The War Of Words

Harivansh Rai Bachchan - MadhuShala

MadhuShala and Jo Beet Gayi So Baat Gayi are the two of the best literary works I have ever come across.

Harivansh Rai Bachchan, father of the legendry Amitabh Bachchan is one of the best Hindi poets of all time.

More to come on Mr. Bachchan

Prakash

There are loads of things to be done, including the optimisation for the Best Indian Business School Blog contest which curentt Prateek is leading, completing the paper on Dutch Auctions and updating the blog template but before all that, there is something more important to be done here. I need to talk about Prakash.

Prakash left for his home somewhere in East India. Prakash is an excellent singer, plays guitar very well, a drummer and a member of a professional rock band back home.

Before he departed he wanted a second hand mobile phone and a few songs on a disk. I wasn’t able to get him that phone, I am sure Piyush would have helped him with the disk.

I knew he was leaving on morning around 4 AM and I decided I would wake up and see him off but I could’nt do that. I met him a day before when I was running for my class, last words exchanged between me and him were good bye and all the best for your studies etc.

When I have achieved something worthwhile, I would make it a point to go find him and talk to him again and see how his world has changed over all these years.

And if you don’t really know who he is, he was one of those few people who worked in our mess and made sure that we get good food.

Malgudi Days by R.K. Narayan

Malgudi Days - The collection of short stories by R.K.Narayan. I have been reading quite a few things ever since I landed at MDI but Malgudi Days has been a revelation. ! I never thought that short stories could be so good. The use of the words is almost magical. Every story is has a characteristic touch. Each story ends with a positive note with an element of surprise in it.

Malgudi Days is about people of Malgudi, their daily experiences, and their stories narrated by the Author R.K.Narayan.

In Narayan's words himself
Malgudi was an earth-shaking discovery for me, because I had no mind for facts and things like that, which would be necessary in writing about Malgudi or any real place. I first pictured not my town but just the railway station, which was a small platform with a Banyan tree, a station master, and two trains a day, one coming and one going. On Vijayadasami I sat down and wrote the first sentence about my town: The train had just arrived in Malgudi Station. "

R.K. Narayan – brief biography
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Naranayanaswami was born in 1906. R.K. Narayan spent his early years in Madras (Chennai) before moving to Mysore. He got his Bachelor’s Degree from University of Mysore.

R.K. Narayan started his literally career with short stories in The Hindu (N. Ram the editor at The Hindu happens to be a very good friend of R. K. Narayan).
He won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1961, the first time an award was given to a work in English for The Guide. In 1980, R. K. Narayan was awarded the A.C. Benson award by the Royal Society of Literature and was made an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1989 he was made a member of the Rajya Sabha (the non-elective House of Parliament in India). He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for The Guide (1958).

His autobiographies are titled My Days and My Dateless Dairy.

R. K. Narayan – published works (copied and edited from link http://www.meghdutam.com/authors/narayan.shtml)
· 1935: Swami and friends
· 1937: Bachelor of Arts
· 1938: The Dark Room
· 1939: Mysore
· 1945: The English Teacher
· 1947: An Astrologer's Day , and other stories
· 1949: Mr. Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi
· 1952: The Financial Expert
· 1953: Grateful to Life and Death
· 1955: Waiting for the Mahatma
· 1956: Lawley Road , and other stories
· 1958: The Guide
· 1960: Next Sunday : sketches and essays
· 1961: The Man-Eater of Malgudi
· 1964: My Dateless Diary : An American Journey
· 1965: Gods, Demons, and others
· 1967: The Vendor of Sweets
· 1970: A Horse and two Goats , stories
· 1972: The Ramayana; a shortened modern prose version
· 1974: My Days
· 1974: Reluctant Guru
· 1976: The Painter of Signs
· 1978: The Mahabharata: a shortened modern prose version
· 1980: The Emerald Route (with sketches by his brother R.K. Laxman)
· 1982: Malgudi Days
· 1983: A Tiger for Malgudi
· 1985: Under the Banyan Tree and other stories
· 1986: Talkative Man
· 1988: A Writer's Nightmare : selected essays
· 1989: A Story-Teller's World : Stories, Essays, Sketches
· 1990: The World of Nagaraj
· 1992: Malgudi Landscapes : the best of R.K. Narayan
· 1993: The Grandmother's Tale : three novellas
· 1993: Salt & sawdust : stories and table talk

