Chakde India!

What could be the best way to start its second term for PGP-11? No prizes for guessing! The obvious answer is Cricket(T-20) world cup final between India and Pakistan. The stage for an amazing rollercoaster ride was set and the only thing in everyone's mind was 5:30 pm.

With herculean efforts, the setup to screen the match in the Audi was completed. The match started with India batting first and PGP guys clapping and shouting with every boundary scored by the team. Though India couldn't stand up to the expectations of its over-enthusiastic fans, it ended up securing a decent total which finally helped it become the world champion. The PGP10/11 students worked equally hard as they kept running from the audi to the mess to counter the interruptions caused due to network issues. The attendance at Audi and Mess surpassed all the previous records at IIMK.

Kudos to Gautam Gambhir and Irfan Pathan who both played beautifully and brought India back everytime it was under pressure. Some of the PGP guys are waiting for Sreesanth to come back to Kerala to honour him for his breathtaking bowling during the final overs. :-)

As the last Pakistani wicket fell, the scene at the IIMK mess suddenly started resembling a festival. People went wild congratulating each other and many of them went live on their mobiles sharing the excitement with their distant loved ones. Hats off to the men in blue who thrashed the attacks of big names like Australia, South Africa, Pakistan and England even without their top three batsmen. With this historic win, we have once again proved that we are second to none in the cricketing world.

The end of a killer term... and a killer on campus?

The pall on Kampus has lifted. The specter of the end terms now well and truly vanquished, it’s time for PGP11 to kick back and enjoy some quiet time before they return for the massacre that is Term 2. As goodbyes are waved, bags packed and books gladly shoved away (after what seems like years), the atmosphere here positively reeks of joy or something stronger. Loud Punjabi songs and rock anthems jostle in a weird jugalbandi as PGP11 finds a musical outlet for its pent-up frustration.

But has the realization that they have now finished 1/6^th of their time here finally sunk in? Or are they just glad that the term from hell has finally ended? Now that the End-Terms have given way to the term’s end, the K-files talked to a few PGP11-ites to find out their thoughts on their first term at K.

“I finally understand what Einstein meant when he said time is relative” says Chaitanya. “Time at K can crawl as slow as it can fly fast. A minute in normal time might seem like an eon when you are waiting for the results of a Markstrat session and a day of sessions and movies of Dr. Mathew might seem to be over before you can blink. Sometimes it seems like it was ages ago when I entered the campus dumbfounded at its awesome beauty and sometimes it seems like the term just flew by. The experience however only got better, getting to know all the awesome people here, joining committees and getting through the 8-exams-in-4-days ordeal. One thing that I'll take home is a sense of belonging which will bring me back here, term after term with more zeal and enthusiasm than before.”

Perky Punekar, Aniket Kute, agrees with Chaitanya, “The entire process of volunteering for various committees and finally being chosen was a great feeling. The camaraderie developed while preparing for Roobaroo was a highlight of the term. But undoubtedly”, he said, “Markstrat had to be the best 2 days we spent on campus. When else would you find people waking up voluntarily at 7.30 in the morning and discussing marketing and distribution budgets?”

Stringy Srinivasan or Gokul as he’s better known had this to say, “Term 1 was a blur. Too many things were happening around me and I wanted to be a part of everything! I guess the enthusiasm in our batch is infectious. And the best course of the term was STI - no doubts on that front and I am sure the whole batch has a similar take on it. But somewhere down the line, there was discontent brewing within us... of having been deprived of girls. With the academic load increasing, frustration set in; people became homesick; but slowly, we have been brought into the folds of the K culture and we’re enjoying every minute of it – be it the long hours of BCing at the NC or the mad frenzy of messages on IP - the initiation into the Kult. We’ve become a part of K.”

