Dinner, HTC and Volley of words

When dinner gets planned on the fly, things often end up in a messed up situation. In our group of friends, Nimit is known to be the person who should not be messed with. He gets really mad when things don’t happen in a proper way. Dont get me wrong, he is not a spoilt sport and does enjoy the occasional jest, however, whenever he has given a commitment, he will even blast his friends if he has to in order to keep his word. So the evening began when the 6 of us decided to skip the Hostel mess food, most Saturdays you would want to do that. We all ended up planning to get back to the hostel to our ton of assignments/ jobs/studies and other commitments. I happened to be the only one who had to get back to my movie and I had put on pause before leaving. We had plans of eating at a restaurant called Pop Tates, however, due to some confusion, the 6 of us left separately in 2 different autorickshaws. We had plans of being in communicado to confirm exact details over the phone, enroute to the restaurant. When Nimit, Ganesh and I were in the autorickshaw, almost half way towards the restaurant we had planned to go, we got a message from the trio in the other autorickshaw that there was a change in the venue for the dinner. The new destination was an additional 15 minutes away. After that Ganesh and I became the metaphorical punching bags. At one point of time when there was a massive confusion at a three way crossing. The auto driver was slightly scooped and ready to step on the accelerator, but the only thing holding him back was our decision. He kept on reminding us, “Sirji, Jaldi bolo, signal pe khade hain hum”. The poor fellow’s requests fell on the deaf ears of the momentarily turned barbaric Nimit.

Unfortunately we were the only ones blocking the traffic and the scuffle between Ganesh and Nimit on the direction we had to take was taking a toll on the nervous little fellow the autodriver. The argument didn’t really interest me much, since I was more or less indifferent to the destination. In the middle of all the confusion, I happened to see the headlights of the new XUV500 with its headlights on. Being the over emotional person when it comes to automobiles, I asked Ganesh if the SUV had LED headlights. That moment somehow got both of them to shut up about the whole argument and take a step back. I’m not sure if either both of them were shocked at the absurd comment or were truly admiring the SUV, but I would hope that it’s the latter one. Soon when the destination and hence the direction was conveyed to the autodriver, he put the auto on full throttle and we were pushed back into the tiny autorickshaw seats with a sense of irritation at the rickety bone racking structure of Indian roads. For some reason unknown to mankind, Nimit’s volley of nudging was not to end at the three way junction. He continued to curse the other three members of the group who Nimit thought had taken it upon themselves to intentionally get the plans derailed. Words like “Irresponsible”, “scoundrel”, and “careless” were actually so frequently used that the autorickshaw driver also thanked Nimit for helping him mug up new words. Once we reached the rendezvous point, the war of vocals between Nimti and Anshul was up and we were cheering them to actually take a swing at each other. It would have been interesting if we witnessed Fight Club. Then and there I started imagining how the movie I had paused to before leaving would have panned out with Anshul and Nimit in the lead roles in front of the restaurant. I was zapped back into reality when another friend Tushar suddenly violently grabbed the collar of Ganesh’s shirt. It seems Tushar had dropped his High end HTC touch screen phone while playing Angry Birds and panicked that the phone was damaged. His mind was racing fearing the worst outcome for the phone even before he had picked it back up to check for any scratches. Only when Ganesh reminded him, “Dude, have a look at your phone and check if it’s ok”. As Tushar leapt at the phone on the ground, everyone in the group had their eyes on Tushar’s phone. Had there been a scratch, the rest of the evening would have meant holding the uncontrollable raging Tushar. It obviously meant that we would have to skip our dinner anyway. However once the phone turned out to be fine, the other people were more relieved than Tushar himself.

Finally the argument came to a closing when we all learnt that the restaurant had a waiting time for another 45 minutes. A situation that Anshul was sheepishly hoping to avoid and it also meant that Nimit would hold this over Anshul’s head for the rest of the evening. After a quick poll and we all decided to head towards Hiranandani. A place with a decent variety of restaurants and fast food joints that could satisfy the taste buds of all the crazy people in the group. However our dear friend Ganesh quickly suggested a new restaurant that he had heard of from someone. He made a few quick phone calls and we all landed at a small tiny restaurant where the setting was quite unconventional. The restaurant was split in two parts with a partition hanging from the wall making it look like a weird whole thing. It seemed shadier than the new range of dark aviator sunglasses. I wonder how Ganesh gets all his weird information. However, our deadline set by Nimit was scarier than the crooked waiter who was waiting for the order to be placed. Needless to say, we decided to order something and leave quickly. Anyway let me leave the details of all that part for another day.

