Random Musings

This post will not see me playing Tom Cruise saving the world along with the cute girl from the evil terrorists..But I think it will be as dramatic and involves the above two people terrorizing the denizens of the fair city of Chennai!

Flashback

SCMHRD needed to select candidates for promoting awarness of our B School across the country to the potentially smart candidates. The sign up sheet for the city of our choice was put up and was filled up There was a big buzz going around the hostels as this was a perfect opportunity to head home. I really needed to hit the jackpot here as my faithful readers know, I did not head home for Diwali itself. During the Interview with the Prof, I told just 3 reasons why I should be selected among the rest of the jokers applying to Chennai: 1) Im an alumna of Loyola College(prime hunting ground). 2) I go by the alais of vahgar in pagalguy.com(over 1200+ posts with 2 years of understating the entire student mindset across India..yea even I don’t believe that). 3) I *cough* have made it through *every* Group Discussion/Interview I’ve sat for in summers which speaks for my *ahem* uber cool communication skills *cough*

Finally after the interview which I thought had gone well, I got news a week later that I infact did not figure in the Chennai list and was in fact in the Bangalore list! Through a little family/friend sentiment I managed to swap[Thanks Aravind!] with 1 of the Chennai bound guys(he too was a Loyolite,- Clinton – owe you big man!. ) and finally managed to officially be on the Chennai drive with my partner Madumita. We from now onwards will refer to Madumita & Your’s Truly(yea that’s me who else did u think, Santa Claus?!)

We then entered the vaunted admissions room everyday to fix up appointments with colleges and MBA prep inst’s in Chennai. The biggest kick we got out of this was the fact that we could bunk classes which normally resemble some ancient forms of Chinese Torture (for instance its’ like listening to a leaky tap in a silent room when you are trying to sleep). There was a lot of learning that took place (seriously) and understood the difficulty of the organizing the entire admission drive. It was like watching a one armed fat guy do 100 push ups . We booked our flight tickets too early and eventully had to cancel them cause we were not making any progress with conforming our targets! Then finally though a bit of smooth talking and 3rd degree harassament we managed to get ‘em all fixed. So after 5 classes & 3 GL’s whose pleasure I missed, the magical dates of December 10th to December 15th. We were going HOME!!


The Exodus

December 10th

I went to book tickets for the Pune Mumbai at 4 ish that afternoon when I got the shock of my life that all tickets were sold out and the only one left was at 12:45 that afternoon and my watched showed 11:00. Booked, Called,Packed,Departed in the blink of an eye with hasty good byes. We reached the chowk where we had to take the Bus from Pune to Mumbai that afternoon and then we realized we were famished and settled to have *any* food *any* where. We ate pakoras in a small vada pav place which both of us certified that for 16 Rs, this guys’ shop if it goes public would be the next google. The food was simply scrumptious and we ravaged on it like a pair of malnourished sudan refugees. Finally we boarded the bus, which ran like a well oiled Benz, smooth as silk. To kill the 3 hours, we got out our laptops(this is something you will see a lot about..) and started playing monopoly. After 20 minutes I realized that I was on the verge of bankruptcy and she was rolling in the green. As I was planning my master stroke that would turn the tables *Luckily* for her I told her my laptop was out of power..*cough*. She asked me to save the game just in case….and woops alt+f4ed it a bit to early. Reached Santa Cruz ,Mumbai at 4:00 for our flight at 9:30 that night! The sweet talking doll at the Jet counter convinced us to take the 5:30 flight to Chennai…for a small transfer charge of 650/-. She was the 1st to cave and then I did too next.

The flight was quite an experience with Jet really trying to justify the rip off you have been a victim of. The 1st of the ‘refreshments’ was a glass of Lime/Orange juice which as my hand tentatively tried to reach for, when the flashback of flying Deccan Air where a glass of water would set you back 20 big ones when Madhumita almost as if reading my mind nodded that it was all built into the tab! Dinner was then served, was quite pleasing to the eye but was warned that looks are always deceptive & that like 6 sigma thing when it comes to airplane food. But this time the error was on our side, the panner/samosa/cold potato chat was quite delectable. I kept looking at the guy’s dinner plate next to me, he never even touched the panner cubes. Normally I would do something crazy but due to certain constraints (something about socially unacceptable behaviour..-.-) and thus, was forced to ignore it. The tea and coffee was the icing on the cake, the powder/milk mixed in perfect proportion thanks to the fair lady ;) Can we ask for seconds? Maybe Ill have the courage to find out next time. Filled and handed out the in flight quiz contest to the airhostess (she was expecting the feedback form, sorry babes). Landed at Chennai, we saw our luggage at the conveyer belt about to go for the next round when we like hero/ines jumped JIT to save them! Walked out and saw Amma and Appa(so damn happy after 6 months in this prison to be free!) and braced myself for the shocked look in their eyes. They looked like they had been hit with a lead pipe and I convinced them that its really their 21 year old 92 to 68 kg in 3 months boy :p. Folks and me went to have dinner at Palimer, ate the biggest paper roast that could fit the damn table with vada sambhar and finished it off with a chocolate dessert. Yummy!



