New Look

I was thinking for quite a few days to change the look and feel of my blog from the default ones that Blogger provides. It took some bit of experimenting with different templates and some bit of technical troubleshooting to get it to work with most of the original widgets. Hope you like the new look. Well at least I like it.

One small request. I know many of you do read my blog and I really am happy about it. It would be great if you could become a public "follower" of my blog by clicking the application on the right hand side(below the blog visits counter)  and entering your Google User ID and password. Just a request... (it should not take more than 2 minutes of your time).

Ok that is it for today. Before I let you all go...one small piece of secret...I am trying to change my look as well...Wait..I am not growing that moustache back ( That one picture has been famous enough here at ISB). Just trying to get into shape and trimming the one pack flabs. It is no easy task and so wish me luck.

The Complexity of Priorities

Sometimes it really amazes me to see where the priorities in life lie for people. I agree that this is a sensitive topic and each individual is entitled to have their own perspective but still....certain things are just weird.

I got extremely depressed to see a 11 year old marriage of one of my acquaintance broken due to misplaced priorities. The wife in this case refusing to come back from US to India after staying there for 10 years. And to this cause, she was willing to give up her husband (the guy she loved and dated for 5-6 years before being married 11 years back) and her lovely son of 7 years. So she is now sticking it out alone in foreign land while her husband and son (husband got the custody thankfully) made their way back here. The question that begs to be asked here is why and for what???

Anyways so much so for priorities in life being a happy life with the people you love. Not that I did not get a taste of this same story in my life at a much smaller scale. I was talking to some of my friends here and listening to this many of them could relate to a similar conflict in many of their relative's home. I wish and hope that sanity prevails for them and a small child does not have to bear the cost of selfishness of his/her parents.

Life is becoming more and more complex and priorities are ever changing and so are rights and wrongs. I just want to see that the priorities of people ultimately bring joy, happiness and peace in their lives.

And I am back.....

Namaskar, Hello....I am finally back on campus and back from the wilderness (staying without internet access for 10 days seems like living in wilderness these days).

So how was the vacation? It was pretty nice. Lots of good yummy food, a few extra kilos gained eating and sleeping most of the days and caught up with a few old friends and spent time with parents. Ohh also happened to watch a bengali movie after a long time - "Antaheen".

This Aparna Sen and Rahul Bose starrer did not disappoint. Some people may criticize its slow pace and lack of a "real storyline" but the film treads on the makeup of relationships in modern day urban middle class society. It also touches upon the sensitive aspects of a relationship developed purely online where the two protagonists know each other only through Yahoo Messenger. The complexities of modern day and the need to share your feelings, frustrations, likes, dislikes with someone you do not really know is becoming more a norm than an outlier. The cast delivers a very mature performance and although the film has a tragic ending, it is not the ending but the sensitive portrayal of feelings of different characters that lends the film its credibility.

Anyways Term 8 starts tomorrow and to be honest...I do not feel like studying. I dread having to go to class, do the assignments, mid terms, end terms...bla bla bla. All I want is to spend the last 6 weeks enjoying and chilling with my friends here. Already I know I will miss this place like crazy after April. But as they say..."All good things come to an end".

Term 7 comes to an end

Today Term 7 at ISB came to an end. It seems just a few days back I used to blog about Term 1 and Term 2 and the stress busting late night parties at ISB. Well now that Term 7 is over, the campus bears a far different look. On one hand the long arduous road to this point has taken its toll on people. In addition the current economic uncertainty has played a dampener as well. So no parties tonight.

We are having placements on an ongoing basis and till most of the batch is placed, we will try to avoid large scale celebrations. Reading my own blog posts feels so nice sometimes. I can almost relive my journey through ISB. Well Term 7 brings an end to the wonderful unity of our "COBRA" quad with one of my quad mates going to Duke for an exchange program. We went out for dinner last Saturday and arranged a wonderful farewell party for him with presents and lots and lots of booze. These are times when I feel so nostalgic. This one year in our lives is going to be so cherished for the coming years. The fun, pranks, heartbreak, joy, pain, games, parties, dunkings, clubs, and overall the phenomenal environment and infrastructure at ISB. We are all going to miss it like crazy once we head out on the 5th of April.

