Mumbai, ahoy! - Addendum

Have finalized the flat at Bhandup. However, no celebrations until we actually move into the flat! But what I can do is narrate two particularly funny encounters that I had in course of my khoj:

Episode 1#
Aunty welcomes me into her flat with a gleeful smile. The broker (who is incidentally a lady herself) looks very puzzled at the warm reception I am getting. Aunty quickly tells me that she will be moving to Kerala and hence wants to give out her fully-furnished 2BHK on rent to someone nice and scholarly. It turns out that she was a teacher and she loves good students. I am all smiles.

Aunty: Beta, you are an engineer?
Me: No Aunty, I am a commerce grad
Aunty: (slightly upset) Oh...
Me: (quickly adding) I did my MBA - from IIM Bangalore (close-up smile)
Aunty: (eyes light-up) Good. But you look so young to have done your post-grad. So beta why do you need a 2BHK?
Me: Aunty, my family will be moving to Bombay....
Aunty: Oh, your mom and dad?
Me: My wife, Aunty
Aunty: (suddenly jumps on the sofa) Oh my my! You are married. You look so young!
I look down at the floor and give a slight smile (in a sharmila bhartiya purush sort of way)
Aunty: So beta, how many kids do you have?


Episode 2#
The owner is a nice, slightly overweight but good-looking guy. He introduces me to his wife and shows me the flat. Then suddenly he asks.... "You will be staying with your family, right?"
"Yes, with my wife" I reply
"Oh" he heaves a sigh of relief!
"Why?" I ask
"Actually, bachelors are not allowed in the society!"
"Why is that so?"
"Because they are such a nuisance!"
Though I am no longer a bachelor, I take particular offence at that (having stayed with a bunch of guys for almost 2 years in Bombay now! If all societies thought like this!)
"Like?" I ask
"They play loud music, they get their friends over, they booze! They are an overall nuisance. We earlier had bachelors staying in many flats. I have personally complained against them many times. Now, we have banned owners from renting flat to bachelors!" Smug smile.
I decide not to push it further Like it matters to me now :)
"I will be giving the flat on rent for only 12 months. Because I come back to Mumbai in a year."
I look at him with surprise.
"Actually I am going to IIM Calcutta for a one year executive MBA" Smug smile 2
"Great". I give a wicked smile (while mentally picturing him running from the loud music-playing, boozing and philandering junta at IIM)

********************

Mumbai, ahoy!

Househunting... and the Mumbai rains!

After a self-imposed exile from the blogosphere for almost 2 years, what could have possibly motivated me to return...

Life in this godforsaken city had always been exciting - I could have written about my travails of commuting by local trains (that sure deserves an entry of its own!), could have written about how my job sucks, about how I switched my job and the second job also sucks, could have written about the end of the glorious era of my bachelorhood, about 'Wanted', about how I discovered the marvels of Playstation, about Rakhi Sawant, about the online-CAT fiasco.....

But I did not, any more, have the patience for blogging. Reading and writing were the only two (good) hobbies I had had. And both were snatched away from me. Don't know why, when, by who.

But today when I visited my blog (by random chance), I saw that this post of mine has been lying incomplete for ages! And, by now, I can write a book on this topic :P .... so, fasten your seat-belts, here we go:

Episode 1#

Broker looks like the south-Indian sidey of some B-grade Bollywood flick's villain. Turns out he is actually a Bong. He will charge one month's rent as brokerage. Both of us (with less than a month of cumulative work-ex) protest that it is din-dahade dakaiti, but give-in to his demands. We say to our hearts 'All izz well' and embark on the househunting journey.

Fast forward a couple of weeks - Found a house, Ankit used his negotiating skills over the phone (in person, his size would give all away!) to get us what we thought was a good deal. We paid the Broker half his commission (balance to be paid on the day of registration). Owner is in Calcutta but is nice enough to let us move into the house before the agreement is signed. We give the sidey the cheques for deposit and rent and we enter the unfurnished 2 BHK, on the top floor of a seven-storied building.