Ad-Mission

Day I

Our 1st target was WCC had to be formal with tie etc and she came in the official college Saree. As we walked into the college, with our laptops we made quite an impression I must say..What made the impression I leave your fertile imaginations ;) I felt kinda odd waiting in the auditorium to give the presentation with an all girl audience and things got worse when I accidentally spilled water on my pants -.- and had to desperately use the tie to cover up the faux pas. Luckily we started off the presentation at that time and hope fully the audience was paying attention to what we were saying. Went of very well and then our next stop was IMS that evening. We were in our NEEV T shirts to make the session more informal. The session was good, fielded lot of bouncers and what we couldn’t the buck was passed to the email as shown in the last slide ;)


Day II

Red letter day for me, going to my alma matter Loyola College. A lot of infrastructural changes, was heartening to see. Went met the librarian guy who for my entire IIIrd year saw me spend endless hours over the CAT material they had. He was quite glad to see that I finally got into a B school! Nice to meet the profs that really helped me shape up and they were glad someone from my worthless batch had made it this far in life! We did a double session there and then headed to CL. We gave an exclusive presentation to the head honcho there who was patient enough to listen to our drivel. So a good day overall, 3 centers done!

Met my friends Sriram[TIME Gd’s] ,Hemant[My cat pardner for 2 years at fellow loyolite], Ashwin and Priyankar, two very close friends from school Im meeting after 7 years..caught up on lot of gossip J

Day III

The big day for us, Career Forum was hosting an open for all session across Chennai so we ‘dressed’ for the occasion ;p. I shouldn’t say this (lowers the trumpet) but we really rose to the occasion, speaking required jazz on every alternate slide..it was poetry in motion for 2 hours! We got great feedback from the students and even the councilor there told us no institute was this good when they gave their canned junk.

Train To Pune

Well, all good things have to come to an end and finally we boarded the train back to SCMHRD at 7:00 am. Carried a hell of a lot of stuff from home (food to appease the ravage savages dwelling in the hostel rooms). We got two upper berths, put all the junk in one of them berths and used the other berth for gossiping and general social loafing :P
Take a tip from me, shoes are not a good idead on a 24 hr train journey and even if you are wearing shoes, have a pair of trusty bata hawai slippers which slipped my mind. The reason I make this pertinent observation is that in such cold weather and with intake of so much H20, your kidney will keep troubling you. And barefoot is a complete no-no in such a hygienically maintained train. And you don’t have the patience or time to put on your shoes when the kidney is working overtime. So you need some sort of protection for your feet. I managed to solve the problem but raised a few eyebrows and weird stares from my fellow co passengers and even the TT(wondered if my kind should be eligible for a ticket in the 1st place). What I did I leave it to your imagination or you can always check out the photographic evidence in Madtumita’s mobile…I wish to comment no more on such a sensitive issue.

There was a 10 year old Australian kid who kept being a kabab mein hadd(hope I used it right)i climbing the berths and playing the monkey,telling me the computer games he plays. Huh..its ironic how kids sense that Im a gaming freak too?! Man what is with kids and trains/movie theaters/weddings? They cant shut the hell up and are too dumb to take a hint! Then tried to get 40 winks after a hearty lunch of Amma’s curd & lemon rice. But then I realized that that kid got a tennis ball kept bouncing it up and down the floor ( he found an equally annoying kid of 8 to team up and teak me ou] counting from 1 to 160 and prayed he forgot his numerical after that[he made it to 256 and then the motor stopped]. Tried to sleep then realized that that kid is a professional and way outta my league, so got up once and for all. As murphys law would have it, he decided to start playing cards with his folks in a quiet corner in a demure gentlemanly Casino Royale way maintaining a poker face and shutting up for once -.-

We continued where we left off and time just passed and before we knew it we at our destination. We had to kill time so waited in the..well waiting room. It consisted of 20 sleeping/dead bodies, dreamy tired overnight travelers snoozing away in the chairs , and the rest of the common folk waiting to catch the next train or getting ready for a job interview making ample use of the Carlton Ritz Bathroom facilities. Not the best of places to hang out as men express themselves in their most primal form which can intimidate even a seasoned traveler such as I and naturally it positively revolted her ;p Finally we flagged a taxi and reached our final respective destinations…

We have an official tag line for SCMHRD: ‘The journey is the reward…’. I can vouch for that now.

Posted by Raghav on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 3:02 AM | Permalink