The Un-terview!

Hypocrites. Who? Us. Yes, you heard it right. It is all of us I am talking about. Think about it, don’t we do a lot of things according to an unwritten credo? Nobody knows why, nobody asks why and nobody wants to know why. We all just follow what we are told we are ‘supposed’ to do. Let me restrict myself to just one ritual we all (well, mostly) must have gone through, campus interviews. So now how many of you are smiling at your computer screens? Lies, cold blooded lies, aren’t you thinking? Yeah, me too, same feeling.

One thing I could never understand is how we were able to get away with all those lies. Everyone knows it. I know it. You know it. Everybody who ever gave an interview knew it. Everyone who will give interviews will come to know of it. Even the HR who took your interview knew it. I know I have shared my blog link on my linkedin profile. So the future HR who might recruit me might come across this. And even he knows it! Then how do we get away with it? Is it some sort of a capitalist conspiracy? Do they select the guy who lies most convincingly and with conviction? The girl anyways gets selected, she doesn’t have to lie. Chivalry, apparently! Now shall we stop calling it interview and refer to it more appropriately as un-terview?

Being the humourist, creativist and couragist I am (comedian, creator and bold dint go well together!), I started thinking how it would be if I decide to talk in an interview after taking an oath on the Bhagavad Gita. Well, find the transcript of the fictitious interview below. Warning – The transcript is fictitious. I advice you not to use it in any space other than pointless lunch table conversations. Rest is up to your risk taking capabilities. At least, I am not gonna use it.

In the transcript below, Q denotes the question posed and A denotes the answer to be given. Lets start.

Q – Why did you choose to do MBA?
A – There is no better and safer way to become rich!

Q – Why did you come to this college?
A – Well, this was my best admit card! (This was my only admit card!)

Q – Why do you want to join our company?
A – I am finding it really irritating to cough up a new idea for every company (especially when I have multiple interviews on the same day.)

Q – What are your short term and long term goals?
A – Short term – To get this job. Long term – To get a job in a profile and company I want to!

Q – Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
A – Yes, I can’t even see whether I will get through this interview or not but I will be able to see five years into the future. Perfectly valid question!

Alternate answer, choose between the two based on your courage and humor levels.
Q – Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
A – Happily married with one kid and another on its way.
Sub-Q – No, no, I meant something ambitious.
Sub-A – What I just said was pretty ambitious!

This seems more like it. Can somebody do this? Whoever does this will be my undisputed corporate hero. Lets wait for him!

Cheers

P.S1 - I wrote this blog on April 1. Join the dots if you are smart, move on to PS2 if you are not!

P.S2 - Sarcasm is not a dead art, yet!

The 'H' factor

Dear people reading this, people not reading this, Barrack Obama, the pretty girl that travles with me in the same bus everyday, Lalit Modi, the unsuspecting Gorilla in the African forests, and everybody in general, my name is Vasanth Kumar and my patience is running out.

You must be wondering what went so wrong with me that I had to suddenly come out and proclaim my name. I had to. I am fed up of (almost) everyone spelling my name wrongly. For heavens sake, my name is not Vasant, its Vasanth. This is a trend I have observed especially in north India. Yeah I know, being a domicile of Tamil Nadu, the rest of India is north for me. But I still find solace by using 'north India' in the conventional sense. I don't understand what is wrong with them. What do you call that that comes after ninth? It is tenth. Not tent. Nint is not even a word! You get my point? This is how the English language is supposed to work.

Forget the esoteric nuances (?!?) of the English language. Can't you people respect somebody's name? Can't you see the e mail signature and just copy the name written there? Or are you simple oblivious to the letter 'H' when used in such connotation? Disrespecting somebody's name is as serious as disrespecting that somebody itself. When will you learn that? The worst part with this behaviour is the look on their faces as if they are completely innocent and the fault is mine to have had such a wierd name! I don't know how I am supposed to explain it to them that this is not how the rest of English speaking world (what? where does it exist?) percieves the 'H' factor. I am growing tired, really tired of this. Please spare my name!

I have nothing against north India (again) or north Indians (AGAIN!), its just that I feel like biting your head off when you misspell my name... whoever you may be, even that unsuspecting Gorilla in the African forests!

No cheers this time...

Vasanth Kumar K

P.S - For those who still don't get the drift, I am trying to stir a controversy against north Indians (oh come on...) by blaming them for their magical talent. Spread the word, make me famous. I see myself giving interviews to 24x7 news channels. Make it happen.

