the company I have interned, largely makes you feel, as this is just another event.

I am all set to attend my engineering college Alumni meet today and also attend the Lucky Ali and Karthik music show at Saarang, later this evening.

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.

Loosen Up!

Midnight binges of finance books and discussions on derivatives, seem to dominate one set of classrooms, while the other class rooms have smaller group giving the last minute touches for the assignments in ERP, while the HR students seem to be involved in some activity, as the class room floor is strewn with straws and origami designs. It seems like a battlefield that is active at all times, except between 6 am and 7 am, when silence prevails as students use this time to head back to the rooms and get some rest. The last few days have been tense, running from one assignment to the other, burning the midnight oil for the finishing touches to the CGPA's before the placement season starts. Hunger and sleep seem to be my main issues, as too many cases and promises stack up. I feel like a over worked battery that has lost the enjoyment in the MBA program.

I just rewound life over the past 3 years . I was dyslexic to coding at Infy, and after 14 months of confidence taking a beating, I decided to quit Infy and join a job that allowed me to breathe. Sulekha seemed the right panacea, but at as time wore on, the enjoyment in the job was slowly getting lesser, due to some politics played by some higher mandarins of power. I battled on challenging myself parallely with CAT and GMAT preparation and finally reached a stage when I again reached a stage where I wanted to breathe again. CAT and GMAT didnt go as well as I wanted it.

I got a new lease of life with an employment in Delhi, but that was shortlived as the Great Lakes MBA call came along after the Otto Beishem admit fell through due to visa delays in a student schengen visa. April to January, I have run this race and discovered some great friends, some free loaders, some brainy nuts and in the process have observed like a passenger observes for hours at a station, with trains one by one passing him, to the extent that he doesnt even remember which train passes, but just remembers that the chillness of the air, when the train passed was an experience to cherish.

Now Cases and assignments dont really get me started all up. I have taken in too many things and am just waiting for a break, but as soon as I get a one day break, the feeling of guilt breakes through, as some case/assignment would lie staring at me. Nor have I got peace nor have the assignments got my attention fully.

There is a sense of tension in the air, as the mind is mentally prepared to adjust to the workload that the excel file instructs to complete, and sometimes a sense of resignation too. For the past 2 days, I had taken some long walks around the campus area into saidapet, with the music on, and that seemed to have cooled my frayed nerves. Frankly that's the best part of the 24 hours that I look forward to thinking about a make believe world, with the songs buzzing in the ear, as I walk along.... thinking about what I want to do about my life.

Life poses many questions with many unfinished ambitions and desires, all of which takes a back seat, during the mad-helter-skelter life at B school. Am I working more hard to get more of this in the years to come? Sometimes when I ask myself this question, I go numb, as the more I work at things that dont exactly give me time to breathe, I go claustrophobic and the small break becomes the whole object of reward for the work, which ultimately affects the work and the break. I spend the whole day wondering why some crazy bunch of CEO's took some path breaking decisions, and suggest ways to break the problem, by some obscure imaginative reasoning, but when the same applies to decisions in my life I just freeze.

What decisions you may ask? Its like a fight between ego, fame, ambitions and the risk factors and the monetary factors. Newer factors get added....to add to the confusion, when life presents with you with too many options. Strange isnt it? You come to the MBA program to have more options and when you have more options in life, it leads to even more chaos when it comes to choosing. I anyway take decisions based on gut feel in the end, after worrying days over it, so I guess nothing new this time around.

Just feel better penning my frustrations. I guess all this would be laughed at when I take a look at this post 2 years later. Thats life... you keep progressing from one state to another, but the catch is that the problems increase in magnitude too :-). So that pretty much means I have to loosen up for the final leg of this 1 year race. I am 75% complete with the MBA....

Crossing The Ball of Fire!

