Hi there!

This post is to assuage any fears of the readers (if there are any left!) that I may have left planet earth! Well, I am here and I am very much alive! I hope that this long hibernating blog will become much more active from now on.

Back to Cognizant!

The placement season is over and I am glad to announce that I have been placed. I will be going back to my old employer, Cognizant Technology Solutions. I will hopefully be put in the banking vertical and be located in Chennai. Thus ends the great quest of a job at the end of a MBA course. Well, the course is not over yet…but for all practical purposes, it has now lost its importance in our eyes. The placement week itself was more stressful than I had imagined. I thought I was very calm and composed and confident. But just one rejection shook me up and I realized how vulnerable I was to failure. I am forced to follow some protocols here which do not allow me to disclose which company I am talking about. This company came to campus about a week before the official placement week that started on 30^th Jan. And it wasn’t just me who was disappointed. Scores of others who were rejected were also dejected and depressed. I hadn’t imagined the kind of gloom and negativism that set in throughout the campus as companies started their pre processes and shortlists started coming in. We MBAs are supposed to be a self confident lot. But a lot of that is actually pretension. Placement season makes even the most self confident soul feel humble about himself.

By the time 30^th Jan arrived, I had regained my old self confidence. I knew that confidence, calmness and composure were the key to get through placements. And with the amount of preparations I had put in over the past few months, I knew that I could not rely on my knowledge- coz I don’t have much of it. So confidence and composure was very crucial. Thankfully things ended well and I ended up in the IT sector as I had wanted to. The interview itself was very cool. I had never expected it to be that way. The subject on which my knowledge was tested most was Formula One racing! I couldn’t have asked for a simpler interview. Anyway, I guess I got placed at the right moment. At around 7 pm people who were yet to be placed started getting anxious. Some cried- especially girls. The tension was explicitly palpable. I stuck around till my other room mate was placed. Then I quietly got down and took a drag and went back to the hostel.

By the end of the day, less than 20% of the batch was remaining to be placed. These guys were placed the next day. The placecom guys did a really commendable job. The first year students who handled the show were extremely good at their task and kept the inevitable confusions to minimum. The quality of the companies coming to campus was not compromised even till the last moment. Unlike the previous years there were no ‘bulk recruiters’ that took candidates in droves. Yet everyone got placed very fast. When placements ended, around 40 odd companies were yet to come! This speaks of two things- the marvelous effort of the placecom guys in convincing so many companies to come to campus, and the present crazy demand for MBA students from institutes like NMIMS by corporates. I guess the official placement statistics are not out yet. But the average salary this time will be substantially higher than last time’s figure. A look at the salary figures in top b schools over the past 5-6 years will give a mind boggling picture. Wage inflation is running up like crazy. It will have to stop at some point. At least the party hasn’t ended until I entered the dance floor!

Well, that was placements @ NMIMS for you. Now that it is all over, life is boring. But I am glad that I got most of what I wanted from placements. I am back at home now. I have a pleasant feeling going around in my head now which I would like to call- peaceful relaxation…

Guru

The latest movie by Mani Ratnam starts with a message which reads something like this:

ALL CHARACTERS IN THIS MOVIE ARE FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO ANY PERSON DEAD OR ALIVE IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL

That message is crap. But the movie isn’t. The movie is not simply “inspired by Dhirubhai Ambani’s life”. It is as close to a biography of Mr. Ambani as Mani Ratnam could dare to make. The movie is very good and deserves to be seen by every Indian. Inspirational stuff, especially for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Like many other people, I had an opinion in which I used to see the Tatas as the ideal businessmen, full of ethics and values and I used to see Reliance as an example of how not to do business. This movie has made me think a bit on this and now I see things in a different light. I see that all is not black and white in this world. Sometimes breaking the law is not the wrong thing, in fact it is the right thing. To borrow a line from the movie, 70 years back a man broke the law of the land, and today we call him Bapu. Dhirubhai might have done a lot of things that may be termed as fraud or illegal or unethical. But he did what he did, in order to grow despite the stupid license - quota laws that were prevailing in the country at that time. When you put in your sweat and your hard earned money and risk it all to do business, it is but natural that you don’t want an illogical system to stop you.

Ambani was successful at a time when it was a sin to make huge amounts of money- unless you were rich with your forefathers’ wealth. Though he himself became hugely rich, he also made thousands of common shareholders rich. Not only that, he gave employment to a lot of people and inspired countless entrepreneurs. He gave confidence to businessmen across the country and played an important role in building the nation.

India is very lucky to have had Dhirubhai Ambani and others like him. To overcome all those odds and still succeed, takes guts and determination. Dhirubhai had ample amounts of both. Thanks to people like him, today India has a stature of its own among the nations of the world. There have been others too, who have given the country as much, Narayana Murthy being a top of the mind recall. And I feel naturally proud that I am born in the same land as such great men.

