Books - Man's best friend and mine :)

"Outside of a dog, a book is Man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx.

Books were a fascination for me during childhood. Not because of me being a bookish guy or anything. But then I've always liked reading. My mom had a good collection of novels from her college days and I used to go through them(except the Mills & Boon section) during my high school days. My dad isn't a big fan of fiction and he feels that reading stories isn't the best way to learn about the world(especially when the stories are written by Sidney Sheldon). So to get rid of me begging him to buy all the books in the world, he took me to the state central Library or commonly known as the Trivandrum Public Library. It was a great day for me. I still remember the 1st time I entered the huge doors as a thirteen year old and being awe struck by the rows and rows of books in the various reading halls. Since then my love story with books and authors had started and this relation, though had its ups and downs, is still going strong - much stronger than my OTHER love stories :).

This post will be about my fascination about books, some of the books that have changed my view about life and some of my favourite authors. The books and authors all came from different cultures, countries and ages, but influenced me greatly to THINK! If you are interested, read on to know their names and it would be good befriending them based on your interests.

I always was a fan of paperbacks; mainly because I liked reading lying on my bed before sleeping. This habit is still there with me and I still like the same type of stories. It started with comics when I was a kid; then Famous Five, Hardy Boys and then later on I graduated to novels and then stuff which I couldn't put my hands on as a kid :)

Books always used to be my 1st love, but since my life started having a new member called computer, books had taken a backseat. All through college my reading habit was lost and I picked up books again only when it was time for belling the cat - which ultimately belled me.

Then my focus started shifting from fiction to non-fiction. Particularly the autobiographies of business and political leaders and the so-called management books. Some of these were good reads, some were utter waste of time.

During my teenage I used to adore books by two authors; one was Sidney Sheldon and the other was Jeffrey Archer. I still remember the 1st Sheldon book I had read. It was Stranger in the mirror. It was like all of his other books, written like a movie with all the effects and special scenes that would make it a page-turner.

I'm proud to say that I've read all books written by Sheldon and Archer and I owe a lot of my reading habit to these two guys. If it weren't for their awesome narration and gripping tales I'd have left books a long time back.

Now any Indian in the 2000's who claims to be a book lover can't be ignorant of a certain individual named Chetan Bhagat. I've loved all his books and even though I feel that except for the 1st book, the others have had a very bad ending. Either being too filmy in style or too quickly wrapped up.

I’ll say that the books he writes talk about the social evils in our society, rather than just being funny. His 1st book talked about how parents just force their kids to take up ambitions for which they don’t feel the same way. The 2nd book talked about the youth’s lack of spiritualism in the present scenario. 3rd book talked about the evil of the religious riots. 4th book talks about the disconnect in our country when it comes to forming relations with people across the country.

So I feel he is someone who is required in our society which is at crossroads where parents are afraid to tell their kids what to do and what not to do, and even though Mr Bhagat has this cool dude image, his books actually help in putting some semblance into the Indian fast changing lifestyle :).

Top 25 books that I would love to mention are:(not all are from the world of fiction)

1. The Godfather - Mario Puzo - The greatest novel I've ever read, truly amazing.
   
2. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho - A truly amazing tale of life,love and desire.
   
3. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Richard Feynman - An interesting side of a serious scientist.
4. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkein - The only book which inspite of being a fantasy is in this list.
5. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand - A totally outrageous but interesting philosophy.
   
6. The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - The confused teens story which was a great read.
7. Lateral Thinking-Creativity Step by Step - Edward De Bono - A good one for creativity.
8. iCon:Steve Jobs - Jeffrey Young - About an Icon's comeback to be the most admired CEO
9. Mein Kampf - Adolf Hitler - I wanted to know what was in the mind of the evil genius!
10. The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman - A great tale about the present world we live in.
11. Freakonomics - Steven D Levitt and Steven J Dubner - An interesting outlook to practical economics.
12. Relativity: the special and the general theory - Albert Einstein - The greatest physicist explains the most complex theory in the simplest way possible.
13. The Motorcycle Diaries - Ernesto "Che" Guevara - An awesome travelogue with great thoughts.
14. The Google Story - David A Vise - The most detailed account of Google's spectacular rise
15. The Communist Manifesto - Marx and Engels - Being a Malayalee, I couldn't miss this one!
16. Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig - A good insight into the human psyche
17. The Art of Computer Programming - Donald Knuth - For a non-software guy this is a bible to understand programming(for the software guys too)
18. Theory of Game and Economic Behaviour - John von Neumann & Oskar Morgenstern - An awesome book which explains the most baffling economic theory with ease.
19. Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking - A man who's life is a great example to follow, explaining the toughest concepts with just 1 equation in the entire book.
20. Joker in the Pack - Nitesh Pahlajani & Ritesh Sharma - An awesome tale of love, friendship and life in a B-School, a must read for any MBA aspirant and .
21. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - An awesome story of justice and a good eye-opener about the American society in those times.
    