The Placement season is nearing, 20 odd days remain for me to salvage some lost pride over the MBA I have slept over. In these 20 days, I will also solve irrelevant cases, do some crazy assignments, make B plans, do pre reading wherever possible, do my consulting assignment for the place where I interned, type and co author a research report with a Harvard pass out and an MD of a US firm, attend Pre Placement Talks, assist in the placecom activities and in between all this also make my fundamentals slightly better to get a job. I see the next 20 days and literally stare at the multitude of tasks remaining and the consistent quality of output that is required to make every activity worthwile. It should remain the ball of fire, for me, as I have fundamentally remained a lazy bum, all through my life, with weekends devoted to hedonistic activities like lying on bed, reading magazines, and watching Television.

After some interaction with alumni, during our alum meet last saturday, I have realised that my analysis of employment has not been well thought of, and it requires far greater understanding of the subject as well as the market. It looks as if I have suddenly woken up to the magnitude of things piling up, and this will actually be an acid test for me to go beyond just planning. Its about execution in these few days that will decide the course of life for the next few years. So even as I jot my tasks down on outlook with reminders, hunger pangs reminds me that I havent had proper food through the day...which was littered between a quick noodles in the morning, to some awful lunch at college and some not so good Vadas at the nearby Tea shop.

Time for dinner....

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

January 2008-The Month of Fests and Racing Pulse

The month of January seems a packed fun filled month

, and I want to make the most of it. There's Saarang, Intaglio(IIM C), Backwaters(IIM K) and Kurukshetra(Anna University,CEG) happening, and I should be going to all of them, unless something drastic happens at college. I havent spared the time for managemen fests for the first 6 months of my 1 y ear MBA, which makes the last 6 months, all the more worth enlivining. Also making the month very critical is placement season at Great Lakes, which happens towards end of January. Basically summed up, its the month of adrenalin.

What a fortnight!

The last 2 weeks have seen me sleeping very less, averaging between 3-4 hours every day due to heavy workload and actually not-so-good efficiency of working. A tiring mind, always takes that much longer to charge up and work full throttle. All the hardwork for Latitude, in making the videos, finally paid some dividends, no goof ups. What was really impressive was to find the unbridled enthusiasm that batchmates had in conducting L'ATTITUDE. I enjoyed evry inch of the sessions except for the times when the auditorium was empty as the other events were conducted in the conference halls. Its been a hectic weekend, at the venue...running helter skelter to put up a good show, and the madness continues. Pending assignments, cases, and readings have piled up. I promised myself that I would be a better student this term and try and learn things better(placement season is round the corner), and right now, I foresee a lot of effort that may be needed to sell myself to employers.

Read more about press releases about L'ATTITUDE right here

Would write in detail about L'ATTITUDE, in a day or 2, along with a travellogue long pending(My Goa sojourn in November, My Dream Job experience at ESPN).



Till then, its back to B school life

Great Lakes Management Fest

The Online quiz for Latitude 13 05 is up. Do check it here.

Guilt vs Indulgence

I seem to feel like I have been left over in a race, as I ponder over feelings of guilt. Guilt, You may ask why? Guilt because I gave indulgence priority over some basic must-do. Once there is a respite in a B school from classes and case studies for a day or 2, I seem to madly look for peace(by closing my eyes and sleeping) and indulgence.

Here's my crime record for my indulgence last week

Immideately after my Subject FMCG marketing was over... went over to a quiet classroom and laid myself flat with my music player on. Then booked a ticket at INOX for the night show of Dus Kahaniyan. Spent the evening-night at CITICENTRE hogging a double cheese pizza and Bhelpuri, while my comrades in crime belched away at the prospects of eating Non-Veg. Spent some outh watering moments at Inox before ordering butter pop corn.

The Next day, I borrowed some movies from my assamese friend, and watched Caligula, Mouna Ragam and Agni Nakshatram on my Home Theatre system. Admired the Chennai of the early 80's in those 2 tamil movies. The next day, I made some time for a morning trip to Raja Muthiah hall and went for an AVMAX expo on Home Theatre systems. I thought of buying another set of home theatre system with a digital projection tv in a few months. Thats the effect of getting a little over a million Pre Placement Offer :-)

The tiring journey in the Chennai hot sun, made me retire for a few moments into Landmark in Spencers, and my eyes fell on a few "dirt cheap" movies for 69. I ended up buying "Lakshya", "Yuva" and" Passion of the Christ", and burnt a big hole in my purse. It was so tiring that I spent the rest of the day sleeping without any worry about the impending manic monday that was to strike at 3 am on Monday when I got up frustrated after a few repeated mosquito attacks. The prospect of having underestimated my priorities, for the few endless moments of indulgence made me feel guilty, and to add insult to injury, I get chided by parents on how "careless" I am, and a spectator during the India Pak match puts a banner which says " CRICKET FIRST, MBA LATER" and my mother stares at me, as I look at the screen, knowing fully well that there are no directions to hide the face.