These days with the motivation for studies waning by the day, I am averaging 2-3 movies a day. Although this does not beat my wonderful record when in US, it is pretty impressive. In spite of exams today, I managed to watch Vantage Point and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button last night. The latter is a nice movie and the concept is pretty neat. After a significant period of time, I watched a good drama. Although my heart still goes out for Slumdog Millionaire for the upcoming Oscars.

I am heading out home tomorrow morning for a well earned break of 10 days. It is going to be nice staying away from laptop screens,emails, Orkut and Facebook profiles and blogging. I hope to be able to spend some time with parents who have been patient and supportive with everything that I have gone through over the last year or so. A friend of mine called me the other day and was shocked to see so much stuff on my blog. Well, most of it is plain simple ramblings and would amount to 0 bytes when compressed. But then who would come to read my blog for intellectual enlightenment.
See you all in 10 days and take care and Happy Valentines Day in advance to all you beautiful ladies who happen to read this post(at least no harm dreaming that many of them will do).

Kangaroos on the run....

It is so disturbing to see Australia slide from the invincible side in world cricket to a mediocre playing outfit within a span of a year. And this slide started from the beginning of 2008 when India braved the monkeygate scandal that the Aussies dished out to win the One day series in Australia - the first in 20 odd years. While that series was a definite watershed, it was not a reason for this downfall.

Two things happened simultaneously. Three legendary greats of Aussie cricket in recent years retired - Shane Warne, McGrath,Adam Gilchrist. Only when they were gone did the enormity of their contribution to the famed Aussie side came to bear. It was once said that Australia cricketing system is so strong that they can field two equally strong sides in International cricket. Rubbish..As it turns out, their cricketing pipeline is no better than any other country and they are suffering from the same transition phase that all previous great teams across the world have faced.

The second thing that happened was that India and South Africa really improved their level of cricket and enjoyed the kind of purple run that was always associated with the Aussies. Australia came to India and got thrashed in both Tests and One days and the confidence of the fledgling side went for a toss. Then South Africa steamrolled them in Tests and One days in Australia in an unbelievable fashion. I never in my life remember them being humiliated at home.

Well anyways, I hope the Aussies come to terms with the facts which are really staring at them. They are no longer the team to beat. They are an average side under transition and need to be patient to build the team for future. And this stage requires maturity, poise and not arrogance and denial. Just as an example, last week Michael Clarke said that defeat to the Kiwis in unthinkable. Well two matches down in the 5 match series, Australia look down the barrel 0-2 down and the Kiwis have the perfect opportunity to nail it home this Sunday in Sydney. Now Kiwis are no mighty force to reckon with and this series loss should at least bring back some sanity in the Aussie camp.

With the tough tour of South Africa coming up, Ricky Ponting and his men should reflect on the last 6 months and be open to learning a few things. Australia have been a dominant force in world cricket for the last 10 years and people the world over love to watch them play. I just hope that their impunity and arrogance does not prevent their ascent back to the place they lost.

Fulfillment

It is so strange that there are times you really have no clue where you are really heading. Its weird because we pride ourselves to be one of the most ambitious people around. Are we not supposed to know exactly where we want to be in life, how to go about it and how to tread the steps to achieve it? Here at a business school we are taught strategies for competitive advantage, risk mitigation and contingency planning. Yet there are situations when you forget all of them and get plain simple confused. Maybe it is because we do not want to think about such situations as business problems. Maybe these situations are really so complex that simple applications of frameworks and theoretical models fails. Or maybe these situations are what we call life.

Fulfillment is an elusive entity. It needs not only successful strategy, flawless execution but luck as well. It needs things to fall into place on which you have no control. It needs people around you to work in tandem to do the right things. It requires you to just have faith that others will not let you down. I think in life we tend to run after things which are actually fulfillments. However we forget what it takes and only concentrate on our part of the puzzle and not on the bigger picture. We take the externalities for granted and assume that everything will just fall into place. Unfortunately such things do not always happen and we get repeatedly bitten by the elusive nature of fulfillment.

So here I am contemplating on what more I could have done to reach the state of fulfillment. I did everything according to plan till this point. Totally focussed, I believe that I kept all my promises and did the right things. But the quest for fulfillment is still on.....