The Chronicles of a Happy Life

This was my last interview. This ends about three months of gd/pi prep days – basically involving little preparation apart from keeping in touch with the news (including political news *yuck*) and getting nervous about being unprepared before every interview. Thankfully, I wasn’t asked the question I was dreading the most - “Do you watch pirated movies? Don’t you think that’s unethical?" If I answer yes, I’m unethical and no IIM wants to produce unethical business leaders. If I answer no, I’m screwed again because I’m clearly lying. I don’t think I possess the ability to lie convincingly yet. Ask my friends.

The IIM Bangalore interview was my best ever. It didn’t start off very well. I was as tense as I was for the IIMA one. In fact, I gave only monosyllabic answers (a strict no-no according to CL) for the first few questions. There were two profs – one of them was the Chairman of Admissions – I recognized him from his photo in the brochure. The other was a really young guy – I half thought that he was a Ph.D student.

They started quizzing me on Fordism, Taylorism, Post-fordism and I just knew all the answers. It was like an episode of Mastermind. After a while, the young prof said “You know so much about management already. What are you doing here?" That instantly put me at ease. It was like BCing with friends after that.

The old prof then asked me about Probability – how discrete probability was different from continuous probability. He said that for any value that you pick, you can always define a continuous probability case and also a discrete probability case for a probability of that value. I tried explaining him via one approach. When that failed, I backed up and started from the beginning – from the definition of probability. Big mistake! He succeeded in trapping me, but then let me off with a laugh. Moral of the story - be very sure of what you're talking about. IIM profs love probability.

Then the weirdest question of all ‘Consider this hypothetical thought experiment – suppose you are invisible and you can do only two things. What would those two things be?’ I’m sure every red-blooded male knows the first answer that came to my mind. Unfortunately, though we had built a really friendly rapport till that point, I couldn’t tell them that. So I thought about the closest thing that came to a WPA (World Peace Answer – immortalized by Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality – means an answer which you don’t really mean unless you’re a saint, but you still say it in beauty contests, interviews, etc. The interviewers know that you’re giving them gas, but that’s precisely what they’re testing – your ability to generate gas on the fly and deliver it with confidence. Probably it’s useful in some business situations ;)). I told them that I would try to find out what industrialists and politicians really talk about in private – you know, expose corruption and all that stuff. I didn’t want to say that I would kill corrupt politicians because I didn’t want to take an extreme view (another strict no-no according to CL). They told me I was sneaky. And then the young prof told me that he would’ve gone and watched the world cup, because otherwise it would be too expense. I then did the best I could do in the circumstances – grinned stupidly while they shooed me away laughing. So much for ethics.

I’m leaving tonight for Bangalore for my last IIM interview. This time it’s for IIMB itself. Having IIMB last is bad and great at the same time. It’s bad because this is one of the important interviews and I’m too chilled out after five interviews. It’s great because now I’m completely at ease with the whole process. Waking up on your own, getting dressed (I’ve even started enjoying wearing a tie), meeting familiar strangers (by some logic, I’ve always find some people that I’d met in an earlier interview), ‘being welcomed into the second stage of the admission process in IIM[X]’, participating in a GD (oh, this deserves a separate post), BCing with everybody around while waiting for my turn and finally facing the panel and always stepping out thinking that I should have been better prepared. Though, I haven’t slogged as much as ‘some people’, I try to keep abreast of the news and I’ve read up a bit about the institutions and the cities that I’ve been associated with, the Indian economy and of course, technology. However, in each and every interview, the professors manage to ask me a couple of questions that are just beyond the limits of my knowledge. IIM professors are truly amazing.

