Journey on Indian Rail – Fun on the run!! (Day 2)

The next day started quiet differently with beggars and hawkers of all kinds that you would (not) like to see, from people who would sing, clean the place, show their physical disability (& later appear normal on their return, tats once their collection time is over), to people who were absolutely fit and fine but lazy enough to work (tats what easy money makes u – lazy!!). The most annoying amongst all these people was a group of errrr transgenders. I was completely annoyed by them, not for the fact that they were doing the vasooli kind of stuff but it was more cos of the method they adopted to forcefully make us pay them. The 3 of us (friends) were sitting doing our own things (listening to music, eating, reading) when this human came to our berth and demanded money, we remained ignorant, not in the mood to give even a single penny, when really insisted up on, one of the friend picked up a nice piece of apple and said ‘wont give money, take this if u want to fill ur tummy’, which got refused instantly and to not waste the time and energy anymore that moron of a human being, raised the bottom of her sari till knee high ( obviously indicating to us that, if u don’t give money in a jiffy, this level could go even higher!! Grrrrrr). Totally frustrated by the act, we wanted to get rid of her (for the sake of convenience and for the fact that she was wearing a sari, no offence meant), so I quickly took out my valet and gave a Rs.5 note, which she dint like, but I some how managed to communicate to her that, that’s what is all the change that I have, she thankfully obliged and moved on.. Jeeeeeezz!!

As this session of stupid drama started to fade, came the most interesting part of the journey, u enter Maharashtra and u get to drink this special brand of tea called ‘chaudhry ki chai’. Man!! if u could find a person selling tea any better I’d give u all the wealth I have. These set of people start someway like this at the other end of the coach ‘Chaudhry ki chai peeeo, chaudhryyyyy ki chai peeeeelo’, ‘achi lage toh paise dena, nahi toh paise mat dena’ and the best one amonsnt many other 2 liners, which hits u hard, real hard!! ‘achi lage toh peeo, nahi lage toh khidki khula hai bahar phek do’. Ever heard a marketer/seller be so tough to u, he’s sure u wont dare him by saying u dint like it, remember u r in Maharashtra!! This friend actually wanted to have a cup of tea, so he stopped the chai wala ( I was seriously in the mood to mock at him, just by buying a cup of tea and telling him I dint like it and then throwing it out in front of him, but sense still prevailed so I managed to stop myself from getting into useless trouble! :D ) and got a cup of tea, when asked how it was, he managed to say that it was really nice. (am not sure if he really liked it or did he sense what kind of crazy ideas were going in my mind and so avoided telling the truth ;) )

The chai wala left and then came a young guy (10-12 yrs old) with a hell lot of key chains and other kid’s games; he had an accent and attitude of his own to sell those beautiful key chains for rs.10 each. My friends did buy a few key chains from him; both cos they wanted to help the innocent lil kid plus they really liked a few key chains from a huge variety that he managed to carry on his small shoulders. One friend also bought a couple of JLo ( just a few ppl know here wat it means, so pls ignore wat JLo is, I just couldn’t resist myself from using the term though ;) ) kind of mobile pouches, but I was wondering why he would buy 2 pouches? He told us, he was buying them for his wife! But why 2? Won’t 1 do?? Oh then we figured he bought 2 of 2 different colors, ah married he is now, obviously understands that women like to match things to their clothes (sorry dude I doubted u unnecessarily ;)). Do I need to mention he bought a purple and a pink one.. God!!!!! I thought it was just girls, see what marriage does to men…! And then since we had bought enough from about a 100 rupees or so, we started doing time pass with that guy, seeing key chains just like that to kill time, for which that small lil kid gave a fitting comment ‘lena hai toh lo saab, kahli pili time pass mat karo, aur bhi dhanda karna hai abhi’, my o my, 12 yrs old he was I thought!!

Last thing I’d like to mention about the journey is again about this same friend, we would have laughed at least for 15 mins non stop at this particular incident. There were these set of ladies selling a floor mat kind of thing which we use for sitting on floor at home. It was made out of some different material and did look really nice; it at least looked costlier than what this friend bought it for. He bought it for Rs.10 each and asked us what we thought it was worth, to which we unanimously said, must be about Rs.20 each (conservatively) and he was glad that he had bought something nice for home and tat too cheaper than what it looks worth. Once his purchase was over, just a minute later the next lady selling the same stuff entered and started shouting ‘2 for 15’ ‘2 for 15’, one must have looked at this friends face, he already felt cheated :D. this wasn’t the end, a few minutes later the next lady entered the coach and yes u have guessed it right, she shouted ‘2 for 10’ ‘2 for 10’. There couldn’t have been a better expression on some ones face to make us laugh anymore that day: D hilarious!!

