Ripples on the brain

Just back after dropping one of those assignments. I’m really losing track of the number of assignments we have submitted so far in Term2 alone and the number we are yet to submit. It seems to be almost every day that I deposit a few sheets into the one of the drop boxes kept in the main building.
Today’s assignment was a case about an electronic retailer in the US. As I was reading about it, I stumbled upon a HBR case about Aravind Eye Hospitals. I learnt that the doctor who established that hospital, Dr.Venkataswamy was actually a rheumatoid arthritis patient, with a completely affected right hand. He fitted his hand with his own instruments and did a hundred cataract surgeries a day even with this crippling disease. He established this hospital after his retirement and fulfilled his dream of serving the poor people. This hospital treats 70% of its patients free of cost and even for the rest of its patients, the costs are less than the normal charges. Still the hospital keeps its operating costs so low through efficient processes that it makes profits. What a great organization and what a great man!!!
I am proud to say that I was once a patient of this hospital, albeit an out-patient. Sometime in 1988/89, when I was running across the volley ball court in our school, the net cord brushed over my left eye, causing a minor injury. I visited the hospital thrice during my treatment and I think we even consulted senior doctors there. I still remember that I was charged Rs. 15/- for the whole treatment!!! “…Cheap and best”, my late uncle would remark after my final consultation.
I would have loved to have that case in our curriculum. Many students here sometimes complain that there is less of Indian content in the cases that we are doing. Most of the cases are US-based. Some have, in fact, gone to the extent of talking to a Prof and replacing a case about the US economy during Reagan period to the Indian Economic revival during the now famous Rao-Singh period. But I guess, the curriculum could not be changed so late and the request was rejected. I can think of so many cases even in Chennai, like the Saravana Bhavan chain or the strategy of Saravana Stores . But somebody should have already researched and written a case on them for them to be taken up in a formal curriculum.
That brings me to a classical case. When I was doing my graduation, there used to be three canteens in our campus – The Annamala Kadai, The Thevar Kadai and the official college canteen run by Sonia dhabha. In the four years that I was there, there were so many changes that happened in those canteens that I can describe those using all the marketing vocabulary that I have picked up so far. Even as an under-graduate, the market dynamics there interested me. I’m thinking of writing a case about the things that happened then. I’ll save that for a more relaxed day (probably Term2 break).

There is a presentation of some wonderful photos taken by the batch of 2005 when they were here. During our orientation, this was played in the auditorium and I must say, I felt as if I was leaving the college. Such was the nostalgia it created that I felt moved. Needless to say about the 2005 batch guys. A handful of them were standing just below the stage near the left entrance, clapping and holding their tears at the same time.
With the theme “The Year that was”, it shows people with various emotions throughout. The theme music is one that doesn’t leave you if you hear it once. Today, as our team was working in the atrium, somebody played the presentation and I again remembered it and cannot stop humming it.
Some seniors who spoke to me during the orientation told us that they envied us as we had a year full of fun ahead. That brings me to a question. Are pleasant memories always pleasant? When you look back at something good that has happened to you, you feel happy alright. But you want to live that moment again, but obviously can’t. That leaves you with some sadness always. Atleast with me it does. I think about the greatest moments I’ve had in my life and invariably feel bad that I cannot have that moment again. That gives me something to be afraid of. When I grow old and hang up my boots (so to say) and stretch myself, resting my head on my palms and reminisce about my life, will I feel sad that I have actually grown old and cannot start it all over again? I don’t want to think about it now.

Stay positive.
Take everything as a learning.
You can and should improve.
Woek hard and show yourself what you are capable of.

Yes, that sums up everything that’s happened in a couple of days.
First I got my Term1 Marketing paper and it was hard to believe what I’d got. I haven’t fared so badly EVER in my life and it took sometime to sink in. But the thing that irritated me more was how certain guys wanted to know my marks somehow. I do everything to avoid going near anybody else when evaluated paper viewing session takes place. But guys keep coming upto me and asking for my marks. If I don’t tell them, they start talking non-sense (they just do anything to get the score from me). As if my score was not enough bother for me, these guys trouble me a lot more. It all looks very kiddish to me, I somehow want to yell at all those “Guys, grow up”.
Today I got my accounting paper and it was again a bad score. I really need to pull up my socks in the remaining term. First, I must find out what mistakes I make during preparation and then I should drastically improve my thinking during the examination.
ISB was also “powerless” whole of today with some transformer problem. This meant that my room and the classes were without A/C. I don’t use A/C a lot in my room, but in classes A/C is a must because they are constructed that way. So, there was a bit of a problem.