Day One: Sunday, we goto Big Bazaar and do max-level shopping. Ankit orders his furniture, we buy mattresses, grocery, utensils, what not. Otherwise, the day passes without event.

Day Two: Monday - all the Gods simultaneously take a leak and Mumbai is semi-flooded. We return from work to find our flat flooded as well. Turns out the roof leaks majorly - distraught and on the verge of tears, we call the broker. He feigns ignorance. We call the owner - he is like, 'didn't the broker tell you, there is minor leakage problem the society has been trying to fix for the past two years? You just have to adjust during the monsoons' . We cry foul and want our money back.

Broker - Actually Sirs, you have to pay me the rest of my brokerage. I can't help if you don't like the place now.

Owner - I have lost your cheque in any case. You can put a stop-payment on that cheque if you want, but I want additional one month's rent.

Ankit uses his charm over phone once again. We finally get away with minimal damage, monetary as well as mental.

(and everyone we speak to says, 'You shouldn't have taken a top-floor at all! You should know this in Mumbai - you could have asked me for advice!')

Episode 2#

We find another place and have to shift before the weekend - so that we don't have to pay the owner extra one month's rent. Only option is to move our stuff after office-hours. We book a tempo, return home from office in torrential rain and wade through knee-deep water to reach our building. The tempo guy refuses to come in such heavy rains. Now, it's a choice between some desperate last-minute jugaad and shelling out extra 21K. We choose the former and with umbrella et al, start scouting the locality for some tempo-wala who will help us out. We finally find a young boy who agrees to drive us (at exorbitant cost, of course) but he refuses to assist in getting the luggage loaded/unloaded.

The picture of that night, when the world around us seemed to be dissolving, and we were busy carrying our stuff from the 7th floor down to the garage, will be etched in my memory forever. And not only because of Ankit's decision to drive the tempo. Thankfully he handed over the steering wheel to the driver after nearly causing an accident (while we were still in the garage).

Stay in the second house was uneventful for the next one year, except for the time when I had to single-handedly fight (verbally, how else!) with a crowd of 300 angry Marathis because my Bihari servant was charged with eve-teasing a Class VI school-girl. But that is for another time.

Episode 3#

One year has elapsed. We have to find a new house. Ankit is hell-bent on taking a place in Wadala (which seems to have an aspirational value for all IIM-grads). Dosti Acres and the nearby shanties get a premium becuase all IIM junta stays there. The facts that it is absolutely unreachable by public conveyance and that travel cost is raised substantially do not seem to matter to the wannabe Investment Bankers. I finally manage to convince him against the very idea.

We finally take a 3 BHK in Kohinoor City itself. We get the local guys to move our stuff - and the day we are supposed to shift, the skies open up again! Not much of love-lost between me and God, since we were only moving to the next building.

Episode 4#

I get married and so have to find a place of my own. Being a SINK family (as opposed to DINK), this was anyways gonna be a mighty task. Finding a good house in a good locality at affordable rent! I did find one such place and promptly closed the deal with the owner - a Bengali software engineer who had gotten transferred to Ireland and hence was giving his place on rent. Then one week before my wife is supposed to join me in Bombay, he gives me a call:

Makanmalik: Jogesh, I have shocker of a news!

Yogesh: Erm?

Makanmalik: I have just been informed my Ireland project is canceled!

Yogesh: Erm?

Makanmalik: We have done the agreement and all (where I had slimy-ly put in 6month lock-in period), but that is all fine, right? Thanks for the cooperation. Happy House-hunting!

If you haven't guessed, I am still house-hunting after recovering from the above shocker of a shock! And, hence, couldn't resist venting out my frustration when I saw this topic in an incomplete status :)

Life @ IIMB - The Final Chapter

For the past two years I had waited for this day. But when it came… it felt like it came too early.

