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An evening in the summer vacations of 2001 at a landmark site in a wonderland

I should start with acknowledging my buddy Himu Don for our wonderful recent conversation of "those lovely ol' days" which has motivated me enough to work on this post which has been due for sometime now.

First, its time to set the mood for the note. Its pitch dark somewhere in the jungles of Kerala and a few remotely habituated areas in the rural areas of Maharashtra but light is basically shining in the streets and roads in the suburbs and the cities. Pune is one such city where even if its only alternate street lights that seem like burning the electricty, it is sufficient to light up the surroundings. The summer is in full effect and the temperatures are soaring beyond comprehension.

Now with the tone set, let me zoom in to the precise surroundings in just another society in the middle class dominated Kothrud area in Pune. With a total of 8 buildings incorporated into the society area, the construction is robust if not fancy and serves the purpose for which it was really built. There are 4 buildings F-1, F-2, F-3, F-4 which are a modest 1 BHK houses while in front of these buildings are 3 more buildings E-1, E-2, E-3 which are 2 BHK flats. The vacation time of summer means that the "TAVALKI PORA" ( read good for nothing boys) are spending the mornings till noon getting burnt playing cricket, the noons playing card games of the board game of BUSINESS (the one where you buy cards of cities and build hotels and houses and extort money from the other players) and the nights spent sleeping on the common terrace of E-2.

At most of the flats like E-3/6, F-2/3, E-2/10 etc., the minute hand in the clock is lazing over to the digit 10 while the hour hand holds fort at the digit 9. The time reads a little different at E-2/12 which as per the family tradition of the residents is a little ahead of time and is normally 20-30 minutes faster than the others. At the other flats mentioned at the start of this paragraph, the residents young and old are getting ready to go to bed and winding up the day with some show on TV which signals the end of another day spent in an otherwise mundane life story, but not at E-2/12. Infact as a matter of fact it literally and figuratively is a new dawn.

Let us cut straight to the apartment which can be referred to as TAPKIRWADI, the erstwhile scions of Alandi and presently the owners of the most happening place in our colony. The subjects include 2 boys, one entering the graduation college (A) and the other having completed a year of junior college (V), a girl who has just started working (T for Tai) and our most beloved KAKU (K) who is at the helm of affairs of this particular kingdom. The time as previosuly mentioned is around 10 in the night but there is not a thing in this house that even remotely makes an attempt to justify it. T is busy cutting vegetables to be cooked for dinner while K is engrossed in sorting out the rice clean and having it washed. V on the other hand is buzzing out some calculations of his accounts subject which pretty much actually resembles the buzzing of a bee while A is lost in some deep thought of the events of the day. At this very juncture, it is the sound of the door-bell that seems to create a stir in the TAPKIRWADI. Enter friends (F) of A and V who have finished their dinner and are dressed up in pretty ragged night clothes with a twinkle in their eyes.

This entry of the F seems more like the indication that K was waiting for as she suddenly seems to upshift gears and calls out asking the quantity of chapati that will suffice for A and V as T invariably is like a constant and never seems to dither from her standard quota while A and V in terms of appetite are more like the variables that we were first taught in algebra. Once this matter is put to bed, F suddenly seem to disappear and reappear within no time with the slight addition of their beddings which was absent prior to their disappearance. Apparently these beddings were stacked up in one of the inner rooms. With their beddings fetched, F seem to quietly settle down on the sofa set and the chairs in the hall for a brief duration of about 15 minutes. In this time duration, the wickets that fell earlier in the morning are hotly debated and the bowling action plan for the next day is formulated so that the batsmen wouldn't score much. IPL is a pretty recent thing. We were already at that level of expertise 10 years ago itself. No wonder the colony is called the wonderland. Along with this,the decision of who will go for toss is taken as it is the LUCKY one who will bring in the luck that will win the toss. Probabilities was still something that was restricted to the math books for all the participating numbers and was not a practical approach.