Tats what Indian railways makes ur journey – Hilarious!!

P.S - Quiet a lengthy post, guess i need to work on making my posts shorter!! thank god I got the idea of splitting this post into 2 parts :P

Today’s Favorite Line – Honest people have a value, corrupt people have a price.

Today’s Favorite Song – Anyone else but you (The Moldy Peaches)

Journey on Indian Rail – Fun on the run!! (Day 1)

What’s the first thing you should expect when ever you board an Indian railway coach? Chaos, Quarrel, filth, strangers or entertainment?

Wondering why entertainment also features as an option u got to choose from? That’s cos that’s wat a journey using the Indian railway provides you, that too without any additional charges! Great!! Aint it?!

This is about a train journey that I undertook a couple of weeks back to and fro Ahmedabad. It was not my first journey, but still I feel every journey with Indian railways leaves you with unique experiences and this one couldn’t have been any better in terms of free entertainment. Let’s see what kind of entertainment this journey was filled with…

The journey had just begun, it was not even 30 mins since the journey started, I was travelling with 2 other friends of mine and apart from the 3 of was there was an old man sitting opposite to me. The 3 of us were randomly exchanging pleasantries and wondering to ourselves how we were gonna bear each other for the next 7 days, when this old man out of the blue started speaking looking at me. At once not sure whether he was speaking to me or to one of the other 2, I just looked at him and turned back to the conversation with my friends. But then the old man wasn’t done speaking, and I realized he was saying certain things about me, he said ‘you have a flickering mind, its really difficult for u to take decisions generally!?’ I looked at him for a moment but I still couldn’t care as much and turned back to my friends. 5-10 mins had passed and the old man started again ‘who asked u to wear this ring? R u wearing this on ur own or did some astrologer suggest u to? Please show ur ring to me once’. This time again I wasn’t really listening to what he had to say, but he kept saying things to somehow grab my attention, but this time he had gone beyond just speaking! My mind was raising different questions ‘how can a person u don’t even know ask u to remove ur ring?’, ‘who is he? Why is he making statements about me?’, ‘why is he just talking about/to me, why not the other 2?’, I was really confused, but I decided to act as if I wasn’t interested (I genuinely wasn’t anyways!) so I told him that I wasn’t supposed to remove my ring under any circumstances, but he kept pressing and finally said ‘don’t worry, just remove ur ring and hold it in your own hands I want to show u something’, I was still in dilemma, every now and then we keep hearing about stories of how people get cheated while they travel in a train, but the old man sure dint look like someone of that kind, but how could I be so sure, no one has it written on their forehead. So I obliged to just show some courtesy to the old mans requests, removed the ring till the tip of my finger and held it there tightly pressed with an other finger (so that, just in case even if he had a trick to snatch it away from me he cant that easily, smart enough eh?!), to which he said ‘can u see some dust inside, u should wash the ring regularly so that u get the real benefit of the ring’. I wore the ring back immediately and sighed to myself ‘huh, he could have said that even without having me remove the ring’. I once again shifted back to the conversation with my friends and the old man kept speaking every now and then interrupting our talk, till he finally got down at a station after some 7 hours. And before he left, he told us everything about himself and had enough content to boast about himself and also made us nod at a lot of things he had to say. My friends got interested in his talks and they did show their hands to the old man to know their future. I remained indifferent so that neither I would be sad if he said something that I dint like nor will I be over excited for something good that was supposed to happen to me in the future (it’d get boring to know about something and wait for it everyday to actually happen!)

Part 1 of our entertainment filled journey had just got down, now we were again bored and in came another gentleman in his 40’s, he took a seat next to me though he dint have a reserved seat anywhere around us ( that’s the kind of courtesy less ness u can expect in India!), a friend of mine took the pain to ask him if he had a seat reserved or not, to which this gentleman raised his hand like the congress party symbol signaling to my friend that he need not bother about that and just stay put with whatever u r doing (now that’s another thing u should know while ur travelling in Indian trains, u need to just bother about ur own seat, at times u wont get even that..). Then this gentleman was kind enough to grab a copy of the business magazine that I was carrying with me lying in between that man and me. No, I dint bother to ask him why he had picked it up even without asking me, I know Indian travel culture really well, when ur travelling in Indian public transport system, everything that u carry with u is also for other publics use, u shouldn’t raise an eyebrow if u want to have a so called ‘Happy Journey’, plus I was already too occupied with my tryst with Nandan Nilekani’s ‘Imagining India’ I dint have to imagine any differently by interrupting both my own reading and the gentleman’s pursuit of looking at pics in the biz mag!

