Pune meet @ Sigree: Of ISB, IITs, IIMs and IBS

The Pune ISB meet happened on a beautiful summer evening (the like of which can only be found in Pune) at Sigree. I walked in and found Jasnoor sitting alone at a table meant for about a dozen people – Manish seemed to be expecting a lot of female company (The solitary dame who attended seemed to belong more to ‘D’ company!). Manish, the guy who is trying to stick it to the man by buying a Macbook after years of selling IBM laptops, soon arrived. He seemed a little disconcerted at not seeing a certain someone at the table and even went out of the restaurant to check if that certain someone was waiting at the entrance. After this and numerous phone calls, he decided to end that love story (before it began) by starting a new one.

Presenting ‘Kheer-Ranjha’, where Mr. Manish Bage tries to drown his sorrows (in kheer?) by eating bowl after bowl of kheer throughout the evening.

Soon, Rishi and Vishant arrived and it looked like it would after all be a guys-only meet (which just prompted Manish to get more kheer). Vishant is a Tamil lad from Baroda who is currently working in Pune and knows Tamil and Gujarati, in addition to English and Hindi. He must have been confused about the language to use and hence was quiet most of the evening. He did say that though he himself did not drink alcohol, he liked to enjoy the sights of his drunken friends engaged in ‘high’ conversation. He said that while looking at me, which struck me as slightly odd.

Then entered the aforementioned solitary dame (who goes by the name of Malavika), who could not eat or drink what she liked because she was going through a ‘Art of Living Hell’ course. That must explain why she wanted to talk more about ISB Beat-up than ISB Meetup. Various individuals were ‘moved’ by her opinions on this topic.

Rishi: What is your favourite colour?
Lady M: Black and Blue. That is how I would like to turn my course organizers and some of the people on the ‘Class Of 2010’ Yahoo! Group.
Rishi: I like how you think (Moves away a little).

Lady M: Has anyone seen Gulaal? I loved it!
Jasnoor: I heard it’s really violent.
Lady M: Whats wrong with that? I like violence. Violence is good.
Jasnoor: Hmm (Moves away a little).

The wooden tables had a sunk-in barbeque with hot skewers which everyone picked up at critical junctures to make their point with the least resistance.

Rishi: The Jeep is the finest vehicle in the world.
Jasnoor: I think that it is subjective…
Rishi(picking up a hot skewer with smoking meat and vegetables for effect): The Jeep is THE finest freakin’ vehicle in the universe.
Jasnoor: I agree!

Finally Saurav, the guy who keeps forgetting that he is married, arrived. As a result of this affliction, he keeps getting a call from his wife every 14 minutes as a reminder that he is not single. (Although the fact is tattooed on his chest, she does it to save him the embarrassment of stripping to his waist every 14 minutes. A sign of true love, aww!)

After confirming that no one at the table was from IITs, people started giving their frank opinions about the venerable institutions. It seemed like a case of sour grapes for some, though.

Someone: This wine tastes like it has been made from sour grapes.
Someone else: That’s because its beer.
Of course, there was no such sour grape issue about the other great Indian B-school, the ICFAI Business School (IBS). And people were happy that they were going to ISB and not IBS (one person more than the others). Still, they are both Top-20 schools (yeah, right!).
(BusinessToday placed IBS in the Top 20 B-schools of the world in its April 1 edition a few years ago. This led to a spike in the number of applications to IBS that year and consequently the theme song for the school was titled ‘Fools rush in’).

As the barbeque feast progressed, the conversations started to take an interesting turn. Facebook users know that Rishi is souping up his jeep for Hyderabad. Manish decided to question him on this.

Manish(in between spoonfuls of kheer): What does ‘souping up’ mean?
Rishi: That means carrying soup packets to prepare on army kit stoves when you go ‘off-roading’.

Lady M saw us as clearly as 3D (‘Desperate’, ‘Deprived’ and ‘Depraved’ were the exact terms she used), and gave us Chota Chetans some advice. “Ditch the girls that like Salman. Get the ones that like John. You can’t go wrong!” Saurav (the Memento/Ghajini guy) started scribbling on the Polaroid photo of her that he had clicked earlier “My friend. Gives good dating advice.” Then his phone rang and he was seen scratching that off.

Throughout the evening, people gave various reasons for joining ISB. Some of the top ones are: “I joined ISB for rubbing it in my so-called friends’ faces”, “I joined ISB for the cheap alcohol” and “I joined ISB so that my mom can rub it in her so-called friends’ faces at the next kitty party”. I decided to join in this honest conversation by saying that “I joined ISB so that I can go to such meetups and write tell-all blogs about it”. And that seemed to break up the party really fast. Hopefully, people will still turn up for the next meet!