Bloggers war: verision 2.00

Winner of Bloggers war : version 1.00 - Priyom

Theme for this fortnight: "Mumbai carnage and terrorism"
Topic suggested by: Binita
Last date for posting: 6th January 2009
Results and the next topic declared on: 9th January 2009

PS: Entries need to necessarily stick to the theme, you are free to post on any topic.g

Bloggers War: Version 1.00 - "My journey to ISB and what it means to me"

The entries for the version 1.00 of bloggers war are now available:
Abhishek Singh
Sweta P
Ankit Goel
Laxmikant Vyas
Nitin Pulyani
Sankar G. Vyakaranam
Vinit Garg
Amit Kumar
Sarat Chandra Vadapalli
Raghav Wate
Priyom
Voting Poll is up now on the Y! groups. Voting ends on 26th December evening.

We gotta wait!

We are excited. But with little to do till April 11th, we wander around creating our own excitement - we meet our future classmates, we visit ISB, we discuss laptops, the economy, loans, trips, we blog about every moment, book tickets for April, give advice and generally jump around.

Remember that birthday so long ago with that gaily wrapped present sitting on the table. Mum insisted on waiting for the party to end before opening it. For the next few hours you wished you had xray vision, you petted it just so lovingly, carried it around like a fool, shook it gently and guessed hard.

But you had to wait, baby.

Nothing’s changed even now - we gotta wait till the clock ticks to the chosen hour.
Jump all you want to, but we gotta wait anyway. :-)

Bloggers War Kickoff!!!

Bloggers war, a fiercely fought contest among the ISB 2010 junta is now open. Jung ka elaan!!!!
Lets put in the most caustic, vehement, telling, but frank comments on issues , insane yet pragmatic reactions to new developments, lateral and vertical thinking(:P not sure if something such exiats) on abstract topics.

Some golden rules:
#1# The topic for the next fortnight and the results of the prior fortnight will be posted on this on every alternate Friday evening starting from today.
#2# All the bloggers will have to complete posting by the next Tuesday evening. So in all you get 2 weekends (i.e. 4 days) and 7 weekdays to post. This should be sufficient no matter which category you fall under (cat1, cat2 or cat3 :P).
#3# All the bloggers will post on their personal blog and provide the link latest by Tuesday evening.
#4# The link to all the participating posts will be posted on this blog by Wednesday morning.
#5# The poll for judging the blogs will be put up on Wednesday morning and will close on Friday morning.

Topic for this fortnight: "My journey to ISB and what it means to me"
Topic suggested by: Zorawar
Last date for posting: 23rd December 2008
Results and the next topic declared on: 26th December 2008

Mumbai

I’ll miss the sea, for sure. The grey, rippled balm putting together shreds of another working day’s resolve. Kurkure packets, SEC A, B and C garbage bags, plastic forks and plates notwithstanding. The kala khattas, pony riders, helium balloon sellers, shapely belles and their out-of-shape better halves, all.

Media men talk about and dissect the Mumbai spirit. Several carnages, bombs, AK 56s, Pakistani linkages and pathetic post mortems later, life races back to normal. That really isn’t the Mumbai spirit. That’s compulsion. That really is a mechanical servitude that thinks twice before letting go of another Privileged Leave just like that. That’s the stoic that comes with the warm cocoon comfort of knowing that no one in your family was killed, maimed, blinded or paralysed by a terrorist’s gun. Collateral damage is someone else’s spill to clean up. So, one giant rally with candles and slogans and life’s back to Sex and the City and the weekend boogie at the Hawaiian Shack or wherever.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against a show of solidarity or a quiet protest march. But my point is save the fact that apart from getting a few media people scurrying with their cameras, microphones and dictaphones, it’s just a colossal waste of collective effort. I’d rather park my time for a pressure group, or a Public Interest Litigation for NSG-like bodies playing vigilante rounds in every metropolitan city, or anything that measures up to something.

As for the spirit of Mumbai, I guess it’s summed up no better than the thousands of suburban families that turn up on Marine Drive or Juhu Chowpatty on Saturdays and Sundays to do their weekly quota of romance, iced golas, sev puri or horse rides. From miles away they come, so that their kids can see what the best of Mumbai is like. Where investment bankers, private equity moghuls, diamond merchants and Bollywood heavyweights go back to after a hard day’s work. So that the kids can aspire and work towards that.