P.S2 - If I REALLY become famous (half hour interviews in at least two national news channels), I will sign autographs for free to all those who comment on this blog. Hurry, offer valid till stocks last!

The curious case of my fellow human's brain!

Again, no blog for two months. I prefer to blame it on my tight schedule rather than on my lack of motivation :) Well, now I have motivation on my right hand and time on my left hand (I wear watch on my left hand :P), I decided to do this thing - write random things in the hope that it will come across random people's monitors when they are randomly searching the web for random items!

The last sentence was completely random. Anyways, getting to back to my story, the curious case of my fellow human's brain. We have all been told humans are blessed with a special something called sixth sense. Might be. But the problem is most of my fellow humans refuse to even accede that they have it! (No, no, not you. The rest of 'em!) Unlike that genius Calvin opting to ignore common sense, our friends ignore their sixth sense inadverdently. One leadership guru once said, "Don't ask why, ask why not". As usual, we listened only to the first half of his speech (slept through the rest) and followed it diligently. We never ask why. We never conteplate why we do stuff. We never realise we appear plain stupid in the eyes of who ask that dangerous question, why! Let me quote a few instances.

The scene is set in an airport where I am waiting for my boarding call. The aunty with my microphone finally announces my flight is ready for boarding. Immediatley everybody picks up their luggage, go stand in the long queue in front of the boarding gate. It is ok if a coupe of ladies do it, but smart gentlemen in suits doing it is just hilarious. No offence ladies. I don't mean you are dumb, I just mean it appears dumber when men do the same thing as you! Now, I have my boarding pass with my seat number printed on that. Its not like if I go late, I might see an adamant kid sitting in my window seat refusing to get up. (Even if it happens, you anyways get to see nothing after take off!) Now that I have a boarding pass, the airlines cannot operate the flight without me on board. They have to find me and throw me in. So why can't I use it as a privilege? Why should I go stand in a queue for 15 minutes carrying my luggage waiting for them to open the gates? When these people do it, it gives me a feeling that they are waiting to board a B.E.S.T. bust at Andheri bus stop, not an aircraft! Why?

This is one scene I watch everyday. Mumbai, central railway line, train compartment. From the outside it seems damn crowded, from the inside it appears half empty! Yeah, these commuters pick the most strategic position to crowd - the passage between the doors on both sides of the compartment. It causes great inconvenience to other passengers alighting and boarding the trains but they never seem to care. These are not the bunch of blithe college kids hanging on the foot board for some fresh air. I would know them, I was one of them. These are family men, mothers, grown ups, all regular commuters. They just stand there, they don't care if there is space to stand inside the compartment, they don't care if there are vacant seats in the compartment. I have to wrestle my way everyday to get off at my station. There are also other kind of people, the ones who come and stand in between seats even when the compartment is half empty. Dude, did you drop your brains when trying to board the train? Why?

There is a theory that we are living in a 'Matrix' style simulation of some extraordinarily smart aliens. Seems right! The above mentioned are just some flaws in their 'code'. Areas were intelligencce was forgotten to be programmed into the omnipotent (what?) human brain. May be the aliens' testing department is not as competent as the one at my office!

The more I think about it, the more similarity I find in humans' outlook towards brains and money. For instance, we always think we need more of both. We always think our neighbour has more of both. Even if we were given copious amounts of both we would simply misuse them and waste them. At the back of our minds we know, if not used both gets wasted and we never cared to change our outlook towards both of them! I rest my case here. Don't ask why.

Cheers!  :) 

P.S - It seems if I don't blog for a long time, I compensate by writing a long post!

...and we are done !

The last time I had to write a similar post I started it with, 'all good times come to an end'. But now I am starting with, 'all best times come to an end as well'. Its done. The blissful stay at a slice of heaven on earth, NITIE, is just about to end. Now I feel like that F1 car that rammed into a wall! Lost, confused, sad, out of shape and out of comfort zone. WTF!

You tend to notice that you are growing up when you start losing stuff. People lose youth, people lose free time, people lose freedom, people lose brains, and some people lose hair! Now I have lost one thing that I have had since my very early days of childhood, formal education. It feels really awkward. No more waking up late, no more bunking classes, no more classes, no more hostel rooms, no more getting dad's sign in report card. But on the flip side, no more attending useless classes for attendance, no more insane writing for 3 hours in the name of exams, no more assignments, no more homework.