As the day passed, the charge in my mobile phone eroded faster than time, so I thought of getting my phone charged from one of the charging points ( there r 2 points in each coach supposedly) in my coach. But it was not surprising at all to find that both the charging points of my coach weren’t working, so I thought I’d check it out in the next coach but not as exactly expected out of the 10 coaches that I quickly checked out, only 1 point was working!! I had to wait just for an hour to get my turn since by then the most of them travelling in the train weren’t aware of this condition of the train. Luckily I figured this out early and spent almost 2 hours to assure myself that my phone battery would last for another 28 hours that I had to spend in the train. From the time I had started charging, people from across the train had started looking out for charging point and they enquired with me how long I would take, to which I had a standard answer ‘just some more time’, I had waited long enough to give it to someone else so early and easily ;). The charging incident was not just about the waiting time or the non functional charging points, it was also about the way I had to charge my mobile ( was literally holding the charger into the socket for the 1hr tat I charged my phone) and about the constant nagging by the people to remember their face and give them a chance to charge their phone after I was done! (Why would I bother who does after me?! Fight till u either break the only working charging point or be patient and get ur work done!!)

P.S – The post has already reached the 2 page deadline, so I rather split it into 2 parts and call it day 1 & day 2! ;)

Today’s Favorite Line – There will be no reason for love, if there is a reason, then it wont be love – Shakespeare

Today’s Favorite Song – Soniye Hiriye (Shael)

Life in a Bschool beyond classes, cases and grades!?

Every individual has some instance or happening in their student life which they cherish for all their life and boast about it whenever possible. If there has been one such thing in my student life, it without any second thought has to be Abhyudaya.

Getting admission into a premier bschool is a dream of thousands of youngsters like me. But after crossing all the hurdles and getting into the bschool the next challenge is to find yourself in that over hyped crowd, people with white hair (work experience), people with gold medals & national ranking ( in academics, sports & what not!), people with different ambitions and attitudes, one seems to be lost. There is this feeling of doing something by which you could stand out, make a name for yourself and be recognized!! No one’s out there to help you, no one to tell you what to do and how, one needs to get there and do it by one self.

September 2007, I was wondering sitting in an Abhyudaya meeting listening to the Coordinators, I am here without any work experience, without any gold medal or national ranking to flaunt, not even an attitude to show! What do I do? How do I make myself known? When’ll people start recognizing me? I am not even a club/ committee coordinator here. And that’s how and when I started getting involved in the organizing of, one of the finest Bschool fest of the country. And since then I was convinced to exert all my skills and energy to make this event the best.

It was just the 3^rd edition of the event, but the previous batches had set such a nice platform for us that it never felt like it was still in its early years. Abhyudaya was already an established brand across bschools in the country, all we had to do is keep up the expectations of the world. Must sound easy, but for the kind of standards in place, it required real effort and time. Being in a Bschool one is expected to be in class most time of the week or doing assignments or solving cases written by the best nerds of the world sitting there at Harvard. To which I thought this is something that every other batch mate of mine is doing, so I decided to differ from at least a huge number of them and chose to simultaneously work with the team that was working towards the success of Abhyudaya.

Not knowing even a bit about how events are organized, what all goes in the backdrop behind a successful event, I was quite eager to learn it all myself and that sure did take all the time after classes and in fact lot of time during classes as well (multitasking my friend!!). Grades and sleep both started going south, meetings and tense situations started moving north, friends and family started moving east and west randomly. But all that was well worth it. Learned a lot of skills and lessons that a lot of other friends dint quite get a chance to learn, even though they secured outstanding grades and long horns.