22. Day of the Jackal - Fredrick Forsyth - A tale so realistic that I felt it was too much of a story.
    
23. Love in the time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - The best love story I've ever read.
24. Jeeves Series - PG Wodehouse - An awesome set of books which though funny are a great read anytime :)
25. Kiterunner - Khaled Hosseini - The last in the list is a book which made me feel sad and happy at the same time.
    

I hope you find the above interesting and thought provoking as they were for me.

My Generation

Don’t make someone a priority, if you are just an option......

I absolutely love this saying that I cannot find an author to give credit. It rings true everyday of my life. I have used this saying more than a couple of times in my GTalk status messages and also in my facebook, twitter and orkut pages. But till today I hadn't given serious thought to this line. You might ask what happened so much today to make me think about this sad fact of life. I believe it hasn't been a smooth sailing for anyone in their love-life, who ever says that they've the perfect love story, are either lying or are acting in a movie.

Now coming to the saying- Whether they are friends, family or a special someone they really can’t be that special if you are just an option in their life. I feel that people do make you an option in life, especially in your work, your college(at times it does feel wrong), your social circle and so on. It has been the norm in the fast moving world that we live in. I still remember the term Friendship of Convenience when it was told to me by a teacher at the TIME centre I had attended. He told about people being friends for just the sake of using eachother when they need something. People who think like:

How can I use him? He is well connected, financially well off, resourceful, he is a doctor, lawyer. Build and maintain the relationship, some day he could be useful. Usefulness goes, friendship goes.

I hadn't got seen much of FOC(not pronounced as the F word, but just F.O.C) in my life until I joined my work and their again in my training programme the company HR head told about the same term. He rather gave a 30 slide PPT on how to do the same quoted lines I've given above. But finally he told the term Social Networking, rather than FOC.

I had heard about networking since I am a part of the Orkut era, the Facebook generation, the guys who wake up and tweet their status and check their mails before going for a piss and will even F**K for the next best thing. Now when my generation decides to make friends it is a simple step. There are a thousand different places where you can meet people, maybe real, maybe virtual. But anyways you will always find people; more so because you live in a world with 6.6 Billion people. But still people will be happy to talk to some unknown on a website rather than with their next door neighbour or even to the people living in their homes.

There is a saying "my enemy's enemy is my friend." Common enemy goes, friendship also goes. True Friendship cannot survive without the element of mutual respect and that I feel is the one thing that lacks in these ONLINE, always there for you friends :).

I am not pointing fingers at anyone, I am very much part of this generation, I get happy when people say they "LIKE" my stupid messages in Facebook, or when someone RT's my tweets; why go that far, I ADORE the one's who comment on my blog and for me and my generation this has become a way of attaining social recognition, of having a status that they won't get otherwise. Especially fat guys like me who would not be able to make it to any happening parties or be invited to movies or hang outs because of their looks or because they can't dance that well and so on and on........

Now I feel I've digressed quite a huge bit away from the saying at the start the blog; so let me just FOCUS and get back to the point. (MBA has been doing its good bits to me too, don't you see the jargon's I've used till now :D). So I was talking about someone making you an option when you make them or rather plan to make them a priority. I feel that in the family life the FOC should just F*** off and you should have sincerity in your relationships. I can't imagine a father having a caring relation with his children only so that he thinks they treat him well when he's old. Going by the present way MY generation is going ahead I don't think even if we care for our kids they will take care of us when we're dying. Maybe this fear is making my generation to run more after the all elusive MONEY.

I still remember my dad's words when I had told him that I want to quit my job and go for an MBA, he was shouting into the phone that I am mad to leave such a well paying job and I don't realise the value of a government job. It is true, my generation doesn't know the value of a government job. Even after working in a government company I feel that I would do good in a private firm because their I will get recognised for my work. Its true that private firms reward people who show dedication and usually in govt. firms and departments good dedication means trouble for the person.

But then when I joined my course in July and in the discussions in class when people diss about government jobs and the work culture and how corrupt the officers are and that if the country is allowed to run by private firms then we'd beat US in a matter of years and all that wonderful ideas go around. Only the handful of people who've worked in govt. firms and have led a non-corrupt, non-maligned career(albeit short) will disagree and try to persuade that NOT ALL the officers are like that(heck I too was in that category a few months back, so how can I agree??).

My generation takes pride in the discussions and dialogues that we all carry out, but still we either never vote, or never care to know who wins the elections. As far as we are concerned it is always one corrupt guy to another, one uneducated fool to another and one idiot to another. But like the Tata Tea campaign I ask isn't it time to wake up and do something about it?