Everybody has gone through college. Everybody knows how it feels to get out of college. So I will stay out of the touchy-feely stuff here. My kith and kin have always asked me what was my biggest value add in MBA. I've always maintained a modest, 'I don't know', and its true. I seriuosly don't know. But I am sure about one thing, the experience here was worth screwing 18 months of my life. Seriously I never imagined I would get to share my plate with a Delhi-ite, share my glass with a Odiyan, party with a Punjabi, get drunk and blabber to a Marathi manoos, teach Hindi to a mallu, watch a goult movie in Mumbai with a confused Kannadiga, get bumps from gals for my birthday and many more! I am definitely much more sophisticated and refined than what I was. I guess that was the biggest value add.

Well, even a thousand pages wouln't suffice to describe the 600 odd days spent here. But even in a sky sprinkled with sparkling starry moments, some stars do sparkle brighter than the others. The crazy room mate, legendary 422, awesome 4th floor, overwhelming tam gang, kickass fourth hostel gang, rocking PMG, dangerous baba's office, pond, night outs, maddu mess, insane parties, nescafe, ten people sitting in a dinner table meant for four and things like these can even stand the test of amnesia. I have friends from all parts of India! The humble fact that I am carrying more than 32 GB of photos out of this place sums it up!

It would be sheer betrayal if I don't mention Prerana here. If Prerana'08 redefined the concept of hardwork and responsibility, Prerana'09 redefined the concept of struggle, setback and stress. Prerana is not an event, its an institution unto itself. The most meaningful thing I've been a part of in NITIE has to be Prerana, not even the MBA. Prerana taught us a lot of things which cannot be put in words. Although what takes the cake is the scientific art of handling the dragon! NITIE rocks, Prerana double rocks!!

I am emotional, I am sleep deprived, I have nothing to do, I am leaving this place is less than 36 hours, I feel like writing about NITIE for hours. I rather choose to end this post here as it is wrong to try and fit every emotion into words. No human language is capable of doing that. It would only distort those emotions. Let them be unsaid and better remembered. I minced my brain really hard to come up with a simple sentence to explain it all and I think I succeeded. All those of you who cared and shared, thou shalt never be forgotten!

Pepole going through this blog, kindly take out a minute to comment. That would remain as a proof that our lives were intertwined at some portion of the space time continuum!

Cheers

P.S - Things are really changing. After a really long time, I am going to sleep before midnight!

P.P.S - On second thought, certain things never change. I am yet to submit assignments worth 80 marks! NITIE rocks, in past, present and future!

BEST... Or is it?

The first time I landed in Mumbai, my friend said "We will go by BEST bus". The moment I saw the bus, I said "Good one bro! :)". He replied, "Dude! That was not supposed to be a joke". Oh!

This one falls under the category of 'unintenionally funny'. You think of some cool thing, give it an awesome name but in the end it falls flat, even funny. Mumbai's BEST, is one classic example. I don't blame them either. When you gotta manage such a huge city, you tend to miss out somewhere. Some aspect, some area, some system, some random thing doesn't get the attention and it stays a part of prestigious history. Now lets take a look at why BEST buses are not the best (not even close :P)

First impression... was a worst impression. Even my school bus sports better style damn it. Painted red, absolutely cuboidal, looking like straight out of a museum...! When rest of India is going for low floor, air suspension, ergonomic seats, bright colors, our friends at Mumbai never felt the need for all those. I guess these buses are a part of their tradition. You might catch an enthusiastic guide say someday, "You see the Taj, it is older than the Gateway of India. You see that bus, it is older than the Taj" :D

I lost myself in the beauty of the bus as it crossed me. Suddenly I realized I had a bus to catch and... WTF! There is no route number at the back! Are we supposed to randomly run behind buses, overtake them, check the route, and then climb onto them? Are Mumbaikars such good athletes? Or is this some sort of practical joke? Just imagine how it will feel if you finally overtake a bus, but its not the one you want and the driver grins at you and says, "Gotcha!" When I enquired about it further an effervescent college kid said, "The route number is there on the left side of the bus". So what dude, I cannot overtake the bus from the left. Traffic rules don't permit it you know. :)

Somehow I got onto a bus and one look inside told me that the bus might actually be older than the Taj. When I purchase my ticket comes the next surprise. Everything on the ticket is printed in Hindi, even the numbers! Beleive me when I say its been 17 months in Mumbai and I still have trouble deciphering numbers in Hindi. I've used the word decipher in the previous sentence intentionally. I suggest carrying a number catalogue with you to help you out. But there was more. The price printed on my ticker was Rs. 6.86. Seriously, six rupees eighty six paise. Do you guys really live in prehistoric era? Thankfully there was no 'Please tender exact change' board put up in the bus :)

Not that Mumbai is otherwise perfect or for that matter any city is perfect. They all have lots of scope for improvement. But what got me going was the name given to these buses, BEST. Although these buses go a long long way everyday, they still have to go a long way before they can become what they are called, BEST.