Links
http://www.iit.edu/~jainank/reading/db/narayan/narayan.html http://www.meghdutam.com/authors/narayan.shtml

Jism - Music

So time right now is 12:40 PM and Lunch would be served at after 1. I have about 20 minutes and no one to talk to online or offline, played CS already, so thought would add yet another one to the BLOG.

This is about Jism. The movie stared super model Bipasha Basu and John Abraham. No I am not talking about the movie and theme and subject here. I want to talk about the music by M.M.Kreem, excellent lyrics by dunno who, performed by Kay Kay, Shreya Ghosal, M.M. Kreem himself...

I particularly like a two songs... Jaadu Hai Nasha Hai and Aawarapan Banjarapan. Initially when I heard these songs, they didnt appeal me that much but when later on I heard them again and got the complete song, I realized that these are true masterpieces and are complete in every sense. Be it lyrics, music, performance, videos everything is so good about these songs.

Right now am listening to Jaadu Hai Nasha Hai on Raaga.com. If anyone is interested in Jism songs and wants to listen em online, http://www.raaga.com/channels/hindi/movie/H000492.html is the link. The only thing you need is RealPlayer on your comp to listen to these online. Although I want to reproduce the entire lyrics here on my BLOG to help me get higher ratings on the search engines but am deciding against it and the entire lyrics can be located online at http://www.hindilyrix.com/songs/get_movie_song_JISM.html.

These songs are very very highly recommended by me. The voices are very very soothing and the songs work as magic. No matter how down you are feeling, no matter how sad you are, no matter how happy, how high you are, the songs are perfect.

And I rate some song this high very very rarely. Waise people can ask who am I to rate songs...? I would say this is my BLOG and I am the authority here ;) Please ignore this paragraph.

If any one is interested in guitar tabs and chords... here are few links that might help. These links are combination of places where you can find tabs and chords of the songs from the movie jism.
http://www.indianguitartabs.com/showthread.php?t=133
http://www.indianguitartabs.com/showthread.php?t=455 (better and complete version)

Notes - Aawarapan Banjaarapan http://www.hindisongnotes.com/tabs/details.php?hash=227
Chords - Aawarapan Banjaarapan http://www.hindisongnotes.com/tabs/details.php?hash=534

And since am talking about guitar, I plan to be the greatest guitarist of all times. I would be learning guitar here at MDI. I would make sure that by the time its my farewell, I am a sexy guitarist. Sexy as in very very good and outstanding. Nothing more and nothing less.

Its 1:08 now. Food would be ready. Time to catch something. Last time I ate, it was 9 PM yesterday and I have been fasting for well over 12 hours now.

Talkin a leave ...

Ruchi Pokhriyal - my Mentor

So at MDI we have a very very flourishing Mentor-Mentee system. Each student of an incoming batch is assigned a Mentor from the senior batch who would help the new student get used to life at MDI and other stuff.

This post would be about Ruchi. Yes this is going to be one of those essays that we wrote in school and were titled My Best Friend, My Favorite Book etc. I can title this one as My Mentor. Here it goes...

And hey Ruchi before you start reading this, please note that this would be a critical evaluation and might have a few good things and a lot of bad things. So before going ahead, kindly keep a glass of cold water next to you to chill you down just in case you dont find things according to your liking.