After all, I had just started enjoying my vacation at IIMB.

Hours after hours of doing nothing.. playing World of Warcraft in the Computer Centre Lab night after night, taking a walk to Athica’s with friends at 2’o clock in the night for a cup of coffee, sitting in the OAT at 4 AM in the morning bitching about people, getting drunk on L^2 parties (and hitting on a girl?), watching a night show in a theatre and on our way back doing a little jig in the rain… the second year of my stay at IIMB was as chilled out as the first year had been rigorous, perhaps more … not because it was designed that way by the Insti… but because I had decided, after a lot of deliberation, that I want to enjoy this one year of my life to the fullest.

And enjoy I did. From travelling to Malaysia on a fraud project in a fraud course, to vacationing in Goa, to not mugging for FSA mid-term because I had to finish reading that newly released Harry Potter book (and thus, somewhat foolishly, showing the middle finger to grades), to organizing Karaoke parties in the night to the annoyance of the entire Girls’ Block, to spamming away to glory on all the BRacket folders in the name of ATF… second year at IIMB was fun. But always, somehow… there was an eagerness to run away from the place which had so few happy memories for me… I had always waited for the day when I will finally go far far far away from this hell-hole…

Now I realize how wrong I was… At times, we do not realize what is it that we actually want… maybe I didn’t realize too.

Second year was as different from the first year as it possibly could have been. Maybe because we knew by then that in this race for surging ahead of each other, in this game of marks and money… we are falling behind in this journey called life… we knew by then how to bend rules of the Insti, how to study just before exams and manage the passing grade, how to keep safe distance from the RG-loving, marks-hungry junta… how to ignore people who really don’t matter and … how to live your life your way.

Second year also shattered some myths for me… most important was the realization that my expectations have been misplaced all along… it is not necessary for friends to be like-minded, to crave for the same thing, to follow the same road. I made friends who couldn’t have been more different from me, they still are and will always be… and they formed part of every bit of fun that I had at the place. Had it not been for them, I don’t know if I would have survived IIMB at all. We have fought, we have shared, we have celebrated, we have cried together… have shown each other different facets of the world, have been each others’ conscience, have prayed for each other…

And all that was over…

I remember the day I left campus…

Mummy and Papa were waiting in the cab.. all my luggage had been loaded. I locked the room and rushed to the Hostel Office to deposit the keys… the corridors were deserted. Most students had already left campus. And those who remained would do so in a couple of hours. The first years were busy writing an exam…

It was in that moment that the feeling sank. So, this is it? IIMB is over?

I tried hard to contain tears.. not in front of Mummy and Papa!.... A couple of friends were standing near the cab to see me off… I felt strange. I didn’t know what to say. It was like I am leaving a part of me behind. I looked at the campus one last time… took in everything. There are thousands of things I can complain about and I have been doing that in all earnest. But I know one thing for sure - these were the two best years of my life.

Loser?

Yes, I did that. Again.

Happy Birthday to me :)

Make a wish, Patwari!

Mumbai, ahoy!

Sunday, Evening 8:00 PM – Cribbing to Thatha (my roomie) about how I have wasted the entire weekend by doing nothing but sleeping and hunting for a decent place to eat (i.e. a place where you get cheap yet great food!) and couldn’t really do the Mumbai-darshan that I have been planning to do ever since I landed here. Thatha takes his eyes away from his laptop (he is watching some Tam movie for the umpteenth time – don’t ask me why! Tams usually don’t have any reasons for doing what they do), murmurs something and gets back to his chore.

Night 11:00 PM – Playing War-craft on the laptop and promising to myself that this is the last game…

Night 11:59 PM – Take a Digene tablet (the oily food has caused acidity again!), check the alarm, and hit the bed.

