Mukund 'Marriage' Treat - 25-Oct

Hey! The meet was good.. though not many turned up.. it was good to meet up after a long time..
Me, vikram, supriya, mukund, kedar, sharath, dumma & mozz were the only ones who turned up. The food was great man.. and the desserts were yum.. and i miss them even now man.. :p It was a total binge out!
I was there as usual.. on time. And had to wait for about an hour for the others to pour in.. and there is nothing new about me.. working with Yokogawa, still alive and kicking! And i wasnt shy the other day ok.. it was just a way to make the others involve while making plans to meet up.
Vik turned up 20 mins late.. I meet him every other day so it wasnt so great to see him.. and there is nothing new to him either :p he is one kid who will never grow up. :p Oh yeah.. he did give a bad news, said that dumma couldnt make it cause he had booked a wrong flight and had missed it..
Soup came an hour late.. The news is.. her job is to teach french, table manners, etc etc..(forgot what the others were :p) and the big thing.. she got an awesome hike in her salary the other day.. so its gonna be her tret next.. :p
The man of the moment.. Mukund, came after soup.. The news is.. He has lost weight! And he cant stop blushing.. lol.. u just have to see him when he blushes.. hahaha.. talk abt bhavya.. oh sorry rashmi.. (His fiancée) and the next second he is all smiles.. giggling.. reaches out for a glass of water.. oh! Dude.. Is this really you? :-) Anyways.. cant wait to see mukund on the wedding day on the stage.. :-) and after a year, holding little mukund.. :p
Kedar & Sharath followed dumma.. and the news is kedar seems to be pissed with his job.. it was so visible.. (currently working for KPMG) and sharath was happily showing off his new phone.. it was quiet a cool one.. :-). Oh the driver code to the camera of that phone was written by sharath himself.. wow! and also seems like he is the next one to get married after mukund.. :D atleast looks like he is all ready!
Dumma makes a surprising entry.. he never misses a thing like this.. so proved it again.. :-). The news is.. he looks just the same to me since college.. :-) the little rock star!
Finally.. Mozz lands up after everything, he was starving so much that he didnt mind to finish the left overs.. hahaha.. the news is.. mozz is a business man now.. he manufactures jacuzzis and he talks in fluent kannada.. and he has put on loads of weight!!
Whoever missed it.. actually missed it! So next time, make some free time.. and lets plan properly so that more guys turn up..
Cya allPraveen