Cheers  :)

P.S - BEST stands for Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport!

Need to bring private capital to finance higher education in India

The following article written by me was published in the Financial Express newspaper national edition dated 19 October 2009. Online copy can be found at http://epaper.financialexpress.com/FE/FE/2009/10/19/ArticleHtmls/19_10_2009_010_003.shtml?Mode=1 I can discount one thing from the list of things to accomplish in this lifetime. Alright, now the article,

Education sector, like any other in India, invariably stares at the same horizon – one billion people and counting! When exploiting economies of scale is one side of the coin, the myriad challenges faced in reaching the masses becomes the other daunting side of the same coin. Before attempting to answer the question posed, let us define the boundaries of the playground. For the sake of this analysis, any kind of formal education undertaken after 12 years of schooling has been considered as ‘higher education’. The ever rising applicants/intake ratio in all the top notch institutions of India has indicated the clear inability of the government to provide quality higher education. Can the time tested solution called privatization be applied to education sector? Probably yes, but only in certain pockets.

If we look at our government’s spending pattern towards education, lion’s share is allocated to the top institutions offering professional courses such as engineering and management, majority being government institutions. Other disciplines such as arts and sciences receive very little funding from the government that they can even be termed neglected. But it is a fact that no country can survive with engineers and managers alone, whatever their levels of competence be. A developing country like India needs scientists, lawyers, farmers, artists and philosophers in same numbers as engineers and managers. It is time for the government to seriously concentrate upon hitherto neglected disciplines and lend them a helping hand.

In order to do that, the government simply cannot redistribute the allocation of funds because it will stall the development of the top institutions which can be detrimental to the nation building process. So there is a clear need for generation of extra funds and this is where the private sector can pitch in. But the problem is private sector is interested only in commercially viable ventures. In other words, private sector will be interested in financing tech schools and business schools only. This is evident from the sheer growth of private engineering and management colleges in India. Here 2 ways of bringing in private capital exist – setting up private colleges, bringing alternate revenue stream for government colleges by way of consultancy and training programs. The government should strongly encourage the latter and undertake a regulatory role for the former. This would both decrease the stress on the government and ensure availability of quality education.

The government should consider the extra funding thus generated as savings and reinvest these savings in building a strong arts and science base because at this moment it is these courses that need utmost attention. There is a need for extra funding in these sectors whereas the funding can be generated only through professional courses sector. Thus there is a need for bringing private capital to finance higher education but what is more important is an intelligent redistribution of funds. If the redistribution is not proper, the chasm between professional and non-professional courses will continue to grow which is not a good sign for tomorrow’s India.

Leave a comment if you like it.

Paradigm shift

Our upbringing in this world has been shaped by many conventions, many of them dictated by a lot of paradigms. The problem with these paradigms is that they are suitable only for the contemporary times in which they were told. They are never updated. How about updating some of them? Yes, it is time we say the unsaid, add disclaimers wherever necessary, clear some confusions and change the unchanged. Here is a sincere attempt to modernise some of the well known paradigms. You have all rights to use them at will. Oh yeah, comments in line  :)

• Failure is the stepping stone of success, only if you step against it! you gotta work baby!
• Don't count your chickens until they survive for at least a week! competitive environment boss  :|
  
• Don't count your chickens until you are done with your chicken soup! you naughty boy ;)
• A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, only if it won't poop on you! gotcha...
• The way you look at a glass half full or half empty depends on whether you want it to be completely empty or completely full! this did not occur to me when I was drunk :P
• Silence is the only thing that can be misquoted in any number of ways! be careful!
• Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, Apes are from this place, Earth! now tell me, where are you from? ;)
• Don't go where there is a path. Instead go where there is no path and leave a trail. only then someone will be able to find you and bring you back!
• The early bird gets the worm, the last bird gets the sleep. Make your pick.
• Nobody travels on the road to success without a puncture or two. remember, no stepney allowed!  :(
• Hope is a good thing and no good thing ever dies. we hope so! :)

I think now these are contemporary. Nothing is left unsaid and hopefully nobody can sue us for not providing the disclaimer. I will again come out with a different set of paradigm shift once I figure out enough paradigms that can be shifted.

Cheers!

P.S: If you want to shift any paradigm, you can do so in the comments section!  :)