She is beautiful !

She has captured my heart. Her photo has been occupying my desktop for the past few days. I am longing to meet her again and hold her and kiss her.
She is my cousin's daughter, Dhriti. I haven't seen anything more tender than this.

Found this somewhere on the net.


American sports fans kind of pride themselves on following their own sports that no one else in the world really cares about. The people who follow soccer (as it's known over there) are generally not "Sports fans" as such (or of South American descent). Basketball and Hockey may be big in other parts of the world, but US fans don't care about anything but the NBA and NHL - the various World Cup and Olympics apperances of USA teams in these sports are mere blips on the radar compared to Super Bowls, World Series and NEXTEL Cups.

In short, the only way F1 is going to break big in the states is if it becoms unpopular in the rest of the world. That's just how it is.

A year old !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Exactly a year ago I started an unsure journey as a blogger. One year on, I look back at what I ve been writing and what I’ve got out of this activity. My posts have been a mixture of personal incidents and general issues and of course, Formula One. I have deliberately not given a definite shape to this blog. I guess this somewhat reflects my personality. I am a bit of everything. Sometimes shy, sometimes bold. Sometimes naughty, sometimes serious. Sometimes proactive, sometimes inactive! Since I myself seem to be a confused soul, you can expect something similar from my blog too. Moving forward, you can expect to find an assortment of articles relating to whatever comes to my convoluted mind.

Looking at what I’ve gained from blogging, the least I’ve gained is that my writing has improved. Just as it is important to keep reading and speaking to improve one’s language, I’ve realised that writing something from time to time can also be a big help (especially since the only other writing I seem to do is once every three months during my exams). When I read through some of the old posts, I realised that I was storing my thoughts and my ideas though this blog. Now of course I am not an Einstein or a Gandhi whose ideas are of relevance to anyone. But somehow, I feel good when I look back at my thoughts. It is almost like travelling through time and revisiting certain moments. One more thing that I derive out of blogging is of course the gratification derived from the knowledge that what I write is being read by quite a few people. But this was not the reason I gave myself for starting a blog, not is this the reason I give myself to continue blogging.

At this milestone I have some resolutions. I hope to be more regular in my postings from now on. I take this opportunity to thank all those poor souls who were unlucky enough to visit this blog and senseless enough to go through my posts!! And if any of these poor souls intend to return, then I assure them that I will try and keep improving my writing and will try and make their reading a little more fun.

The Verdict

Sanjay Dutt was charge-sheeted by the CBI for possession of weapons which included three AK 56 rifles, hand grenades and ammunition. These weapons were allegedly meant to be used in the 1993 Mumbai blasts. Last week a special TADA court gave its final verdict in which Dutt was convicted under the Arms act and not under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act.

The full verdict of the case is not yet available to the public. But I must say that I am bewildered and disappointed with the verdict. Dutt’s argument had been that he had the weapons for self defence and that he was not a terrorist. Hence he should not be convicted under the TADA. Now, the judge has said in his verdict that Dutt did possess weapons illegally. But he also said that he buys Dutt’s contention that the weapons could have been for self defence. He also said that there was not enough evidence to prove that Dutt was a terrorist. But apparently there was enough evidence to prove that Dutt was in illegal possession of weapons and hence the conviction under the Arms act. Now, can any sensible person justify the possession of AK 56 rifles and grenades for self defence? Isn’t that ridiculous?

Among the co accused in the case were those who allegedly delivered the Arms to Dutt and those who tried to destroy the evidence by melting the rifles. Both of these men were convicted under TADA. But Dutt was seemingly just an innocent person caught in the middle guilty of simply possessing illegal weapons!!

I am sure that money, power and politics had their role to play in this case, as is common in such cases in this country. The fact that his sister is a MP of the ruling congress party and Dutt himself is a Bollywood celebrity should have been indication enough that one couldn’t expect a fair verdict. I have tried to gauge people’s opinion on the verdict. The responses ranged from disappointment to indifference. And then there were some whose thinking was something on these lines:

‘C’mon, he may have stored the weapons for some reason or pressure or whatever… but for sure, this guy is not a terrorist! He is a good actor. He may have been misguided in the past but now he is a reformed man trying to live a decent life. Whatever happened in the past is past. He is now trying to live a peaceful life. Why do you want to punish him now?’

Now what can I say about this. It is true that the objective of punishment is to reform a person. But there is another very important objective. The act of punishing a guilty man serves as an example to the society and shows that the laws of the land are functioning. This deters potential criminals from indulging in such activities. If the punished is a celebrity or an important person, the example is that much stronger. In the end it is the society which is benefited.

Sanjay Dutt, his family and his fans are happy that he escaped the TADA conviction. Of course they believe that this guy is a transformed man. Maybe they are true. But this verdict is one more nail in the coffin in which lies the nation’s legal system.