Before talking about Ruchi, I would like to talk about BLOGing. People say BLOGing is yet another way to express yourself. As far as I am concerned, BLOGing for me is one good way to kill time. I just love typing and penning down any random thoughts I may have. Probably this is reflected in the quality of the posts I make. Yeah ! yet another lame reason to cover my ass for the shitty posts :D

Ok, getting back to Ruchi, when I entered MDI, I was supposed to make a two page report on my mentor. The rules of the game were very simple. We were to talk about all the good things on one page and all the bad things on the next page. All this info was to be collected by talking to other people. I could'nt talk to my mentor. Following are the things I can recall of that Mentor Report...
1. She is very good friends with Aarti, Geetanjali, Rasna and two more ladies from my senior batch.
2. She loves to dance. She is the first one to get on the dance floor and last to leave.
3. She loves to spend time on computer and often can be found chatting on Yahoo late at nights.
4. She is from Delhi and lives in North Delhi.
5. She would run away to home as soon as she gets a holiday for even a day.
6. She loves music.
7. She is very very hardworking.

Enough of goodies and now getting to the negatives (Yes Ruchi ! there are few)
1. She lost the Mentor Report I wrote about her.
2. She needs to do something about the way she manages her time.
3. She smiles a lot and people are sometimes suspicious of her for smiling all the time.
4. She #$% 34% 345#% #$%# $**$## (CENSORED)

That would do it. I can' t remember anything else right now but would surely update the post as soon as I rememeber more.

In that Mentor Report I found out that she did her Engineering from M.I.T. and was Jyoti and Sugandha's class mate. Recently I figured out that she also knew Deepti (I was so stupid that I didnt ask her before about Deepti. She had to know Deepti as Deepti n Jyoti were classmates). So she passed out in 2003 and cracked CAT n MDI and reached here. She is majoring in HR and Marketing. She is head of the Delphique Senior HR Panel and a member of the Alumni Committee. She recently won the HR Game at Imperium 2004 - The annual cultural festival @ MDI defeating teams from all the big B Schools. She won 6000 bucks and am waiting for a treat.

Talking of her hobbies, people say she likes to talk and indulge in general chit chat. Like Mentor, like Mentee, me too is very interested in talking about stuff. Lets see how much we have in common. She likes to spend time chattin on Yahoo, so do I; she can be found awake at any time of the day/night, sames true for me as well. She needs a crash course in time management and I cant stress more on my exploits as the worst time manager in the world.

So we have so much in common, let me highlight a few things where we are worlds apart. She is rated among one of the most hard working people of her batch. I am called the NPA (Non Performing Asset). I am the last person who would work in my group and I am so lazy that I wont even submit my resume for the summers.

Now getting on to few things I have noticed about her...
- She is very very helpful. When I was supposed to write that report about her, she helped me a lot cos she didnt want me to get into trouble. People might get curious what trouble? I cant write about it here but she saved me.
- I hate her for giving me a bag ful of notes to study. She should have understood that I am not one of those who would enjoy padhai likhai.
- She also is very good to talk to. A smile never leaves her face. She can be seen smiliing any time of the day irrespective of the mood she is in.
- I found her behaving strangely when I was being interviewed for the selection of the Alumni Committee. I wanted to be on that committee so bad and I thought I had a good chance but things turned out the other way.
- She would remember the small details. Observant. Careful. She is definately not in that category of "We see but we don't observe".

I cant think of anything else to write bout her and there are few things that I might have to ask her before I write em down.

And I need to send this link to her to make her happy :D

Stuff to be covered in next posts...
Imperium
ITC Mera Gaon Mera Desh Business Plan Contest

Septemberthe22nd - Happy Birthday To Me ...

Septemberthe22nd, the day it all started in 1982 and today, 22 odd years after that fateful day I have come so far and yet I have got so much to travel. As a very good friend would say "Miles to go before I sleep".

Talking about birthdays, the best thing about the day is that you are treated like a king. Everyone is listening to you, altering their plans for you, making sure you are happy. Wow, I sometimes wish if I couls celerate my BDay around the year...

So me at MDI and my first bday away from home. Generally I would sleep when its my birthday or I would start something new and be up at 12 but ever since I have landed at MDI, life has taken an entirely new shape. Its an entirely different world out here. I cant even explain it in words. One has to experience it to feel it.

At MDI, like every other BSchool we have a tradition of giving Birthday Bumps to people. My birthday was no differnet. People gave me bumps and I was lucky enogh to get them twice. The reason being our End Term Exams. The exams started 22nd and everyone was very very frustated with the entire thing and the wanted someone or something to vent their anger out. And it was ME.

