Kerala: God’s Own Country!

Our Beautiful Resort!

Fishing for Diamonds in the Sea

A Crusade of Ducks Waging War Against Our Taxi

The Famous Kerala Houseboats

Shadows and Light

My Sis (probably brooding about her coming IIT-JEE exam)

Birds in Flight

There are some things even an MBA cant help you understand and Mohiniyattam is one of them!

Swans Afraid of Getting Tanned

Elephant Going to a Wedding

Tons of Cats in Kerala Fish Markets!

Amazing Pics!

- courtesy: photographers i dont know yet!

Unmaad 2009!

I wish I could afford a telephoto lens

Overexposure works well sometimes...

This guy really had a bad sense of humour!

Unadulterated glee

My favourite dancer!

2nd best Dancer

“…the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centre light pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’ “

- Jack Kerouac

P.S: Thanks to the friend who sent me this, i couldn’t agree more

The Genie Syndrome

Sometimes, the best tonic for a weary soul is an old friend – a friend crazy enough to ride his bike all the way down from Bombay to Bangalore. You start talking and before you know it – reputations are ripped apart – character sketches redrawn – and humor reinvented. And all of it seems so magical, especially when you’re a couple of mugs of beer and long island ice teas down. You suddenly feel that your friend has become 10 times as funnier since the time you met him, even though the truth may be that your own sense of humor has eroded considerably over the last couple of dates with your statistics and economics textbooks…

The sad part is that he’s leaving and I may not see him again, atleast for the next 2 years. Actually all my good old friends are leaving me. They’re all off to different corners of the world, making sure that I will have a darned tough time in trying to reach them.

One is off to Stanford, probably on his way to becoming a millionaire. The other one is going off to rub himself on to hot bikini clad women tanning themsleves on sunny Florida beaches (though I still think that they would much rather prefer sunscreen lotion instead!). And the third one is gonna see Eurotrip again, this time in real instead of reel.

I wish I could bottle all of them up in a genie bottle and have them pop out whenever I’m in one of my “I wanna get wasted or throw tantrums or gossip moods”

Why won’t you guys take me along with you? Atleast, promise me that you won’t forget me??

Photographic Pursuits – Part II

Haven’t touched my camera in days…not a good sign at all.

Right now, I’m just going to console myself my posting the last few shots I took before joining IIM Bangalore…

My Favourite Shot!

Doesn't this look Wet?

Co-passengers at the Singapore Airport

Kids never did like me...

If you think I'm Moody, please meet this Guy!

My Knight in Shining Armour - still waiting for him to show face...

Experimenting with Depth of Field

The Leo in me coming out...

Outside the Bar I passed out in shortly after this short!

Bird-watching, as Usual

Even Trees are Twisted Nowadays

Ummm...no comments!

And this is exactly why I don't want to get married...

Just wait for a few days, all this magic fade...

She really didn't like Cameras...

Lost in Translation

Times change but people change faster. It is said (and if not, then let me say so) that the best way to judge a person is by his/her heroes.

When I was in school, I asked my best friend what she wanted to be when she grew up. “A movie star”, she said. It was then that I squared her up for the first time (usually I am quite non-judgemental, especially when friends are concerned). She was approximately twice my width. Also, the cumulative weight of all the strawberry ice-cream my mom lovingly fed her during the 5 years I had known her easily amounted to thrice my weight. I raised my eyebrows and asked her how she intended to go about doing so. “Simple…”, she said…”start with the B grade movies and work my way up.” (Please excuse the progressiveness of thought which came so early to us, but this tale takes place in a land far far away where kids start dating as soon as their age hits double digits)

At that moment, I realised that no dream was too big or impossible. Even if you aren’t a rocket scientist, you can always make a parachute which will float its own way up to the moon…right? It was precisely around that point that my power-hungry roller coaster ride commenced.

I started with a shoe store next to my house – Conrad. On my way to school, I would dreamingly gaze at the twinkling red stilettos on display there – and my passion to be the next CEO of this shoe-store would steadily grow stronger. But Conrad quickly changed to Nestle (the makers of Maggi) …later on, Budweiser replaced Maggi…and after a lot of permutations and combinations, I finally settled for Goldman Sachs – I heard from colleagues that this was the place where the cash registers could actually sing you to sleep.

But like all roller coaster rides, the slope which goes higher and higher is always followed by a steep fall. Or could I say that a steep fall is always followed by a sudden rise? One day, all of a sudden, my track changed and so did my heroes.

Now, my heroes are no longer people who have slogged it out long and hard to reach the top echelons of (what they describe as) success, but people who have ended the tipsy-topsy ride early to do other sorts of things. Some would call these ‘other sorts of things’ bold, some would call them crazy, I would simply call them things your heart wants to do. To be more specific, one such hero was a senior MD in my company who retired in his 30s because he wanted to spend more time with his yacht and sail across the Pacific. Another such hero retired early too, giving up a future string of million dollar bonuses in order to pursue his passion for environmental protection full-time.