But after all the indulgence somewhere down I was still feeling happy that I had watched Dus Kahaniyan. Its a great movie where 10 small movies have been made into 1 movie, with a little over 10 minutes for each small movie. Excellent direction, kept me hooked on.

With about 50 days left for placement and 4 months for the course to end, I am realising the seriousness of arming yourself with enough knowledge to use jargons for a living. Only thing that I am sure of, is not to get into any IT company(the service companies). So as I dwell in guilt, its time to get back to normal life, 3 hour snoozing sessions, classes, presentations, B plans and et all, and when all of that gets freezed for a few moments the glorious cycle of indulgence and guilt will repeat......but a similar blogpost will not :-) .

FMCG Week

The last 2 weeks have been great with the kind of insights I have recieved from my faculty K.S.Ramesh, who teaches us FMCG Marketing. His real life experiences at FMCG companies and his simple ways of teaching have made me understand the intricasies of FMCG marketing very well. His suprise tests and quizzes, have ofcourse, jolted me, but the case study assignments and the nights spent in decoding the case and having Microsoft Excel/word and Powerpoint for company, has made the last 2 weeks an amazing journey. I am now delving for the final case study tonight for a presentation on Wednesday. K.S.Ramesh is a visiting faculty at Great Lakes and IIM-Indore and runs his own strategic marketing consultig firm.

The Extremes of B-School Life

The best fun at B school happens when you work together on Industrial projects. Everybody follows the cycle of hardworker, lesser-work-mode, the complainer mode, Listener-but-not-doing mode and free rider mode. This would be the knowledge supply chain at group projects, with every one contributing his best and his worst across a given time period. This pic was taken during the Coke Project, where Rajesh is seen explaining to us, with Vinay Krithik, in more than a dormant mode. The alacrity in taking a quick shot, made me awake, or I too would have dozed after a tired day. The whole COKE project was a great excercise in getting to know the various moods and ways in which peers operate and dealing with frustrations of non-performance of various factions from time to time and also dealing with the brilliance of the same group the very next day. But as they say ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL, the project was an immensely succesful project, as the smiles on the faces of the Coke honchos said it all!

Photographic Snippets from B School

There are times during coninuous assesments,case studies and night outs, the class room during the day could just be the last thing on your mind. Just to lessen the embarrasment for the prof, we tend to look for a strong well built male/female in the front seat and bask in their shadows as the AC just lulls you into sleep.


Sparks fly in a Placeom meeting. Any casual remark can set the eyeballs against you! This was shot in a meeting we recently had for discussing the status of our work assigned to us.

Some of the best ways to fool a prof is to say you have conjunctivitis and close your eye, but my friend Ashutosh is doing something far removed from that. This is a pic taken in Prof Shriram's class on Strategy, where Ashu was subjected to a blind test, to check whether his tounge could detect the different cola brands as part of our case analysis of Pepsi vs Coke. Lucky Dawg! Got free cola in class :-)

Oh! These so called discussions for presentations. If each one were to work individually for 10 minutes and then present his views life would be a lot easier and productive, but given the hi-fi management students that we are, we use the laptop to convey ideas, files and presentations. I found out the other day when we were to analyse a case in class, every body was speaking arbit things and fiddling their ideas on the lappy, and with 3 minutes to go, we couldnt help noticing that we had hardly progressed, and then the mouth just worked, with a ramshackle of 3-4 basic slides. So much for technology!!!

When one was working, it was all about the fight of "I-will-pay-the-bill", followed by the first few weeks of going dutch at B school outings. Now after Management Accounting, we follow Activity Based Costing strictly when we hang out at high priced shops.