Monday, Morning 7:30 AM - Shit! Am late again. Get up, check the alarm (it must have rung you idiot!), rush to the bathroom… have to get ready by 8 at all costs. Today, I finally want to attend that early morning briefing on the treasury floor…

Morning 8:05 AM - Enter the mess, check the menu, if it’s anything other than Misal Pav, order (and eat breakfast in 2 minutes flat) else rush to the station.

Morning 8:11 AM – Enter the station missing the 8:10 Andheri local by a few seconds again! The Bandra local is at 8:25 – so all hopes of attending the briefing down the drain!

Morning 8:35 AM – Getting a free full-body massage – in the local train – it is packed to the fullest and you can’t move a toe without pushing someone off the moving train.

Morning 9:00 AM – Waiting in the queue to board the bus that takes you to BKC, and making use of the time to breathe freely for a change and also to wipe the perspiration…

Morning 9:25 AM – I am again the last intern to enter the office and I re-assure myself that petty things such as this don’t affect my chances of getting a PPO

Morning 9:35 AM – Try and talk to the guide, she is busy (We’ll talk over lunch, dear), try and do some work (after successfully resisting the temptation to participate in the nonsensical chat the other interns are having), discard the idea as bad and join the gossip instead.

Afternoon 1:00 PM – Guide finally steals half an hour from her busy schedule and we meet over lunch in the cafeteria… this being the only thing in the whole day that I can feel happy about…;)

Evening 5:30 PM - All the interns go down for snacks and they need some bakra for time-pass as they are bored. But they don’t seem to get bored with me being the bakra everyday!

Evening 7:30 PM – After another day in office, you rise to leave and realize that you would be the first intern to leave. You again assure yourself that this would not affect your chances of a PPO and walk out of the office. (This occasionally doesn’t happen if guide wants to talk to you or you are doing some good work for a change - and then you may have to stay back till 9:00 – 9:30)

Evening 8:15 PM – Get a free full-body massage again!

Evening 8:50 PM – Enter the hostel, change into full pajamas and remind Thatha to do the same (In the hostel, we aren’t allowed to go to the ground floor wearing anything that shows even an inch of our body except the face. BTW, we are in a boys-only hostel and the authorities have no problems with the boarders loitering in the corridors in ill-fitting underwear almost all the time!), go down to the mess, eat dinner if anything is left at all…

Evening 9:15 PM – Check if the wireless is working, curse since it is not, crib about how long it has been since you checked your mail or did orkutting, and then start with War-craft…

----------------------------------------------------------------

Spend most of your next weekend (if you don’t go to office on Saturday that is) washing your clothes, ironing them (if the dhobi has ditched you again!), chatting with other B-school students, planning to go on Mumbai-darshan, falling asleep in the afternoon… doing nothing and just nothing…

That has been Mumbai for me for the past one month… the coming days have something good to look forward to like the faccha party, the Alumni meet… and the project work-load will also go up keeping me busier…. So taking a sanyaas from blogging for a while!

May God kill Arjun Singh soon! :)

Life@IIMB Part-V

A five-day farce!

Things are getting scarier. There was light at the end of the tunnel, or so I thought. Now there is this nagging feeling that it was only a mirage.

You know that creepy feeling that something somewhere is terribly wrong and you ought to know about it, fix it if possible… as it concerns you and the ones you care for… but you don’t know what to do and where to look…

Final Placements of seniors are on now while I write this blog… was there most of the time… and was witness to the drama that is being played out in the MDC lawns… The newspapers will be agog for news of splendid placements and would carry articles that would eulogize the institutes and the MBA program in general. And all the budding MBA-aspirants beyond the walls that surround us here would embark on a journey… a journey fuelled by fragile dreams and delicate aspirations… a vicious trajectory would start all over again.

