Thursday, July 31, 2008

Reason...

These are some excerpts from a friend's blog I really liked.
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"...So, whether we love or not is not important. What is important is whether we make appropriate pairings and add to our already excessive population..."
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"...Another thought: In Mahabharat, Kunti has the blessing that she will forever remain young. Somebody asks, Yudhisthir, "Don't you lust after your mother?" Yudhisthir says, yes, but I control my passions through reason.
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Reason, be reasonable..."

Of groups and sub-groups...

R(elative) G(rading) - giri, a common phrase used here in IIM Bangalore - almost always in a derogatory sense, i.e. when some students try score points through some seemingly unethical ways over their peers. Well, each to his/her own place :)
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But then, several students (including yours truly) have taken a seemingly high moral grounds on this issue, ridiculing these RG-giri-doers. And yet, I remember umpteen number of times when a prof has announced a group work in class, leaving the group formation to the students. What did we, the anti-RG squad, used to do? Try and form a group with people you know have above average calibre, before others swoosh them away. So much so that 2nd term onwards, as soon as the announcement was made, we, the above-average calibre guys, just used to signal each other through a wink of eye and form the group, while sitting in different corners of the lecture theatre!
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Well, a certain part of it is attributable to the comfort level one develops while working with the same set of people, and indeed, most of those students are today my best friends around. In fact, now it is almost given that everyone will form groups within his/her own friends' group, and this whole group formation exercise is reduced to fitting these smaller 'friends-groups' into the project groups while still observing the constraints of the upper cap on project group membership. But still, this comfort level was on level zero during the first few courses, we knowing each other barely, apart from the one's background (and hence the perceptive measure of calibre).
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But then, isn't one of the objectives of group work - peer learning from a diverse set of people - defeated when students work in same groups for the entire tenure of MBA?
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Working with different people each time has its own advanatges. One, you meet new people, and thus further developing the very network touted as the single most important advantage MBA offers. Two, you stand to gain learnings in terms of working with people with unknown temperaments/skills/mindsets. Three, when you know your groupmates are not your friends, you realize that your every contribution to the groupwork can be openly grilled through frank questions in front of the entire team. Last, but not the least, it tends to develop a real team spirit, taking up someone else's work (who is not your friend) due to time committment clashes for the person concerned.
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IMO, groups here should be randomly formed, course after course. If left to students, they would always take the (seemingly) easier route - dost hai na.
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And yeah, this also means an off-chance you get to work with a hot babe - of course, if Murphy doesn't have his say :)

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Birds of a Feather...

It's a common practice in IIMB to party around on the drop of a hat. Now that the new batch has joined, the seniors are busy partying with these guys on pretext of some or the other common ground. For example, today, the 2nd year students in IIMB who graduated from IITD threw a dinner party to their counterparts in the 1st year - kind of a welcome gesture for the newbies. Slightly amusing too, as some of these 1st year guys were my seniors in IITD on account of heavy pre-MBA work experince.
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We already have had the freshers grand welcome party. A separate girls-only party was also organized. Then came the individual "block" parties (IIMB doesn't have big hostels, rather small blocks of 30-50 rooms each, interconnected through corridors). And now, alumni meet from various reputed grad colleges as IITs, BITS, DCE/NSIT etc...Of course, I am not complaining - parties are fun :)
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A not-so silver lining though, which I noticed today - they also have what they call the "tam" party, the "gult" party etc. Somehow, the idea of forming groups based on your native regions has never gone down well with me, more so because this trend seems to be prevalent only in the southern states - I can't, for the life of me, try and organize a Delhi/UP/Punjab meet (Though one of my friends was suggesting a Chandigarh treat, but that was purely because the 1st year has some good looking girls from over there). Two further observations cause discomfort to me:
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1. Somehow, the southies here tend to stick together. Not all of them, but still an all-Southie friends' group is a much more common sight than an all-Northie group. For example, my friends' group has two guys from Gujrat, three from Jharkhand/Bihar, two from UP, one each from Bengal, MP, Chandigrah, Mumbai and Orissa. Somehow, we always miss out on Tamil Nadu/Kerala/Karnataka/Andhra guys and they seem to miss out on us.
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2. I did not observe regionalism to this extent in my IIT hostel life - My hostel had southies in single-digit and they didn't use to hang out together. Ditto for the immediate senior as well as junior batches over there.
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One of my close southie friend (outside the group I talked about above) had an explanation for it - One, there is always this language barrier which prevents southies from freely intermingling with Northie guys; Two, southies in general are more humble/modest and might feel slightly out-of-place in the company of chalaak Northies; Three, the Northies (again, in general) might have some inherent racial color-based prejudice against southies in their unconscious.
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Well, probable reasons these might be for this groupism, justifications they are definitely not. I will try and analyze this further in some future posts, especially what implications it has on Life@IIMB.
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And oh, this also holds true for north-eastern states, but the number is so small that it is hardly noticeable.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

The Nesting Place...

What's Peace Club?

"Peace Club was founded by its board members with the single, holy mission in their selfless minds - to spread peace in this war-torn world using the tried and tested medium of alcohol...Till date, several General Body Meetings (GBMs) have been conducted on the roof-tops across various hostel blocks to spread our message of peace emphatically and efficiently. Night outs have been put in during these GBMs; the members have discussed several burning issues facing the IIMB junta at length. Since we had the hostel residents’ best interests at our heart, our efforts have paid off – the voice of Peace Club can be heard echoing through the nights"

In a nutshell, a group of friends whiling away time, partying, on hostel rooftopes here in IIM Bangalore. What we were missing was a common area, a place truly becoming of us peace-lovers. This is what we erected, took us 2 days and 25 grand.

Name is The Lounge...The Peace Lounge...



I love this place. I love my friends. Let there be Peace! Amen.

P.S. As John Lennon aptly put it, "All we are saying is give PEACE a chance."