With the decisons made and gameplan deicided, the F move out to arrange the beds on the terrace whilst the resident family members get ready to have their dinner. The F seem to settle down on their respective slots on the terrace and set down the beds and sit down for a fast card game of Mongoose which normally takes around 30 minutes. The timing is so perfectly matched that the completion of the game in in sync with the completion of dinner at TAPKIRWADI. With the game completed and the clock striking 11 in the night, the F move down back to the residents of E-2/12 to usher in A and V. It is now that the true description as to why this particular house is a landmark will bear fruit. V is lazing around on one of the long sofas in the hall wondering if he had half a chapati too much and if he'd be losing the shape of his ultra curvy biceps and abs. In the passage from the hall to the bedroom, observing himself closely in the mirror by the wash-basin is A who seems like he has transformed himself from a student to a facial beauty expert and is taking all the necessary precautions to preserve that much celebrated handsome face. K meanwhile is sitting by the base of one of the chairs in the hall and is busy lapping up the re-telecast of her daily soap as she missed the normal episode which is scheduled at a more humane hour of 8 p.m. due to her matriarchal chores. The multi-tasking expert that she always has been, she is dabbling the TV watching along with reading the newspaper. At a time when the normal human population has undoubtedly slipped into the deepest slumber, K is lapping up the headlines, breaking news and other literary viewpoints of the day's newspaper with the only exception being that the day is almost about to end. It is a relief that T as mentioned above seems like the only constant and is getting ready to sleep in this otherwise exceptionally invigorated family.

Invariably, remarkedly dazzled by this sight every single night of the summer vacation yet never ceasing to amaze anyone from the gang of F, they all tugg along to have a well deserved sleep in the cool summer night breeze wondering if the inmates of E-2/12 suffer from an illusion or are living in a dream where they picture themselves living in Dubai as evidently their time-zone and lifestyle seems to be 2.5 hours behind that of what is around 00.00 hours IST of some day in May,2001.

D start of a new beginning...or...

There is a time in life, where one needs to go ahead, leaving behind your friends and carrying along only memories. You do make new friends, but then you never get the old close ones ... you do meet people who'd be so good to you that you could tell them anything and everything, but you do not find a person to whom you needn't say things ... friends who just know you. Occasional calls from such friends, have been the only thing that I seem to look forward to...However, I cant help but notice the uneasy pause that lingers around the conversation ..A pause not because of the relationship, but because it is too short a duration to say everything, and of course you cannot completely rule out the paucity of words!



As I sip coffee from the ubiquitous coffee mug, watching the drops of rain, trickling down the tinted glass panes, veiling the scenic beauty outside, I tell myself, may be there will be a day when things will change, when life will offer a rewind, a recap of all the events and I just have to wait.

Capricious are the ways of life, for I know there would be many who'd be able to empathize with me, ironically, even the dear ones that I miss this moment, waiting perhaps...!!


And I keep on waiting......

The journey to the future is being contemplated...

Each one is born with his destiny is what I have heard but then it is also believed that each man for is own. Shawshank redemption has Tim Robbins famously quote that "you gotta get busy living, else get busy dying". The irony for me though is I am confused & struggling in making up my mind on which one to get busy with. :-)

The possibilties that I am presently faced with are all bright & good in their own sense which is precisely the reason for me to be absolutely confused in deciding what is that I should go after. As a prelude, I am about to complete 2 years on work. My work is dynamic & interesting & keep posing new challenges on a daily basis but somewhere down the line it is getting repetitive. There have been organisational changes which have resulted in structural changes within our team leaving the team unsettled slightly as everyone now wants to grab the attention of the new boss leading to a little messy atmosphere within the once harmonious team.

The fact that I am involved in a core technical job lets me have the liberty to think about the M.S. option which will help me delve further into the infinite technical possibilities that branch out from my basic knowledge right now. The lure is of the foreign shores, the educational model there which is like worlds apart from the book based model employed in India. Education abroad has always been more practical based, applciaiton of knowlegde based whereas here in India it is more book based which as I will reveal further is causing me a huge dilemma. A M.S. will open up new avenues that seem highy lucrative on the knowledge front and also will give me chance to dive into things that till now I have only roughly known about & which interest me too. However the counter argument in this case is that as I am learning in my present job, that no matter how much satisfying & thirst quenching the technical part is, its a matter of time before the boredom sets into the picture. It is not the content that gets boring but it is the repetitiveness & the inability of the others to take it up at the same level despite proper documentation & sharing that sometimes becomes frustrating. Also the fact that an OPERATIONS job will always mean that its more inclined on implementaion of something which is already planned out or that maintainance or support of something. So though I might have an increased undesrtanding of the stuff, in a larger picture I will be doing the same work as I am right now.