My 26 Birthday

My 26 birthday was on 20-08-2008. isn't that a pretty cool date! 2008-2008!! i was kinda hoping that even the day would turn out as spectacular as the date, but on the evening of 19th, i came back home with absolutely no plans for the night. couldn't remember the last time i had no plans on a birthday eve of mine.. anyway, decided to work it out once i got back to my guesthouse. but getting back itself was a problem, because exactly on this day, the skies decided to open up and bring cats, dogs and elephants down on Chennai. so i got stuck in the rain and used the time to buy some chocolates that i can distribute the next day and browse through some groceries. but no matter how much browsing i did to cut time, the rain just wouldn't subside. so i got back wet, only to find no power in the guesthouse. it was the only flat in the entire apartment without power! so there i sat, in my room, all alone, wet from the worst rain Chennai has seen, with no power and no plans for the night, and nothing but a box of chocolates for company. even my roommates who were staying in the guesthouse until a few days back had vacated. so lonliness had taken a whole new definition in my life!
i called my only good friend in Chennai - Harsh, and pretty much forced him to come out and spend some time with me. he was totally surprised that i don't have any plans for the night. i had to explain that i was in a strange city with very few friends and really with no options of going out and having some fun. so the poor guy obliged, and came riding all the way at 10 in the night. by the time we went to our usual hang-out - bikes n barrels, the only pub that allows stags (coz they have a separate section for "scum-bags" like us), it was past 11. we ordered beers and just hung out drinking and chatting. just when it turned 12, the waiter brings a cake! i couldn't believe my eyes. just 2 hours back, i was wondering how today is going to be my worst birthday ever, and here i was, having a good time with a good friend (which in so many ways is better than being out with a 100 people who hardly matter to you) and now with even a cake to cut! so i blew the candle, made an apt wish for the night and cut the cake and shared it wit Harsh. i gave him the rest of the cake and asked him to distribute it wit his roommates. soon the calls started coming through and i was wrapped in that for the next one hour, when Harsh drove me back to the guesthouse. pretty soon, i was grabbing my 40 winks and the next day, i wore my new 'birthday dress' and went to office and distributed the chocolates to everyone. spent the whole day doing the work my boss gave me and attending to calls and answering msgs on gtalk/orkut/facebook. by evening, i was once again faced with the dilemma of a plan for th rest of the night. i decided to ask my 2 colleagues out for dinner, and Vergis and Bishak were only too kind to give me company. so we went to a restaurant that i really wanted to go to for some time, had an awesome meal and then, after bidding goodbye, called Gita as she said she would meet up in case she was free. she was indeed free and i went out with her and one of her friends, Karthik to Zaras - the best club in Chennai. of course, it wasn't very happening as it was a week night, but we hung out there any case. just as were about to start on the drinks we ordered, the waiters began doing a round of the entire restaurant in a train like fashion with a cake in their hands. i was beginning to wonder whether it could be for me. but then dismissed the idea coz we just landed there, and there was no way my colleagues could have planned so much for me.
but all of a sudden, all the waiters gathered around our table, began singing happy birthday, even got my name right. they gave me the cake to cut and it was the sweetest thing ever! i shared the cake wit the other 2, and after my beer, came riding back to my place. when i entered the room, i find a bouquet of flowers saying, "wit love, from Bangalore" i knew instantly that China and Sin were behind this. it was the best thing ever. come back home after a really long day and find a beautiful set of flowers from the most beautiful city on this planet!
so now, im sitting in bed, just 15 minutes after my 26 bday (its 0015 hours now) and wondering how a day with maddening rains and no electricity turned out to be a day with 2 cakes to be cut, hanging out at two cool (of the only three!) places in Chennai, wit really cool friends and most of all - a lovely bunch of flowers from my favourite city.
this was really a fabulous birthday and i must really thank all the lovely friends that made it so special to me.

the 'silver' lining on the dark cloud

We've heard this line many times as children, but today, when I'm on the threshold of going out into the corporate world as a grown man, this quote has become metaphorically so much more significant to me..

Last Saturday was my graduation day. The entire batch of some 500 odd MBA's from NMIMS University were to be conferred their degrees. The day before that, on Friday, we had the mock rehearsals for the entire session. That was followed by a Photo Session with our graduation gowns and caps. Then there was a ring ceremony. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Seema ma'am called me aside and asked if I was bringing my parents for the function the next day. I told them they are already in college and will even be attending the ring ceremony. She said that's good because there was a 'little surprise' in store for me. Apart from getting the degree certificate, the only other thing lined up for the day were awards given to meritorious students and faculty. 

I knew that the previous year, the three Presidents of that time, Vikas, Sujay and Chandan, received a Silver medal for their contributions to Student Activities. Being the President, I could assume that this time I would receive the same award. But I wasn't very sure, because we had interviews held for these awards, and my interview went terribly awry. The Dean in charge was so unsatisfied that he said thank you and asked me to leave even before I could talk for more than 2 minutes. It was the shortest interview I had. Either it has already been fixed and they didn't want to waste their time on me, or as the more rational and less arrogant thought would be, they were totally unimpressed with me. 

I felt really bad that my interview didn't go that well and tried consoling myself that not every day is a Sunday and I've had a pretty good run of luck with interviews the last few times. Maybe I was on a lower curve now! 