Why I wanna visit the States again

Being a diehard auto-enthusiast (well, maybe not diehard, but still an auto-enthusiast), I always envied my American friends and colleagues for the variety and price that they get while buying cars in the States. They also get to lease cars for virtually any duration of time (at realistic prices too), something that is non-existent here. My friends in the states who buy used cars, quite often get them in mint condition, unlike the options that I had when I thought of buying a used car 2 years back. So today when I went online, I thought of looking at the American automotive market at a more granular level, and so I searched for American automobile websites to see what variety and price range Americans get. For instance, a Honda Accord in India costs anywhere between, Rs 20 Lacs to Rs 27Lacs (Approx 25Million Rupees). In the States, the same car, with more engine options, sets you back by only $20,000-$24000. Now even if I take the Dollar-Rupee exchange rate at Rs55 (to give this comparison a fair chance of reasoning), the entry level American Accord costs Americans about Rs 11Lacs (1.1 Million Rupees). Besides, when I was looking through the stats, most of the cars there have a higher power range, better transmission (of course lower fuel efficiency, but that’s beside the point). If you take SX4 in India, you pay about Rs8-9 Lacs(0.8-0.9 million, or about $15500) with a 1.6Ltr Petrol or 1.3Ltr Diesel engine with about 102HP & 90HP respectively, while in the USA, though the car costs about the same - $16000(one would think it is good news for people like me, yeah right!), but it comes with a 2.0 Ltr engine with 148HP. These numbers become more shocking when comparing cars, such as Mercs, Beemers, Audis, etc I always knew that the reason for such differences - TAX, something that a friend of mine who recently returned from the States re-affirmed. I am not sure precisely, what the American government levies and what the Indian Government levies, but one can get an idea by just looking at a simple comparison that I just made for the Accord. In India, cars are considered a luxury item. Taxes are high, and despite a lot of people now having some or the other car. Another reason of course is the level of automation in the factory that is itself dependent on volumes. Needless to say, USA has higher numbers in terms of volumes, and that is again part of the reason (Economies of Scale). However over the years, I don’t see the effect of increasing sales numbers indirectly reducing the cost of car in long term (ignoring the ever increasing tax & near double digit inflation). The way car & fuel prices are going, im considering looking for jobs that allow all work to be done from home. Having been to the States once, I remember that it was a heaven for auto-enthusiasts like me. The variety, the drive on freeways (though I didn’t get a chance to drive much), were simply ….. ‘Peaceful’. I wish one day I get to lease a car in India and change it every year, but that is probably a few years away.

New "Energy" kid on the Block called "Tzinga"?

Sometime back while talking to my sister, the name Tzinga came up in the conversation and I asked her what it was. The name Tzinga intrigued me, a queer name in my opinion. So when a friend of mine brought up this name again, I was inclined to know more about it, and he told me about this company that is relatively new and trying to compete in the small but fast growing segment of Energy drinks in India. Considering that it's products reasonably priced(Red Bull is overpriced at Rs75+/Can for no apparant reason - No sudden boost of energy I think), I thought I can give it a shot when I go to the market. Besides the way they are marketing the product, one does'nt stand a chance to miss out atleast a glimpse of the Posters. I thought that the packaging (pouch with a spout) was a bit funny at first but I guess that’s something that adds a “Zing” to the whole thing(thinking different and out of the box is all that counts). So last night at around 10:30 PM, when I had plans to watch a movie and sleep off by midnight, I wanted to grab a snack before I start the movie. While picking out some left-overS from dinner and microwaving it, I rummaged through the fridge only to find the Tzinga in one corner. I thought to myself; let me try a sip with my late night snack of left-overs, and pulled out the drink from the fridge. My sister who was planning to work till late night on her assignment came from her room to grab a snack herself and mentioned that she needed to pull an all-nighter (despite the day being a Sunday, I wondered why people can't enjoy on the last day before a work week). I offered to share the drink with her (Plus, I was hoping that the huge amounts of sugar and caffeine would get divided and hopefully I won’t feel guilty) and mentioned that this may be an ideal opportunity to test if the drink can prove to be as an energy booster. I was quite confident, that a small quantity of 200ML divided between two people is not going to give an energy kick. I guess I was probably a bit wrong. I don’t know if my sister was able to pull her all-nighter(i just spoke to her briefly about her all-nighter attempt in the morning), but I definitely was up till around 1:45AM. I had plans to doze off by 12. So either the drink or the movie or both were the key ingredients in keeping me up till late. Maybe someday I might be able to skip the movie and might need to pull an all-nighter, that day I would try the drink and write another short description of the experience in helping me stay awake. That day I could verify if the claim of 5-Hour energy boost on a 200ML pouch holds true. Attaching a picture I took before having the tropical flavor here, since I knew this kind of packaging is really interesting and worth sharing here.