The placement process at the MBA institutes is a painful one. One would marvel at the way the entire mela is organized and at the sheer scale of it. One would also marvel at how only a few gain out of the process and most are left stranded trying to figure out what could have possibly gone wrong. Having been through a similar process during my summer placements, I thought I would be able to help them out, understand what they are going through. But, I realized that I am still not strong enough… that the vagaries of the process were more than I could take. Looking at people in pain is not easy… and not if a similar pain resides somewhere in your heart too.

One thing which strikes you immediately at the end of the first day of the placement process is that none of the people who are still waiting to get placed deserve to be put through this agonizing process. They are some of the finest brains in India and they don’t need any certificate to prove that they are good. And if nothing else, just the fact that they have the strength to be through all of this is good enough evidence of their capabilities, for me at least. It is not easy to hide from the world the excruciating agony that burns inside. But they don’t need anyone’s sympathy because, if anything, that will only break them down… it is indifference that makes them stronger, helps them to go through it.

Almost like a spider that carefully builds a cob-web for its unsuspecting prey, the MBA institutes ride on the glory of the Day Zero placements. That ensures many things – glamour and exclusivity being two of them. There is no denying that there is no dearth of opportunities for a graduate from a reputed B-School, even for a Day One or a Day Two candidate, and in the end, it all boils down to the abilities that you have. But what is surprising is the way the downsides of the process are played down… and what is highlighted in media is only what would add fuel to the fire.

While a sweeping sense of deja-vu engulfed me the entire time that I was there, I could almost see a similar thing happening to me one year down the line and I kind of feel I don’t give a damn. It is good that I have accepted it now. But does that mean that it wouldn’t hurt when that happened, or that I would stop aiming for the best? Probably not… but then that’s life. Isn’t it?

Yeh ILU-ILU kya hai?

Should have posted this on Valentine's Day... but nevertheless!

Love.... it's something I have contemplated a lot about... something that has been the subject of a lot of discussion among friends.. something which I neither claim to understand nor believe in...

Now, I am talking about a very special variety of love. Love, sadly, is a term used with a lot of liberty and may have many different (and some shady) meanings in different contexts. The pure and quintessential love that we have toward our parents, siblings, family.. friends.. is not something which I will brood over here. Love, in this blog, has a romantic flavour.. it's about that 'itch'...

I begin by wondering. I always do. Why don’t I have a girlfriend while everyone else has at least one? I think I know the reason. Though I’ve a particularly well-crafted face (which I know because of my rather long observations before the mirror and for the fact that I’ve discreetly noticed ‘those who matter’ looking back at me), I don’t have that air of exquisite charm around me which sends gals rolling at your feet.
Never mind.

Next I elaborate on the importance of falling in love -

(between you and me, having a girlfriend and falling in love are two very separate, mostly mutually exclusive events... I will contemplate more on the former as that is what is thought, wrongly as you might have guessed, to be the most common symptom of falling in love)

First, you start getting this special treatment from all your friends. They stop taking you for granted as they know that, now, someone else has snatched away that privilege from them.

Second, all the other girls start noticing you too. It's as if you have proved your manhood without even winking an eye. They, apparently, think that when this girl is going out with that guy, that guy has to have something to him. Personally, I think that this is the only merit of falling in love.


Next, your daily routine changes like a miracle. You no longer are that stink-bag that can also walk. You keep your room and more importantly yourself clean and are given the privilege of being an escort to your girlfriend wherever she goes. This also has another incentive attached. This shows the world that you are also 'sensitive', the perfect metrosexual attribute... that is you are so deeply in love that you can't possibly walk without your girl..

Last but not the least, you also realize that this is not love after all...

My regards to all the lovers in IIMB and also the world that claims to exist outside...

~Down Memory lane~

Some moments from the past that I cherish... some snaps from the years gone by...

Life@IIMB Part-IV

A year older, a thousand years younger…

Okie… after much pestering from someone special, here is the blog about my Birthday@IIMB.

Hmmm.. I have always been somewhat indulgent when it comes to assessing the capabilities of my grey cells (I still do).. and it was such a stupid confidence which made me believe that I can do something really bold and brainy… and that was to escape the ceremonial hooshing on my birthday.