Anyway, it wasn't the interview alone that had bothered me. I also knew that there were a lot of issues this year. From Parampara, which was the first ever thing the Council organized in college, I've been getting on the wrong side of our Vice-Chancellor. We had decided a particular date for Parampara and somehow the VC got another date and he ended up getting wild with me because he had made other plans for the day we decided to have the event and he couldn't be there for the same. This was just the start of the troubles. The rest of the year, there were issues with Placements, Paragana and the whole Sectoral garb. From yelling at me for a small incident regarding selection of Food items for Paragana to completely blowing his top at me when the students decided to walk out on a dinner that he had personally organized for them to ease the Core-Sectoral issues, there were issues aplenty the whole year through. It was almost as if every time the VC would calm down on one issue, I would raise a hornets nest on another one, giving rise to another set of altercations between us. It became so bad, that I started fading off into a distance and not coming out and organizing too many things for fear of going wrong somewhere again. I completely slacked off during the end of the year and did not do a lot of things that I was supposed to get done. 

Of course, having the VC get mad at me was not the only reason why I became inactive towards the end. There were many other reasons as well. Things like having to deal with someone called Professor Rane who was instated as the person responsible for student activities and he ended up eating my head about absolutely inane things. I kept putting up with him because the show had to go on and nobody else in the Council wanted to approach him for anything. I somehow kept dealing with him, until one particular time he insulted me for the lack of effort I had put into the CNBC deal during Paragana. This completely broke me, almost to the point of tears welling in my eyes that had actually dried up many years back. I was the only one who worked on the CNBC deal. I was assisted immensely by all my fellow Council members, but I received absolutely no senior\professional help from anyone in the college, inspite of the deal running into so many Lakhs of Rupees. I still dealt with the whole thing myself and at the end of it, had to hear things from Prof Rane that I was incompetent with the deal.. The worse part of it was, because of all the situations in college, I even ended up looking like a criminal in front of a huge Corporate like CNBC. This is the worst thing any regular aspiring-for-a-good-professional-life MBA like me could do!

Anyway, the VC getting mad at me on one too many occasions, having to deal with a character like Prof Rane, and also having a bunch of extremely capable juniors who very quickly learnt how to run the show on their own, all made me start slacking off towards the end. 

I can very easily assess if I've done a good job about something or not, and I knew very well that towards the end of the year, I did not hold up my duties as President as well as I would have probably wanted to. This reason, combined with my disastrous interview was what convinced me that I may not win any award this year. 

I anyway stopped thinking about it because I always felt that I had received so much during my stint as President in terms of learning about life and meeting some great people, that that itself was enough, and I could do without a medal.

During the ring ceremony on Friday evening, I was asked to come and deliver a speech about my musings of the last 2 years in college. I started talking about a lot of things and concluded thanking only one person, the VC. I could have thanked a whole bunch of them, but the last time I had done that, during Razzy's of Euphoria, I really ran into a lot of trouble for having missed out a few names. So I really did not want to get into that situation and just thanked only one single person with whom I felt I really had to set a whole bunch of things straight. So I said "Exactly one year ago, during the Ring ceremony of the previous batch, a bunch of us students were huddled into the MDP room and conferred our new positions in the Council. That was the time I was declared President and it was the beginning of my interactions with this one person with whom I've always felt I've shared a love-hate relationship. It was more like I loved him and he used to hate me for all the times I have irritated him. I'm talking about our dear Vice-Chancellor who has been such a good role model and a support for all of us during one of the toughest times of NMIMS when we saw sea changes in terms of Placements and dealing with new Sectoral courses. Thank you so much Sir for everything in the last one year". 

Then came Saturday, the big day. All the students walked into the hall led by the Council which was in turn led by me and after we took our seats, the show began. We all went and received our certificates and then came the time for the awards. People around started saying 'best of luck' and stuff to me, but as explained earlier, I wasn't sure at all about it. Pretty soon the student awards got over and the faculty awards began. Suddenly it dawned on me that there was no award for me.. Alok had just received the award for 'Contribution to Student Activities' and I felt this was the surprise Seema ma'am was talking about. Also, during the VC speech, he never made a mention of Paragana or any other Council organized events in the year. So basically this was it. I did feel quite bad that I couldn't emulate what our seniors had done and only had myself to blame for the slacking off that I had done and for the poor interview I had given. 

I was just preparing to face all the students around, my family and even Sujay who had turned up there to justify why I hadn't won anything, when the VC declared that the faculty awards were over and said "Now there is a final award that is to be given to a student. One who has done so much for college and even told in his speech yesterday how we are all doing our best to cope with the changes going on at NMIMS. I call upon Sandeep John Mathew for the Silver medal for best All round performance for 2007-2008"

....