The drink had a very different taste (let me add; for an energy drink). It tasted a bit like mixed fruit(Funny, i thought it was an energy drink that was supposed to feel like tonic), with a little bit of bitter taste, (much less bitter than Red Bull). I am not clear on the composition; however, if Red Bull and Tzinga are to be compared, there is no doubt that taste wise Tzinga comes as a winner. I had thought that the caffeine content in it would probably be resulting in a much bitter taste, but it didn’t, and the caffeine taste was well, almost non-existent. However, it was very sweet; something that I don’t think is the case with Red Bull (despite Red Bull having a very high sugar content). Comparison with Gatorade will be a bit difficult since I have not tried Gatorade ever. I’m not sure how people are viewing this as an energy drink. People abroad often take Gatorade as a sports/workout drink to help with their electrolyte levels. Not sure how Tzinga fares on that front. Remember, I had the drink at late night, not the best time to test its energy level, unless you are studying/working late at night and need support to help you stay awake.

New Gmail & Facebook looks

Gmail and Facebook both are on an aggressive drive to change their look and enforce this new look for all the users. Facebook with it’s timeline and Gmail with it’s, well, weird new look. Both of them recently also had some updates to their privacy policy. And just like most users, even I chose to ignore reading the new policy. The same thing happens when im installing some software or registering at some website. I always end up clicking “I agree” button.

There are apps being circulated that help users with Timeline on their Facebook profile to revert to the old look. But many of these either end up changing the entire look and readjusting the whole display very similar to the old look, or end up not working at all. When I tried to help a colleague figure out how to revert to the old look, I read a bunch of pages on the net where people discussed that the Timeline and Gmail’s new will be implemented for everyone. Just like a compulsory homework or a uniform that you need to follow when you are a kid. In case someone knows how to fix this ‘BUG’ that might force us to switch to the new looks, lemme know, will you.

However, I still have not figured out why users are being forced to switch to the new look for both Gmail & Facebook. Can’t we have the option of retaining the old look? Occasionally users who have accepted the new look for Gmail, get the option “Temporarily revert to the old look”. Something that inherently tells you, “Dude, enjoy the old look while you can, cause when we force you all to switch, there aint one thing you can do”. This message seems so wicked if I may say. Just imagine, a devil rubbing its palms, telling you to enjoy the last few minutes of something good, and hten it will be taken away. Being the administrators, they can easily snatch the sole decent internet based thing that we are hanging on to.

I am not getting “Temporarily revert to the old look”. I guess it seems like the life support of old Gmail (and Facebook) enthusiasts has been discontinued. With Facebook, the major concern is “Over-Sharing” of information. One of my friends realized that some random guy was stalking her profile. All this because Timeline made her profile more visible to unknown people. Of course Facebook says that users should have re-tweaked their privacy settings, but hey you can’t blame a user who is taken by Shock & Awe. Lot of settings change, lot of things become really different. A recent survey indicated that majority of people are not liking the new Look on both Gmail & Facebook. What do you have to say Mr Zuckerburg & Mr Page. PS: please do not terminate my Blog page or my email ID.

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.