But then I myself am not doing anything about it other than proudly showing my finger off about the vote I cast, then why will anyone else do anything about it??

PS: Title credited to The Who for their wonderful song - My Generation.

*Disclaimer: I am being overly emotional tonight. These are the rantings of a person with absolutely nothing fun to do right now. And instead of getting studies done, is making non-sense blogs.

Its Party Time!!!!!!

Today was the 1st party I had since I've joined IIFT. It was a greatly planned party and was executed well by the senior batch cultural committee. We'd been eagerly waiting for the freshers party, which unfortunately never happened due to many issues(which I'd rather not get into now).

The party was Titled "Coalesce '09 : The Rock N Roll". The party had some cultural programmes and in addition we had the usual three things which are present in all IIFT parties : DJ, Dance and Daaru :). The cultural events had the usual of : Group Dance, Group/Solo Song and since we are a B-School we had an Ad-Spoof competition as well.

As part of the events I was part of a Group Dance team; no don't worry I didn't dance and break the stage, but I was the Music composer(rather arranger); I was the guy who mixed the songs for the dance which some 20 odd guys performed. It was a take on the event which we all might have done in our primary school days(atleast I remember seeing this in my young days @ school) called Action Song. In school days the song was sung by the same person who performed the actions. Here we had the song which was a mix of some old hindi songs and some new ones as well and the 20+ guys on stage enacted the same song in ACTION on the stage with good synchronisation.

We worked on the dance starting at 5 PM for the event was scheduled to begin at 7 PM. We had simple steps and by 6 45 PM we had a pretty good set-up ready for the event. I've not yet got any videos of the same, but I'll upload it asap.

The song has been uploaded for your listening pleasure if you desire to hear it :

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

The other events were fun and we were the 1st group to do the dance on stage. It was fun and the dance had great appreciation from all the students present in the auditorium. We guys performed the dance two times, thanks to a technical glitch and also audience request.

Then we had some great songs sung by the singers and accompanied by the musicians of our batch. After this came a slew of spoof ad's which basically spoofed the following products:

• Fair and Lovely
• Colgate Toothpaste
  
• Huggies Diapers
• Kamasutra condoms campaign
• Liril

The hit of the day was the KS Condom campaign followed by the Huggies Diapers Ad. Both these Ad's were spoofed by many teams we saw lot of budding Padamsee's and Piyush Pandey's at work.

We had some entertaining Bhangra performances by the guys from Punjab and some other dances as well which were good fun to watch. We had Saurav of our batch who turned out to be the star of the day with his dance performances being in great demand. His new styles and matka's caught the audience unaware and it was truly a great feeling to watch Saurav do dance with the same ease he solves Accountancy problems.

Towards the end of the events we had the prizes being distributed and surprisingly our dance got the 1st prize and it was an awesome feeling to be on stage to receive the prize with some 20 other guys who I swear would never have danced in their entire lives; atleast half of them would never have had the chance to be on stage for a DANCE, if anything else :). But we did it, we the underdogs got the prize.

After the prizes the party floor was thrown open and the DJ was playing some good music, but since it was 9 30 PM all rushed to get their growling tummies filled with the awesome food being served. In addition the BAR was opened by 10 PM and soon the party's mood picked up with guys and gals hitting the floor and showing their moves on the dance floor. The DJ started with latest Hindi film songs and then some Punjabi songs.

After some time I too joined the crowd and started to make my earth-moving MOVES. Yes, even I danced, so you know how HIGH the mood of the party was :). The songs were all welcomed by the crowd with them singing along and since this was the 1st time we all had a party together and most importantly this was almost the end of 1st Trimester @ IIFT we all were desperately in need of a Break and what a break we had.

This is one snap which I got from the many which were taken today. More to be added as I get them.


The dancing continued non-stop till 1 AM when finally the DJ called quits and the party was wrapped up. The last songs had all of us forming a mosh-pit and crying Encore. Even after that we had a budding shayar in the senior batch giving out some of his fine-tuned Sher's. It was a great evening indeed and now @ 5 AM I still am getting goosebumps thinking about the night's events.

I think each and every person enjoyed to the hilt and those who missed the party had missed a big part of the MBA Life, the IIFT Life. For them I've just this comic from XKCD.

You can only dream of the fun we had today

Sleepless nights; sleeping in classes. That's MBA :)

Its been about twenty days since I’ve joined IIFT. As I sit in the cool confines of the A/C classroom now i can look back at these days and i can see a small smile coming to my face.