Gokul wasn’t the only one who felt that term 1 had sped away. As Puneet Nagi puts it “Like a 10 minute quiz, it ended before it started. But it sure was good fun while it lasted! In this of state of being overwhelmed by the feeling that it's over, I can’t really recall any of the cool things that happened. Perhaps there were just too many of them! All I can think of at the moment, is putting the closing entries on my burgeoning sleep debt account. Debit sleep, credit sleep debt. Or whatever. Accounts sucks!”

Rishi Tandon wrapped it all up nicely saying, “A blink of the eye, and already we are 1/6 MBAs. The term started deceptively slowly, with a starry eyed moi walking wonderstruck into this hilltop paradise. Welcomed by a score of activities, and a happy reconnection with the academic life, I've lived life to the fullest this one term- courses, parties, assignments, field visits, crazy deadlines, infinite all night gyan sessions with a bevy of new friends. This is just how I'd imagined being at an IIM to be. The term break is welcome and I leave for home feeling that all this it’s over all too quickly. I know that I'm returning soon, rejuvenated and wanting more of the IIMK life.”

One down. Five to go.

PS: It wasn’t just PGP11 that was running free on Thursday afternoon. Joining them was this little cobra that for a brief while became the star of the most downloaded video on campus. Think twice before sitting on your bike the next time! Our mallu protectors though did a magnificent job of catching it and here it is in all its innocent glory. Here is a video capturing the same, with MessCom Rohit Arya's commentary.

All's well that ends well!

There’s a strange hush over the campus these days. The NC’s empty and the library full. Harried faces hurry along lugging huge books. Hushed discussions, barely concealed distress and palpable tension seem to be the norm of the day. So what has turned the PGP-11ites (who love to party and watch movies in entertaining modules masquerading as courses) into bewildered zombies? Ah… it’s endterm time -the time for the final knockout after the ever increasing load of quizzes and assignments. The printers in the CC protest wearily under the scramble for last minute printouts. Chips and biscuit packets fly off the NC shelves as students stock up for long nightouts ahead. With three more days to go, before the blessed comfort of term-break, we wish PGP-11 all the best for their end terms. May there be many Venkys and Jaidevs in your batch. And for the less ambitious, may your gradesheets never be marred by Ds, Is or Fs.

Old enemies unite us again ;-)

Photo credits: Manish Harodia (manish.harodia@gmail.com)

Sahil Goyal (sahilgoyal2002@gmail.com) reports from the mess:


From 3-1 down to levelling the series at 3-3, the 5th of September brought with it, a nail-biter of a match between two evenly matched sides. Surely, the whole of India danced to the tunes of the evergreen opening pair of Tendua/Dada and towards the end - the bench strength of Robin Uthappa (or Uthappatha as Atherton put it during the presentation ceremony).

The scene in the IIM K mess was no different. Never in the history of IIMK, has the mess been able to attract such a huge crowd. No, not even the Sunday special lunch. For the record, even the Ghissu Kelkars were right there clapping for each and every run scored. The atmosphere was simply electrifying. Cheering every Chinese cut by Dhoni and the Douglas Mariller scoops by Robin Uthappa formed the course for the post-dinner Mess audience.

As the Indian chase became more and more improbable, one could see Harodia getting frustrated pointing fingers at Collingwood and not just the index finger. The best gestures however were threats of bumps that some of the emotional fans at K threw at Suresh and Harodia in case India lost the match. And what has that to do with the India loss? Both of them belong to Jharkhand and with 8 runs required from every over, poor Dhoni could only play out a few dot balls. :D

Come 8th of September, India and England will battle it out in the series decider... let's see who gets kicked in the mess this time around ;)

Prasanna Bora reports from Jonkoping!

Hi All,

Greetings from Jonkoping (Pronounced as Jon-show-ping), Sweden! It is been about 10 days since we reached this place. It has been great so far. At my school, Jonkoping International Business School (JIBS), we have exchange students from IIMC and IIML as well, apart from students from over 100 different Schools. Yes, you read that right. JIBS' uniqueness is its diversity. There are people from over 50 countries here and more than 250 exchange students. I think having students from so many different countries is truly something unique.