A perk of getting through to the second stage is getting to meet all kinds of people there. I’ve become quite friendly with a rock-star from BIT Mesra. I didn’t believe him when he first told me that he was the lead vocalist of a rock band and has won a lot of prizes in many fests. After all, he’s very polite, speaks very cultured Hindi and is always wearing specs and a tie when I meet him! I’ve met a guy who acts in street-plays for fun and a guy who’s the HR head of a major IT company in Hyderabad. But almost everybody is an engineer and working in or placed in an IT company. And strangely, so far I’ve not met anybody there who really likes technology or has a passion for it. Maybe some people do have a passion, but like to act as if they don’t (I know some such people). Why they would do that is beyond my understanding?

Another plus of giving all these interviews is the mini-vacation I get to take each time I go for an interview. As long as it’s short (nice usage eh?), I love getting away from all the worries of IIIT (i.e. my final year project which is only inching towards completion. I hate Java!). Bangalore infrastructure sucks but life inside IIM Bangalore is fantabulous. I get good food, a very nice room and the best part is the computer centre. There is also that nostalgia bit – Kitty and I stayed in the IIMB hostel for a couple of months two years ago while I was interning at Novell. The weather is beautiful and so are the girls :D. That’s another thing I find strange there – the girl/boy ratio in the GDs is about 1:9 whereas in the IIM student mess it’s close to 1:1. :-S

Results should be out in the first week of April (I’ve only heard rumors, nothing official yet). Wish me luck.

Shiben recently wrote a fundoo story. Like all of Shiben’s previous creations (rmr the list where he compared me to Ambani and the MSBR essay?) it was whacky with a subtle message… more than a subtle influence of South Park :D and it was clear that he had put a lot of hard work into it. As far as I’m concerned, I wouldn’t mind not using my arms and legs for a long time (but I would still like to have them around only for the sake of aesthetics). IIIT’s no computer’s day be damned.

I only disliked the part where he has knocked girls. It’s clearly there for no reason other than playing to the gallery. It would’ve made absolutely no difference to the story had he removed that part. I agree that girls here get a lot of advantages including attached bathrooms, free attendance in the Dean’s classes (”Are all the girls present?” “Yes Sir” No counting… No leg-pulling… Nothing!), better grades (Fine Arts is only the tip of the iceberg), etc. but all this is only the trailer for real life - even in top management schools, girls have a better shot at getting placed in i-banks, consulting companies because they want to have a healthy sex-ratio in their employees. We guys just have to learn to live with it and work extra hard.

This year’s Holi was the best ever. 27 of us friends celebrated at Pragati Resorts (a mini water park thing). There were slides, good music and a rain disco. I had the maximum fun playing HB (secret game ;)) and water polo cum rugby. Thanks to IIITian ingenuity - research with a difference ;) we were able to avoid paying Rs. 175 for the buffet and had a picnic lunch with our own snacks. The bus ride was also awesome fun with some innovative (see, we do it all the time) games like ‘Company dance’ (we had to dance in alphabetical order of the companies that had selected us and so the Adobe dance was first :D) and general leg-pulling. We then went to the Chilkur Balaji temple. It’s said that this god specializes in granting wishes. The procedure is to do eleven revolutions of the temple when the request is made and to come back and do 108 revolutions when the wish is fulfilled. I like the concept. This forces one to make SMART (specific, meaurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound) goals and this requires one to make a total of 119 revolutions to make the goal come true, it makes sure that one is dedicated to that goal too. Thanks to Arpit, Abhay and of course, Rumeet for organizing the whole thing. A friendly ‘Fuck you’ to Smiley Singh for this.

I woke up today morning at around 8. I usually go to breakfast after washing.. but the newspaperwala hadn’t arrived yet and eating breakfast without ET is so.. I-dont-know-what.

