Lazing over the weekend

We all are so tense most of the time that the thought of wasting a whole day (literarily the whole day) seems preposterous to most of us. Today was one such day. After a long time did I clock close to 14 hours sleep roughly over a period of 24 hours. Sleep of that duration, well that’s very good according to my standards. Today I was so very aware of the time going by while wasting a whole day. I knew I got tons of work to do. I had to go over some paper work , visit the bank, read the past papers that I has saved up to read later over the last week, get my car serviced, get my dad’s car serviced, help my sister with some work of hers, run errands and so on. All along I remembered almost each of these tasks yet I didn’t care one bit. At times doing such a thing has its perks. It gives you a sense of freedom from the day to day chaos, a sense of liberation.

So what did I do, I got up late, started watching a movie soon after breakfast, then another one and then start surfing the net till I was really tired. I wrote a blog post, edit it a bunch of times and then grabbed a bite and dozed off. Then I resume the same cycle again that I had just before lunch. The whole process gives one a sense of satisfaction. Doing just NOTHING!
Oh I love that feeling once in a while. So while I type this post, I am battling between the sleepy eyes, the movie that needs my attention, and a hungry stomach that has been growling since mid night. Tomorrow being a Sunday, I am likely to do the same thing, but something tells me that I might need to run errands or get yelled at by my mom. Yeah, some of the things you go through while visiting home.
B-schools, or any other school for the matter, have a way of keeping you busy one way or the other. Either the professors end up piling work on you, or friends end up pulling you into some activity, project, out-door trip etc. So one often finds weekends just zooming by with no free time for oneself (yes, I like that kind of weekend too). However, the weekend that I am currently having is the one that is followed by Monday morning blues. After lazing around the house for the whole day, having absolutely no work over the weekends, Monday morning seems like “Mordor” (LOTR). One has to be brave to battle the fear and resistance.
Now that the movies on my DVDs are almost all exhausted, I am moving to the TV room and planning to switch between Star Movies and HBO every now and then. I hope they have a good lineup of movies today.

Movie marathon with a conclusion

Last night while I was looking for movies to watch, I ended up coming across the movie by the name of “Turning 30”. A Bollywood movie but with a very modern touch (read English language audio and having target audience as the urban youth). Some people call these movies as Art movies, mostly because they are often not meant to generating huge revenues, are mostly small budget movies and mostly bringing forward some kind of social concern, are having some under lying meaning. Turning 30, a movie with a very sorry rating on IMDb showed a woman who was approaching the age of 30 and finding it difficult to balance her emotional trauma and discrimination at work place. Being single at the age of 30, she is fighting with her parents' pressure to get her married, a movie that also shows that women too smoke, dope, drink and are bold enough to go to bachelorette parties.
For me, my favorite genre of movies is action-adventure, crime and sometimes horror, definitely not Rom-coms, and least of all, just roms. so you can imagine my dearth of movies that I had to pick a romantic drama movie. However, the only motivation that I gathered before starting was that the lead actress was Gul Panag, a very beautiful actress from bollywood.

Another thing here got me thinking, why do people (mostlty the women folk and occasionally us guys unless coaxed into it) watch romantic movies? I watched it because my movie marathon yesterday already had had a high dosage of adrenaline pumping, gun trotting action adventure movies. I'm only human to be seeking a variety!!
Why do romantic movies from Hollywood and Bollywood do so well in terms of generating revenue? From my perspective, they give hope to individuals that even they have a chance at meeting someone "special" in life. People want companionship and these movies show them that it is possible.
Often the plot for such movies revolves around a few tried and tested basic concepts such as the following-
1. Two very different people (mostly because of financial reasons, but social standing may also come into picture) meet for first time and one likes the other while the other abhors the idea of love with that person. Soon events take a turn in such a way that they end up meeting more often and getting to know each other better and so on until they live happily ever after.
2. A “happy” couple has a very close relationship and one of them (mostly the guy, though not always) is seen to be infidel and so the relationship breaks, the protagonist comes into the life of the heart broken and they build relation based on trust and unconditional love for one another and live happily ever after.
3. Typical love at first sight (but this never seems to happen with me or my friends). Initially some challenges to the relationship such as parental approvals, long distance and so on. But eventually the pair makes it work and then live happily ever after.
4. A combo of the above three, often these type of love stories are either too complicated to follow or become highly predictable.

So why write a blog-post about what most people already know? I’m sure that these broad categories are quite obvious to most people. Though the movie genre of “Turning 30” did not fit my traditional taste of movie watching, I found it a decent movie. Mainly because of the issues that it brought forward, and also, I saw a non-action movie after a really long time. The editing (mainly the high pitched audio of most women in the movie) could have been controlled (to make it less irritating), and the ending of the movie could have also been lot better. Movie makers need to do something about making movies being too predictable.
Also, I want to know if any of the above types of movies actually reflect what happens in real life. So in other words, how real is reel?
PS: The movie “turning 30” is basically type 2 from the list above

Intern-jet. Going sky high

With the start of the summer internship, I was brought back to the facets of reality. Maybe I had become too comfortable in the student life over the last one year of MBA that I forgot I can’t “bunk” meetings like I could “bunk” classes if I felt sleepy in the mornings. Need to shave everyday or put on a decent set of ironed clothes,
I was coming out of my student attitude when I could even go to classes in an un-ironed T-shirt. Internships which are an integral part of the MBA student’s curriculum obviously vary in experiences. For me it happens to be in one of the best companies of the world. Well, the previous statement in no way does justice to the company. It is the most well known company in the world. The HR of the company has been doing a lot of things to make our life comfortable here with travel daily arrangements, unprecedented support 24X7, a warm attitude, and lots of freebies/goodies and so on. Well at least, settling into the job will be a smooth affair.


The last one week proved to be a mixed bag for me consisting of multiple grueling sessions on different verticals, functioning of the company, overwhelming me (and maybe a few others) on the scale and operations of things happening in the background of a massive 126 year old company. Getting to know so much about management in a huge company from actual professionals who executed the work themselves was a lot better than going through case studies. With occasional fun filled activities such as visit to the IPL match at Firoz Sharh Kotla stadium and a welcome dinner party on Friday, the weeklong orientation had its memorable sides too. Sitting through the full day sessions on the variety of functions of a marketing company, I realized that so much of work went into getting in the shoes of the consumer. While on one hand, a bunch of the things went way-way over my head, I did notice a few others who were holding back desperately on droopy sulking eyes.

I wonder if they were in the same predicament as me or already knew the concepts that were basic to a marketing “enthu”. During the induction, we got a chance to visit a plant, where we got lost from our group and they ran around the plant checking out places on our own. I also got a chance to tick off another thing on my TO-DO list. Drive a fork lift - Check!!





With a visit to a few shopping complexes in an attempt to see how the bookish theories were applied (or rather modified before applying) in the field, we saw the day to day challenges also of a marketer.





Meeting my fellow interns, I was reminded that the world has a lot of smart people who would easily make it to the higher strata of corporate leadership. Not only are they from the Ivy League schools of our country, they are also probably the cream of their own school.



Envying them would be an understatement, but making friends with them and getting to know them better I know they are good people who deserve to be where they are. (PS: dear fellow interns, please reserve some IPL tickets for me if you get any)


With a highly challenging project that stares at me leaving me with a blank expression, I wonder how I would tackle the unexplored territory head-on.