The next question that arises is how was the paper and how did I and other people fared in it, needless to say exams sucked like anything and I as expected didnt do very well. Hoping better for other exams.

If there is something called the Birthday Resolution, Yes I have a couple of em. The first one being getting serious about stuff, studies in particular and second one being starting living in the present, not in the dreamworld I am used to.

Finally in the end... shuks ending is the most difficult part of anything and I cant end a blog, relationship, paper, note, anything properly !

Septemberthe11th

911 - the number Americans associate with emergency. 911 - the nuber americans assocate with tragedy.

It was 9112001 when a few men rocked the world and brought America on its feet. The WTC and the Pentagon were attacked and thousands of innocent americans lost their lives.

Today is the third anniversary of the attack and we should take a few lessons from the tragic event and try to make sure that this kinda thing never hapens in the future.

There are so many interesting facets to the September the 11th attack against America and there are so many things I would like to say here but I won't be doing it because one I don't have that much time to write about it and two some people might be offended with the stuff.

I have my deepest sympathies with the friends and families of the victims. I know its difficult but there are somethings that much be accepted and we dont have control over em.

The Game Theory

When 'The Beautiful Mind' was released, everyone saw it, loved the acting of Rusell Crowe, envied at his Oscar, admired the man John Nash and gasped at the intelligence.

When I saw the movie for the first time, I liked a few things... One on those is a sequence where John Nash is standing in the lawn of the campus in winter afternoon and he visualizes a wine glass matching with a neck tie. I don't recall the seqence properly but it was truely an exceptonal art of photography and/or animation. Another good sequence was when he loses the game of checkers to the bullies and says that the game of checkers is flawed. And finally the last one I can recall right now is the sequence where in John Nash and his friends try to patao a girl in the local pub and he applies the Game Theory on them. A brief Autobiography of John Nash can be reached at http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/1994/nash-autobio.html.

So Game Theory is relaly Economics or Mathematics, I don't have a clue, may be they are related or may be not but I would like to know about it some day and may be become one of those few who have understood it. Economics classes in a BSchool can be real tough, especially for por souls like me who dont have a lena dena with commerce subjects. I know its very very important and probably he most important but I have to admit I suck at it and by the way things are going, I dont think I would ever be able to improve. So comng back to Economics, we have a fwe Eco studs here. The first n foremost would be Samidha aka *****-Wali. The stars can not be revealed as I am not supposed to call her that name. She is a Eco Hons graduate from LSR (Yes ! Lady Shri Ram - Heaven) and by the way she talks about Eco, one can tell she has spent all her life studying Eco. Next would be Neha Agarwal. She did her Eco Hons from Calcutta (prolly St. Xavires). And now coming on to the BAAP of Economics, we have a professor called Dr. Bappaditya Mukhopadhyay. He is GOD when it comes to Economics. I wish I get to be as good as he is... Before I end this short intro about Eco @ MDI, Samidha deserves a special mention once again, shes helped me pass a few quizes and mid-terms and she is one of those few people who would never refuse you for anything.

Getting back to the Game Theory, here is a very simple straight forward example of the Game Theory given by Prof. Bappaditya in one of the lectures. The game goes like... There is a room full of people and they all are asked one question with only two possible answers. The sample queston can be "Bill Gates is the Richest Man on the planet. True or False?". The question is asked to everyone in the open forum and everyone is told that one by one they would walk out of the room and the person walking out of the room would have to give the answer. The game would be stopped AND I DONT REMEMBER THE REST OF THE GAME !

Tomorrow we are having a special class on Game Theory and it should be interesting. I am looking forward to it and I hope I get some undersanding out of it. I would try not to sleep in the class and try to grasp everything. After all Game Theory can help you make friends ;)

Would edit the post later as soon as find out Prof. Bappas' Game.

Broken !

It was one of those times when I actually promised someone something. I promised Ridhima that I would complete the stuff in PhotoShop before 6 in the morning and I would mail her the thing.

I could'nt complete it :(

Linkxxx

The Nidhi Kapoor Story