So, I settiled down to read a book I had started reading long ago but couldn’t manage to find the time to finish it. Microserfs, by Douglas Coupland is an amazing book. It’s about this group of programmers who quit Microsoft to work on a startup in Silicon Valley in the 90s. The cool part is that this book is written exactly like a blog (Weird fact 1: A few days ago, Shiben said on the mess table that I was a blog geek and everybody agreed) - Each chapter title is the Day / Date. Dan (the character narrating the story) his friends, memorable / arbit experiences, falling in love (not in a gooey way. Oh, btw check out this link.) and also techie-thoughts… For example, there is this character, Michael who says, “We’ve reached a critical mass point where the amount of memory we have externalized in books and databases (to name but a few sources) now exceeds the amount of memory contained within our collective biological bodies. In other words, there is more memory ‘out there’ than exists inside ‘all of us’. We’ve peripheralized our essence. Given this new situation, the presumption of the existence of the notion of ‘history’ becomes not necessarily dead but somewhat beside the point. Access to memory replaces historical knowledge as a way for our species to process its past. Memory has replaced history - and this is not bad news. On the contrarym it is excellent news because it means we’re no longer doomed to repeat our mistakes; we can edit ourselves as we go along, like an on-screen document…”

A few days ago, in some restaurant, we were having this discussion on whether the Matrix was real or not and Nappy said that he thinks that the Matrix exists because he thinks there are only a few true originals of people units and everybody else are just copies. True… in a non-scary sort of way. I didn’t agree with him then.. but yesterday, I told him how I understood that he was such a big fan of Abhinav because both of them are practically the same people - same homecity, same type of humor, same ideas on love, same experiences with love (I guess!), same ideas on work-life balance, same performance in college, same attitude towards comp sc, the same drive for iims.. Even their experiences with campus placements are the same!

A few people ask me for advice these days.. and I feel so inadequate giving it. I mean, there is no universal pre-requisite to success.. at anything, anywhere. I cannot tell them to get a good CGPA (there are so many examples of people who’ve done well - good b-school / us univ / job without having a good CGPA. I cannot tell them to focus on only one thing at a time - I feel Su is the best example of doing everything, extra-curriculars, hanging out with friends, working on his project (he must have done sth to get Dr. Sangal to give him such a good reco), preparing for gre, cat, job.. and he’s succeeded in everything too - good us univ, good job.. CAT mein chot ho gayi.. but that was just chance. I can’t even tell them to plan ahead - I’m sure Mux didn’t think he’ll be going to an IIM and all his previous ‘chot’s will not matter at all! Any advice on how to give advice?

Another thing.. I realized that spending too much time reading great blogs can actually be demoralizing and demotivating to write a post - because you feel you will never be able to measure up to their level. So, from now on, I’ll first post and only then check out bloglines. Shiben was right. I am a blog geek.

And my A interview is over. Life is beautiful :)

No, not the city. I’m missing IIIT Hyderabad. I had the A interview on 1st March. It was ok. No stress. No acads. A few questions on math (after all I was the TA), some on blogging and the rest, bas idhar udhar ke question - like political situation in andhra pradesh, entrepreneurship in iiit, patents, etc.

I’ve the Indore interview tommorrow. Going back to Hyd and coming back didn’t make sense for such a short duration so decided to stay here. The rooms at IIMB are awesome. And the PCs in their computer centre are mind-blowing - AMD Athlon64, 1 GBps LAN, Black monitors with thin black CPUs… beautiful!

Initially, it was fun being alone. I read the Wodehouse (Jill the Reckless) that I had brought along. In ‘A Suitable Boy’, a character said that it was impossible to be sad while reading Wodehouse - perfectly true. I realized that if I had been back at Hyd, I would’ve been forced to stand with my project. Bechara gautam is doing that now. Sorry buddy, will make it upto you.

But now after four days, I’m really missing iiit. My friends.. DC++.. My PC.. Elisha Cuthbert on my wallpaper.. :((

Thanks to all my friends who helped cheer me up, especially Divya ;) meebo is an awesome site. It enables you to chat without downloading any client. Thanks also to Abhinav for writing his blog. I read all his archives except 3-4 months today. The guy writes really well.

A few more hours and then I can go back to iiit sweet iiit. Waiting desperately.