Life has been hectic over these days. I've been awake at hours I’ve never seen for a long long time(getting up @ 5:30 AM for yoga); sitting in classes with formal shirt and pants; sharing a hostel floor with members of the fairer sex; having birthday parties that go on till 3 AM in the night; sharing a small cake with 160 odd students; asking housewives about their favourite toothpaste; writing assignments in subjects that I'd never learned before in my life; analysing my own psyche in the dream world during classes; making PPT’s till 2 AM in the night; having coffee at 2 AM and on and on.

There hasn't been a point when I was sad or feeling that I had made a wrong choice. Living away from home isn't new for me and I’ve always felt at ease doing so. The trip to Delhi was the 1st time I was travelling by air. I had a good time. It was an early morning flight and even though I’d heard about the flight being the fastest and the safest means of travel until I travelled could I feel it. The flight wasn’t a pleasant experience as such because around me there were 3 families and all of them had small toddlers. One of these started crying and the others will follow as if in chorus.

After the flight I reached IIFT along with a friend from TVM, Ramakrishnan. He was a friend from college days and it was good to have someone along the 1st time here. We reached and got our rooms and I was on the 2nd floor. One among the 6 guys who shares the 2nd floor with 18 other girls. This looked like an opportunity at 1st but then later only we came to know that this is a threat. We guys are scared of keeping our reputations intact by being in this floor.

The classes started on 2nd July with the 1st class being Economics for me. It was a class that was interesting, and the prof was one genius who was giving out gyaan as if he was Adam Smith and we all were his greatest disciples. Some of us had the blank look on our faces when we got out of the class. But this look is better than the “I wanna sleep” look that we sport these days.

The classes are going on in full swing; but it isn’t classes that make the life in a B-School exciting. It is it the life, the senior-junior sessions, the interactions, the small chats, the long debates, the funny skits, the painful yoga lessons in the morning, the music that blares out of the speakers from the room that makes you wanna dance even if you can’t. All these things are what make life @ an MBA college worth living. The friendship, the camaraderie, the small joys, the midnight walks, the hot coffee’s shared, the poor jokes heard, the stories shared about had bosses and endless cribbing about the assignments and the case studies being handed out in classes like candies. All these things make life @ a B-School exciting. I'd heard a lot about this from my seniors who'd been to top colleges, friends who'd been to them and now I feel so special when I'm also telling my juniors and friends about these sleepless nights.

I just hope the 20 odd months that I’m gonna be here are going to be as exciting as the past 20 days have been. Life in MBA is just this one liner-Sleepless nights and Sleeping in classes.

Rom Coms - The Female Chauvinists' way of getting even

I've watched a lot of Romantic Comedies(Rom-Coms as they're known) over the years. If I remember correctly the very first i saw would be Pretty Woman. I saw the movie when i was in 9th standard. I saw the movie at a cousin's home. He was an engineering student and had this movie's cassette(yes, VHS cassettes were the norm those days, not CD's) with him.

I loved the movie and fell in love with the too-good-to-believe gentlemanly Richard Gere in the movie and wanted to be like him from that day. He had the charm to get any woman he wanted and yet he didn't want any. I wish one day i could raise myself to such a level and then say NO to my mind when i see someone and my heart says YES.

The greatest surprise in the movie wasn't however Gere, it was the every lovable, innocent-yet-charming in her own way, Julia Roberts. I just couldn't control my laughter at the scenes where she barges into the meetings and then takes him off to shopping and all. But at the same time tears welled up in my eyes when i saw the emotional scene with Roxette's It Must Have Been Love in the background.

Since then i've been a sucker for Rom-Com's and have a huge list of those movies in my collection. The movies in this range from 50 first dates to Zack and Miri make a porno. These movies haven't helped me a bit in anything other than feel good at the end when the guy gets the girl. The movies always have a lopsided hero-heroine composition, be it Pretty Woman with a Ivy-League MBA falling for a Prostitute or 50 first dates with an amazing chick in Drew Barrymore falling for an oaf of a man in Adam Sandler.

Always these movies presented a totally unrealistic view of life(atleast for a guy living in India). They always gave ideas that were stupidest in the best of situations and still the guy ALWAYS got the girl in the end. There was a time when i used to believe that such a situation would happen to me sometime in my life and i'll also get that brown-eyed girl with the most amazing smile in the world.

I think these movies are The Female Chauvinists' way of getting even at the so-callled male dominant world. These movies make the innocent guys (like me) believe in stupid things that would never happen. This makes the girls they fall for behave in the most outrageous ways and then assume that things like that would come out to be all fine and dandy.

But sadly the world, especially this part of the world(also known as India) has people who've never had such experiences in their entire lifetime. Yours truly is a living testimonail of these girls getting rid of guys like me after getting their most essential needs satisfied(may not be the need you've got in mind). But still these experiences have never let me down and am still in search of the brown-eyed-girl.

Hope these movies don't make a mess out of the life some other charming young dude.