Courses: The school is really big on entrepreneurship. It’s known for its entrepreneurship programs but isn’t very great for Finance. If you ask me how the courses are, I’ll say – it depends. ;) It truly does depend on what courses you take. We are free to take courses at bachelor level (there are 4 categories of courses: A,B,C,D in the ascending order of difficulty). So if you take an A level course in finance and you are an Indian, who is naturally better at numbers, then you got nothing to learn. Bottom-line, if you wanna make most of the academic experience, take the courses that the university is known for.

We are supposed to take 2 courses per quarter (4 for the sem). For this quarter I have taken Entrepreneurship and Business Planning (EBP) and International Financial Management (IFM). EBP classes are amazing. The course has an enrollment of 375 to 400 i think, which implies we have to have lectures in the auditorium. Yet the lectures are interactive and do not get boring one bit. It is an experience to sit in a class of 400! But of course, for seminars, sessions where there are group activities and presentations to compliment the lectures, we are split into classes of 40. We have been given a loan of 200 SEK (read Swedish kroner or krown) to start our new venture and we got to be profitable during the duration of the course. Besides, we get to make visits to a company and analyze how that company started as an entrepreneurial venture. Perfect combination of theory and practice. A very well designed course. IFM isn’t very exciting and we as fin majors and students of a master's program feel the pace is too slow and the learning limited.

Lectures here are scheduled for 2 hours, but as the profs say, an "academic hour" is only 45 mins. So we get a 15 min break at the end of 45 mins and lectures get over 15 mins early. Is that a piece of advice for someone who talks of market fundas esp paaanetration with complete disregard to the clock ;)

I work in a group of 10 for my new venture project, and we have 6 countries represented among the 10. Beat that for diversity.

Professors: Even for a disinteresting course like IFM, the effort put in by the professor is tremendous. There is no 'free-riding' by the professor. Lecture slides, handouts, course outlines, etc are managed very professionally. The EBP professor has like an entire team of faculty members and PhD candidates working for him, nearly 8 of them handling that one course. The prof is very charismatic and walks in with his expensive business suit on, is a smooth talker and teaches very well.

Professors here are pretty cool. Mobiles ring in class, people come in late, surf during classes, eat, drink coffee and it’s all accepted. But most students are serious and want to make most of the lectures. Also attendance is not mandatory in most cases. Probably explains why professors are not paranoid about things like laptop, mobiles,etc.

Infrastructure: It’s an unfair comparison but cant help it. A classroom here is at least 10 times better than the best facility we have. One of the most amazing things in classrooms that grabbed my attention was movable marker boards. There are multiple movable marker boards that slide across and over. So the prof writes on a board, does not clear it, slides the board up, pulls another one down and writes on the second. Amazing!! The intranet is very well used resource. IIMK needs to put in serious thought on using its intranet well. VC and moodle are the most under-utilized and the professors need to be educated about the effective use of an intranet. Squirrel mail is not intranet!

The country: We have struggled with Swedish. Most people do speak English, but the problem is that everything is written in Swedish. So when you go to a super market, you read a pack and you cant make out whether its sugar, salt or something else. We can’t read the newspapers, the brochures, the notices and more. People pay a lot in taxes. A cleaning company charges 300 SEK (conversion rate Rs 6) per hour. A doctor's appointment costs 1600 SEK. It is a very expensive place to stay. Sweden seems to be devoid of the Walmarts and the Tesco’s. Most chains seem to be Swedish. That may explain the emphasis on entrepreneurship. Volvo and Scania are Swedish icons, if I may say so. It is truly breathtaking to see one of those huge Scania trucks.

Women: A lot of guys would be keen to know about this. There are quite a few pretty looking ones, esp the French. Some do hold you breathless. Also makes me wonder how some manage to dress up scantily in the biting cold. Snaps up here.

Prasanna Bora can be contacted at his gmail id: bora.prasanna