Ok, so we’ve had our first and second classes taken by Prof. Jagmohan S Raju. I’ve been hearing about him from the time I’ve heard about ISB. From the first ISB information session that I attended way back in October last year, he’s been the professor whose name has always been mentioned over and over again.
Just after the first class was over, Bharani was standing out and he asked me how the class was. My instant reaction was that the class was good, but I didn’t find it markedly different from the other good classes that we’ve had. (I just now read in one of the blogs that the Prof. was injured in an accident some weeks ago and was close to cancelling his trip here. Not having him here would’ve been a great loss for most of us, I mean you’ve heard about him so much that you’d have felt really bad if he wouldn’t have been here). But Shankar passed by and reminded me about the perspectives he gave to what we’d already learnt in Term1. There are some well known terms in marketing that we thought about only using the formulae. He made us see them intuitively so that we needn’t remember the terms by their formulae, but by what they meant to a firm. That was actually done in the first part of the class and I hadn’t thought about that when I responded to Bharani.
I liked that portion where he talked about the takeaways from the class. First he mentioned about the obvious questions that we should be able to answer after this term. Then he talked about the other things - the team skills, time management so on and so forth. “…If you think ISB has kept you busy so far, you haven’t seen anything”. “Your team skills will be tested. You have no option but to be with your team. That’s what mostly happens in life. You don’t choose your team, you only choose the way you want to interact with them”.
Markstrat would be that thing which will keep us busy throughout this term. It will test the limits of the time management and team skills. I only hope I learn a lot from this as I seem to be way behind as far as time management is concerned. Term 2 has been very unorganized when compared to Term1. We have classes at odd times and uneven workload. On Wednesday (June 21) we had 4 sessions each running for 2 hours whereas on thursday we’ll have just one. This week we have classes even on Saturdays. I look forward to this term with hope and excitement. Hope it transforms me!!!

There’s something that is unique to tamilians through tamil cinema that, I feel, no viewers of any other movies get to enjoy (atleast I’ven’t heard of it anyother language) - the comedy track. I know telugu movie has some comedy track and Sunil is a counterpart of our own Vivek, Johny Lever has tried some stuff in Hindi, but am not sure in both the cases, the concept itself is as famous as it is in tamil.
To me, these comedy tracks have given an unique identity to the tamilians. I mean, meet any new tamilian on your way and if you need to break the ice with him, talk of a comedy piece from a famous movie and there is a 99% chance that he’ll know about it. And more often than not, 10 or 15 minutes later, you two guys should be having a hearty laugh each not wanting to let the other guy leave. That is the magic these comedians have created. Atleast in my case, we used to talk about the famous comedy scenes at lunch when I was working and one scene led to an other and then another and it used to go on and we used to enjoy so much just recalling those scenes. There are a lot of programmes in the tamil channels late in the night and in the weekends just devoted to showing these comedies and I’m very sure these must be generating a lot of TRP’s because I know they have been there for a long time.
Atleast for this reason, I think we need to thank all the comedians that the different generations of tamil cinema has produced. I know there is always a talk of one generation being better than the other and the current generation having a lot of vulgar jokes with double entendre but there have been so many good ones that have been dished out in this generation also and I only wish such a trend continues through the generations of tamil cinema.

I have not been an avid viewer of English films and watch them when I have no way of watching a tam movie at that time. But among the short list of the English movies that I’ve seen, I remember seeing atleast 3 movies of Sandra Bullock. Just now I saw While you were sleeping, Ihad seen two other movies of hers earlier, though I vaguely remember the story of those. It seems to me that in all these movies, she had nearly the same kind of stereo-typed acting. She wants to look like a goody-goody innocent girl, with her sweaters covering her hand, walking like a little girl and stuttering with her words when she speaks ( I-I-I ) to convey an impression that she’s confused. To me she seems to be doing the same thing again and again - act in a feel-good romantic movie with some comedy and a happy ending. I don’t know, probably I haven’t watched many other movies of hers.
Nevertheless, it is not that I didn’t like the movies that I saw. They were very good. I remember seeing the previous ones and coming out feeling very good and today also I’m feeling the same after watching While You…

“Believe me, I’ll miss Hyderabad more than I miss Chennai when I go to Erode”. This was how I summed up my reactions to our host when our short trip to Hyderabad ended. This was way back in 1998. It was my father’s last LTC and we had come to Hyderabad. Wow, I liked this place. The drive along the tank bund road, the Salarjung museum (”too little time to visit the museum”, I’d complained then), Birla Mandir, the serenity of Sec’bad, Charminar - all of these mesmerized me.
This week, I wanted to sort of relive that magic. Today I visited some of those places again. The magic simply wasn’t there. I loathed the crowded tank bund road. The water in Hussain Sagar clearly looked dirty. I was telling the person who accompanied me all through how great the place would be. When we actually rode through the road, I fell silent. He glanced at me and I didn’t have a word. I don’t know. It’s either that I had thought that the place was more beautiful than it actually was or that it has worsened over the years. I mean, it is easier to say that it has degraded but there is a strong possibility that the former happened because my family didn’t feel Hyderabad was so good at that time. But there is also another possibility.
But to be fair, there’s a lot of planned development taking place in Hyd’bad as far as I can see. Most of the roads laid out here are three lane each way with greenery forming the median mostly. The company HUDA is developing the city well and I’m told except the old city (which I’ven’t visited recently) all other places have been developed well.

I’ve been working on changing the layout of this page. Though I’m not a great coder in html, I’m trying to understand bit-by-bit and change the code on a trial and error basis. blogsome (like any other blog sites I’ve worked with) is making life somewhat difficult for me by not refreshing the changes soon enough. To view the changes that I’ve made, I need to update the blog frequently. So I think there will be a lot of blogs initially.

The final layout that I’ve in my mind is similar to the ones in some other blogs that I visit frequently. I hope to achieve that.

I’ve done this many times before. I’ll hope this is the last time I’m starting a new blog. I’ve always wanted to write, but then I haven’t been able to do it in a sustained manner. Hopefully from now on I will regularly update this space. I will also be contributing to The Collaborative ISB blog from time to time. Let’s see how this goes.