I admit I was scared… after witnessing the merciless way in which others were hooshed on their birthdays. And by some stroke of (bad?) luck, I realized that birthdays can indeed be deleted from the server and I did that, congratulating myself on a job well done. No birthday… no hooshes!!

Ahem, ahem, word did leak out and I got hooshed all right, albeit two days after my birthday… and somewhat more than required.. (Junta being angry at me for what I did) :(… And, as it became known to me that they wouldn’t really have hooshed me had I been good and honest, I felt really stupid and like an idiot.

So, I had to nurse my bottom for the whole of the following week and had to curse my stars for having given me that brilliant idea. But, luckily I was spared the customary pole dance (perhaps, because of my seedha baccha-type looks) and was also not made the target of egg-bombs.

So, the take-aways? Hmm.. small things such as this tell you a lot about the people around you.. about how much they care for you, how much they love you… and today, when I look back at these small incidents… I feel grateful that those many kicks landed on my bottom… for today, I have some of the nicest people I know as my friends…

As I always say… Life is full of pleasant surprises… :)

Now as a bonus to this blog, I am adding some clips and also the birthday mail that was sent out to all students before my grand hooshing… it also showers generous praise on me, so that’s another incentive… :D

*wicked-I-am-so-brilliant-smile*

“Hey IIM B,

What do you do to people who do not declare these B'Day for the fear of being hooshed?? You catch them and hoosh them the hardest possible!!!

We meet at L^2 tonight for the very same reason, to "celebrate" the BDay of a certain Mr. Patwari whose Bday was a couple of days back but the batch-mates discovered it today. So now its revenge time...PGP 2's invited to take out all their exam time frustration.

"Are mujhe last bench par baitha diya. kaise samjega hum lectures?"

"CA mein mera bahut kharab rank aaya tha!" (AIR 39 *^%**%)

"Kitna aata use karte hain roti mein, chhee!"

"kaisa khana hai yaar, chhee!"

"kitne machhar hai yahan ki library mein!"

"Bahut kharab marks aaye hai. sab mere se aaage honge!" (to a guy scoring 72, after himself scoring 87 in BGS)

Crib, crib, crib and a bit more crib!

And thus was born Cribbesh, the fraud CA, the half auditor, the super-sincere stud of Sec D.

A born fighter, he has buried himself into books right from the first week. In fact, he once seriously considered changing his room from K block to C block!

Reason - to quote the great man -

"I want to save the 15 minutes I spend everyday walking to class and mess, yaar. Can put more fight"

In fact the only reason he is still in his old room is the proximity to the loo, which incidentally he is in love with. In fact he spends more time in the loo, rather than in his room.

Talk about girls and the guy blushes big time. Further, given his devotion to studies and globe, we assumed that the fraud bong, would never be interested in the fairer sex. We were duly proven wrong when Cribbesh confessed to holding a torch and a lot more for ******** (Censored). Tribute must be paid to the bugger, who actually had ******* (Censored again) … Nah … the hero got the all India 39th rank ("woh to consolation prize tha, yaar"). By the way, the girl does not know that his aashique has gotten into IIMB!! Height of modesty!!

Yogesh is angry at you, he is furious and it shows on his face. He is about to open his mouth and you stand there waiting for the choicest of abuses to be hurled at you. And what actually comes out?? - "Chor", "Nalayak". Yeah, these are the most abusive words in Yogesh's vocabulary. Unbelievable for a 22 years old guy? But then, our Yogesh is one of his kind!

However, with his intelligence, simplicity and straightforwardness, he is sure to win many hearts in his two years here! Any statistical estimates as to how many of them will be female hearts??? Our calculations show a 99% confidence interval!!

Wishing this wonderful person a very happy, though belated, birthday.

Credits: Sec D Back Benchers Club”