If I take a bird’s eye view of the entire situation, i.e., if I actually go up a couple of thousand feet and look at myself, I am just a small blob in this whole scheme of things. It doesn’t really matter how many companies I bring down though my leadership or how many times I come on TV – because at the end of the day – I still remain a small blob. And if this is the case, then I might as well be a happy and bouncy sort of blob. This in turn means that all that really does matter are things (no matter how small they are) which can bring a smile onto my face.

So I have decided that for tomorrow’s club selections, I am going to forget about things such as resume lines, footage and the number of footfalls. I’m just going to apply to clubs which do things I like…end of story.

P.S.: My friend changed too, she decided to go in for a Masters in Economics instead.

Courting in Indian Bschools

Why would anyone in his/her right mind get involved in a campus relationship, especially in b-school? As an IIMB alumnus very rightly pointed out during our orientation – “if you wanna screw around, please do so outside”. So goes the golden rule – Sleep, academics and a campus relationship – you can only do 2 out of these 3 and it’s up to you to choose which ones. The choice, in my opinion, should be heavily biased towards options 1 and 2, but I think most people out here would beg to disagree with me.

Only 3 days of classes so far…and I already see Escorts emerging. An Escort is a male who leaves aside all his individuality and self respect in order to honour every whim and fancy of his victim. Besides accompanying his victim during every second of every day, he also does seemingly crazy things such as carry her luggage for 3 stories, do her assignments for her, and send SMSs which read “Are you sleeping” in the middle of the night. A victim is an innocent female who thinks – “Wow, if my Escort does so much for me right now, I wonder to what extent will he go to once we start dating.” But little does she know how the tide turns once she actually surrenders to his charm and commits.

The problem with Escorts is that they seem to think that girls are slot machines. They keep dishing out one coin after another under the implicit assumption that at some point they will hit the jackpot. But what if they go bankrupt before that happens?

The problem with the Victims is that they are so swept away by emotion that they refuse to recognize Adam Smith or the concept of the Invisible Hand. So while the theory of efficient markets states that only the best men should win because the sex ratio is heavily skewed against the male race on such Indian b-school campuses – it doesn’t actually work like that. That long list of eligibility criteria which most girls start drafting while very young – things like “he should be funny, smart, have a good body, be good in bed, etc” goes for a toss. In actuality, the Victim just settles for that Escort who has stooped to the lowest level for her.

…And this is why we see so many hot women stuck with loosers. This is also why there are so many sexy single men abounding this earth – because most such available guys have been labelled as jerks by the opposite sex…and their only fault is that they would rather play basketball than do assignments for their victims during their free time.

But Pappu Can’t Dance Saala!

I might have done several wild and stupid things in life, but there is one thing which I absolutely cannot do – and that is dance. It’s not stage fright, neither is it shyness…I think it’s a medical condition wherein upon hearing a dance number, all of the patient’s blood rushes to his/her face and the rest of his/her body parts seem to go into paralysis.

Everyone has handicaps in life but they learn to negotiate with them. I, so far, have negotiated with mine by disappearing in a wiff of thin air in any social situation which starts demanding or has the possibility of demanding this sacred art…. quite often at the expense of offending people (including my ex-bosses several times).

But today, life slapped me right in my face. 350 students on my left and another 200 students on my right …and me stuck in the middle, bearing a title called “cheerleader”. I was forced upon with the responsibility of cheering up some 200 ferocious seniors by dancing impromptu during the commercial breaks of their “torture your juniors” entertainment show. There were coincidently 5 other victims in the middle along with me, who I must admit, took this in a much lighter vein for what it really was…just some good ol’ fun.

The music started on a preppy note. I think I kicked my right leg twice and wagged my left hand in a mutilated fashion thrice…or atleast I hope so…don’t know for sure as all feeling from my body had disappeared as expected. Suddenly, the tempo of the song seemed to have picked up…but the lyrics now went something like this: “Ek do teen chaar…band karo ye atyachaar!”

However, I still managed to emerge alive from that dark and traumatic night. My confidence levels were sure boosted as never before…for a brief moment I even thought that I could take on Mukesh Ambani in a board room. But the sad part is that pappu still can’t dance saala!

Qualitative Limitations

Today we had a talk by James Abraham, BCG India Head. Why do all consult presentations seem surrealistic to me?

There are certain phrases, quite like the ones below, mentioned over and over again in these presentations which completely bounce off my psyche. My banker brain, unfortunately, has only learned to quantify life in dollars.

Hopes
Dreams
Aspirations
Change the world
Passion
After 50 years
BIG
Make a difference
etc…
etc.