The spirit of Mumbai is two hundred men in a crowded train compartment traveling thirty kilometers from Borivali to Churchgate so that their sons can go on to become fine engineers and doctors. The spirit is a taxi driver returning a Hidesign bag packed with 500 rupee notes, left unwittingly by a customer. It’s 5,000 dabbawallas getting a six sigma and becoming a case study in supply chain precision at the Indian Institute of Ahmedabad. It is letting the young couple canoodling and whispering sweet nothings to one another on Bandra Bandstand and Reclamation, stay unmolested. It’s about the nalli nihari on Id eve on Muhammad Ali Road, with gargantuan rotis, topped with firni. It’s the sky on Marine Drive on Diwali eve bursting with rockets in a million hues, dying like a million stars. It’s the joggers in countless parks smiling to strangers as they all aspire to a longer youth. It’s the soft hello to the Parsi septuagenarian who mans his counter as I sip my tea and brun maska. It’s the sum of all our social graces, however soft and hidden.

Inflation, recessionary trends, political brouhaha, corporate shams, scams, they all come and go. They’re the cyclical nemesis of a peaceful equilibrium we all take for granted. We see them coming, yet we stay peaceful till we are disturbed.
We the people, exist, because sperm met egg. We become when we choose to be. Mumbai became Mumbai because we made it so and because it chose to be so. I will miss it sorely for a year. But most of all, I’ll miss the sea.

Here we are...

I don't know what you all said in order to be here. I don't even quite remember what I said in my interview or wrote in my application. It all seems like a long time back. I have vague recollections of sleepily writing the Zumba river essay, of bugging people for references, preparing plan Bs and Cs, marvelling at people's plans and getting worked up over my own, the interview (and my absolute strong belief that I had screwed up), the crazy wait for the results at pagalguy(refreshing that poor page once every 5 minutes - yes, despite my belief that I had screwed up). Well, the mail I wanted so much came on 20th November.

The wait to April promises to be a long one. It is the end of one journey, you know? And we're all the station ready to switch trains. And there is nothing to do at stations except to watch people all around. I guess that is what is happening at the yahoo group and the meets. My mailbox is flooded each day with tons of messages - people arguing on new theories, making plans to meet, wondering about loans, swapping stories about work, blogging about their experiences... :)

But, I feel rather empty right now. It is a destination I've reached two tries at CAT, a job change, a city switch and a few personal upheavals later. And now, there is nothing to do till April - lol, whether I do it or not, I always need something to do. Guess I need to make some short-term goals.

Welcome to the class of 2010. Welcome to the madness that'll begin in April.

Mumbai Meet up on 30-Nov-08

Mumbai guys/gals met last Sunday and had a rocking time with some unbelivable moments in it for everyone of us.

 

We had a huge turnout of very diverse Junta which was young at heart out of which some of where restless :-) The restaurant was so overwhelmed by our presence that they arranged for a live performance of Saif for us free of charge. The turnout was so huge that intros itself took about 4 hours. 

In between we had some lunatics at the restaurant who were very loud and eating like hogs and spilling quite a signifacnt amount of drinks and food near us. One of us who was a expert on healthy living sms'd using Webaroo (SMS Gupshup) and asked them to eat in a more dignified manner. But the lunatics started to get abusive - vebally and physically. We had Karate champ cum lawyer in our midst who with one chop flattened them out like dosa and threatened to sue them. The lunatics were huge in numbers but we had a consultant in our midst who suggested a few ideas after which the copywriter duo came to the rescue. They immediately copied the Karate guy left and right and we won. 

We celebrated the victory with our national bird "The tandoori chicken" and the national drink "The Patiala peg". In fact time flew so fast and it was so much fun that we ended up having Dinner too at the same place. 

By the time the bill came we found that none of us had enough cash. But fortunately we had a 5 star hotel manager in our midst who helped us settle the bill in a much amicable manner without having to do the dishes. Next day our meet was all over news channels since we had a TV Producer in our midst. We also got extensive coverage by the print media since one of our junta was a journo there.

 

It was a time that could easily not have been forgotten :-)

Welcome

Welcome to ISB-MMX, the participative blog of class of 2010 of Indian School of Business.

I believe the trend of calling a year as "two thousand and n" will be over by 2009, and year 2010 will usher a new era, where "twenty n" will be norm. Hence the name, Twenty Ten.

And the url, well, it is 2010 in roman numerals, for the uninitiated.