The second choice that is emerging is that of continuing in my present job field & organisation, where I am about to complete my first evaluation & might end up getting the top rating as I have slogged hard & given more than 200% & thereby some what taking the load & resposibilties of my reporting manager which has helped him relax over the tenure. The work is good & I can learn new things with time & with advent of many new things in my field almost on the verge of getting introduced, it is a prospect that I can't easily ignore. The counter argument in this case is however, as mentioned above there have been some changes which I do not have any control on but which are having a bearing on me. I cannot but resist the fact that they are affecting me more personally & to an extent professionally also. I have been restricted to explore the other avenues in my field which is making me feel bogged down & curtailed. Also if I shift jobs the opportunities & the scope of work in my present work are much vast than the one that I woulb be moving to. As an illustration lets say I handle subject A,B,C & D right now & have sufficient understanding of A,B & C. It is subject D where I am being restricted from delving into presently. However in every other organisation that I might apply to A,B,C & D are all different verticals & so I will have to possibly choose from one of them. It is no surprise then that my scope of learnign will get curtailed.

Having contemplated the 2 possible options wrt the positives & negative, I moved to the next option that was open to me. The MBA. It was like a college dream/decision that sooner or later I will be doing a MBA. It is more like the destiny thing that I mentioned above. Its like a culmination of what I want to do/be. My present job has exposed me to the world of the Marketing wherein I do end up doing a lot of analysis & stuff that ideally would fall under the Marketing profile. Then there are the avenues like Finance, HR, Business Intelligence. etc. Personally other than HR the others seem highly interesting, though I would concede, without any offense that HR is more like the debates that we had in college where you get to brain storm on innumerable things irespective of whether they concern you or not. It is the prospect of the world of knowledge that beckons if a MBA is taken. Its the sheer magnamity of the ocean than is alluring to the soul. Also the fact that it is all an unknown entity as of now makes the situtation more interesting.

So it would be safe to say as this stage that I am more inclined towards the MBA option which now throws up 2 sub-options from which one needs to b decided upon. The sub-options being an Indian MBA or a foreign MBA. The thought process by which I have contemplated these options is the style / pattern of course, faculty, approach to the subject, ROI and though I may not agree fully, geography / surroundings. I will take each one of them objectively, presenting both sides of the coin.

The first thing that comes to the mind is the finance. The best Indian MBA will approximately cost 20 lakhs or $ 40k while the average cost of an MBA in US in a school in the region of 25 to 100 best B-schools will cost around 40 lakhs or $80k. Try as I might I cannot undermine / miss this factor though after a lot of thought I think I might just somehow be able to afford the high costing US MBA if its good enough.

Moving on to the approach to education & the way that the course spans out is the most important point that needs discussion. Like I mentioned above, the Indian way is heavily inclined towards the book based approach whereas that abroad is more practical. Gradually Indian schools are moving towards the case study but then I ain't sure of how effective it is. A talk with my peers abroad in the B-Schools revealed the fact that there is an interesting mix of international students from varied backgrounds. This fact throws to light the different mindsets of thinking that are possible which I believe is a very interesting factor. Different thoughts will lead to an outlook that is way broader & considerate of all possible factors.

This brings to the ROI (Return On Investment) perspective. It is here that individuals differ & also there is a angle of what amount of risk is being considered. Whether to go for a 1 year course or a 2 year course. Its not just the fees that are involved but also the fact that the duration for which you study you are out of salary. So you may add up the compensation lost in the investment made. Also where an Indian MBA might fetch a return of around 10 lakhs per annum an US based job will return around $100k i.e. around 45 lakhs. Europe has many good colleges but with the a few economies going kaput recently it seems that recession is around the corner in Europe & finding a job will only get tougher with time. The USA on the other hand is just getting out of one & the future seems to be improving on the job front as well. India, meanwhile hasn't actually had a recession but only that the ever blossoming pay hikes have now taken a backseat & employees have had to make do with  a little less bonus.

 A factor in selection is also the geography. I like to roam around and explore, so the prospect that I might be able to explore a foreign land & specially as diverse as the USA or Europe is lucrative. I am not sure time would be there to indulge in this factor but then where there is a will, there is a way. I have heard a lot of the course abroad being exhaustive & very demanding which then means that free time is normally spent recuperating. Exploring will surely be enjoyable.

This is my perspecitve on what is & what can be. I might be a stereotype with regards to my dilemmas & what I am going through but then as I have been doing a little bit of research, I observed that there are many blogs, sites where people discuss the same & same over without referring or browsing through it. This is my attempt to put forth my side. I am trying to make it a practice to write more often & present my journey as it comes. I plan to take GMAT in around 3-4 months time & then start applying from November but before that I need to decide what to do. I hope I will be able to decide soon now & have a PLAN A & PLAN B ready.