People management, funding, planning, compeering, politics, soft skills, execution and last but not the least calling for/attending a zillion meetings are all things which others would have started getting used to only after they started working in organizations, but I can proudly say I have done all that while doing my MBA itself. And my concerns with regard to being recognized and standing out in the crowd got addressed just because of Abhyudaya. If today I have an identity w.r.t IFMR and people connected with it, its precisely because of Abhyudaya. I am sure all my batch mates, seniors, juniors and IFMR staff would agree with me on this.

Enough said about my own experience of Abhyudaya, I have seen it growing year on year for 3 years now, both as an insider and outsider. This year it looks and is much bigger than ever. Astounding participation and sponsorship, interesting set of events, the number of people behind the show during my batch was just 1/3^rd of the number now and so is the level of the event (multifold bigger).

I just wish the event reaches greater heights and goes on to become the best management fest of the country in the years to come.

Here’s wishing the team and all the participants’ good luck!!

A new dawn has begun – Abhyudaya!!

P.S - This post is coming now cos Abhyudaya is happening this year on Feb 20 & 21 and the same write was also posted on Abhyudaya's official blog.

Today's Favorite Line - There is this thing about people who mean everything they say, they think everyone else does too...!

Today's Favorite Song - From this moment (Shaina Twain)

My name is SRK and I am not a FATTU!!

The only second movie* in my life that I watched first day (not the first show though) that too after trying multiple times and ways of getting tickets and waiting in the queue for more than half hour (something which I hardly like to do). The movie was extraordinarily rated on TOI (5/5) on the morning of release and also got a fabulous review on Headlines Today the previous night, convincing me to try for tickets first day itself, that too this being a come back flick of Srk-Kajol duo, made it an even more not to miss kind!

The movie though is well made, with really nice acting by Srk and show stealing music by SEL (the ‘tere naina tere naina’ keep my head filled though I don’t have a pair of headphones on my ear!!) and obviously the central theme of the movie about all muslims not being terrorists keep you glued to your seat, still I felt something was missing in the movie, certain parts of it seem not properly connected/ conveyed, and the sequence of events is also confusing on a few occasions ( at least to me).**

MNIK owes a lot to SS & its chief BsT for the publicity it got without spending that extra bit on the additional unplanned promotion of the film. No one so far has dared to stand up so firmly against the old diktats of Bombay ooops Mumbai, which Srk quite well managed to pull off with support from across the country (indirectly only).

And talking about the issue on which SS has targeted Srk and his film, I was watching a talk show on some news channel and happened to get really nice thoughts on the issue and the general reaction of educated youth of the country (remember the majority population in the country is of youth and their voice almost means country’s voice!!)

One gentleman said, since BsT has targeted Srk for making a comment which intended to invite Pakistani cricket players to India for the over hyped IPL, then he should also be targeting the respectable Government of India, its PM, President and the cabinet as such for inviting Pak for peace talks at the same time. If Srk inviting Paki’s is wrong then how can the honorable Govt of India alone be right in SS’s eyes??

One youngster from the audience also mocked at a SS member who was taking part in the talk show via video conferencing, (guess he was scared to be present there, knowing how wrong his party is and what his condition would end up being if he came to the studio in person) this youngster said the SS member something like this ‘Sir, I represent the educated youth of the country and you could well see how you and your party has become a laughing riot stuff in the country as you must have seen even during the show now, take this as a lesson and get wise!!’

Coming back to Srk and why he is not a Fattu, he chose an incredible subject for his movie which people across the world feel and want to convey but fear to do the same. He would have said this one statement a zillion times in the film making it clear enough for everyone across the world ‘My Name is KHAN and I am not a Terrorist’.

Remember he was frisked at some airport in US some time back, he also made sure he gave a glimpse of that to everyone on how he was treated (or better put, how US officials treat people on such instances).

Next he handled the SS issue really well and stood firm with his beliefs and statements by not budging to the threats given by BsT and his troop. Remember last time when our own Mr.Johar personally went to apologize for something even sillier (I get a feeling that Srk must have got some pressure from karan to apologize so that the film doesn’t get affected). But Bravo Srk! He stood to his guns!!

Finally to close this up, Srk said 2 sweet little words to all the ‘sickos’ which I loved the most ‘Shut Up’. I guess that sums it all up.

* First one was ‘China Gate’, yes of the ‘chamma chamma’ fame, that too two shows the same day

**That’s all is the review I could manage to write, just as an attempt though.

Today’s Favorite Line – ‘khush hain hum, kyunki hum phool nahi jo murjha jayen’

Today’s Favorite Song – Tere Naina (MNIK)