It was then that I realized that slow motion was not restricted to movies alone.. it happens in real life too! I adjusted my robe and cap that had come off quite some time back and walked slowly to the stage. Watched all the students standing and clapping as I walked down the aisle. Went up on stage and collected the certificate and had the medal worn around my neck. When I turned to face the audience, I realized I had my first standing ovation! It was heart warming, and supremely shocking as I had quite given up on it. As I walked back to my seat, I first went up to my parents and gave them the medal. Then after I came and settled down, the announcement for the National Anthem was made. It was during this time that I really felt like hugging someone, and it had to be Pooja. I messaged her as soon as the Anthem concluded when people were preparing to throw off their hats, and during the pandemonium that ensued with the hat throwing, I went up to her and got a long tight hug from probably my best friend at NM and one of the few people in Bombay who truly knew and understood all the things I had gone through here. It felt so comforting. I swear, if not for those dried up tear glands, I'd be crying like a baby at that time. 

The next half hour passed with hugging all my other fellow MBA's and introducing my parents to some of the students and teachers who were around, and somewhere in the middle of all that, I ran into Seema ma'am once again who I looked and said "that was the 'little' surprise???" 

"of course dear" she said and gave me the second best hug of the evening.

After all the pleasantries were exchanged and some issues sorted with some people who still came to me for assistance on different things, I walked towards my den, my second home, the Student Council Room, hugging a little red box with my silver medal and I looked up at the sky and thought.. So there is a silver lining on every dark cloud!

Arranged Marriage

wat the hell is wrong with the people of this country man!! especially those who call themselves parents! i've come of age where me and my friends around are thinking of marriage, and just about everyone has one common problem - parents! its parents, society, religion, caste, yada yada yada that seem to determine the fate of a couple working out. things like love, compatability, comfort - all these just dont matter at all. 'you're not a brahmin, my family has been for centuries, how can i marry you?', 'i'm a muslin and you're a hindu, you have any idea how society will consider this?' oh god i say.. wat the hell are people talking about?? Don't their feelings matter at all? does it only come down to asking stupid questions like this? i really really just dont get this one thing about this country. There are some amazing things about this place, but no matter how much we progress, looks like this will remain like this all the time. I remember when I was young, I used to chat with this one friend of mine about marriage and things, and I used to tell her, that no matter what I will never let anyone or anything else determine who I get married to. This girl agreed with what I was saying and used to advocate the same notion, and guess what? She got married good old Indian arranged marriage Ishtyle! And its not just her, so many other people around me are going that way. I really used to think that my generation will change this about India. I can understand where our parents come from, but I didn't want to walk that line. But looks like culture is culture and people will just continue doing this. I wonder if the next generation at least will change this whole 'get married to someone you've never met in your life, coz guess what? as long as things like caste and kundli match - they are made for each other' what!!!!
Well, India does has a low divorce rate. So you think this arranged marriage thing has a say in the divorce rate? Look at it this way, the poor idiots didn't have a say in ending up with each other, you think they'l have a say in getting out of it?? Society bloody decides that also. Its just tabboo to seperate, so no matter how much you dont get along, you just have to put up with what you were forced to get into. Is this life?? I dont understand freedom and democracy and concepts like that, if you're just forced to live your life based on what other people tell you for the rest of your life. I mean, really, its just colonization again.. and worse, by your own people this time!!! Its just really terrible. The number of people I regularly keep seeing hurting around, its just crazy. Either they are hurting because it didn't work out because of society, or, hehe, because it did! Its the same dam story whether you couldn't married or were forced into marriage. At least if you made the decision on your own, you can take responsibility and decide to be in it or walk out if it doesnt work. You dont need to be a slave all your life.
I really am totally against this whole concept of arranged marriage and being forced into something just because of the people around! One should never get into something one doesnt like - or so I thought was the definition of our freedom!
Anyway, to all my friends who have had to undergo the pains caused to them, not by their lovers, but by a bunch of loonies - you have my sympathies.