Ripples on the brain

I was in Rajasthan for a vacation on the third week of December. Though I used by broken Hindi to good effect in most places, my bad vocabulary and the use of wrong words in places made it ample clear to the listener that I was not a native speaker of the language. This invariably led to questions on my mother tongue and such and to some funny exchanges. A couple of them are reproduced below:

Encounter 1:

Man: Aap kahan ke hain sir?
Me: Madras ke hain hum
Man: Achcha, vahan pe Telugu chalti hai naa?
Me: Telugu bhi chalti hai, par vahan ki bhasha Tamil hai
Man: Achcha achcha

Encounter 2:

Man: Aap ghar mein koun si bhasha bolte hain sir?
Me: Tamil
Man: Achcha, to aap Bangalore se aaye hain?
Me: !!?!!

That reminds of a conversation back in ISB some two and a half years ago. When our batch was new into ISB, everybody in the dining hall was almost a stranger to us. So, we used to sit in these long tables with ten people around trying to break ice, introduce ourselves to the group and chat in general. In one such conversation, there were 7-8 people around a table.

Guy1 (to another guy near him): So where are you from?
Guy2: I’m from Bangalore
Guy3: Oh, where are you originally from?
Guy2 (little surprised at the question): Why, I’m a Kannadiga from Bangalore.
All activity at the table stopped. For some reason, everybody wanted to act funny at the same time and so there was silence at the table and everybody looked at this guy.

Guy4: Kannadiga from Bangalore? Do you have a visa or something?
At this point everyone started laughing.

… is Vijay TV’s Kadhalikka Neramillai

Financial Times has rated ISB among the top 20 MBA schools in the world. FT’s list of top 100 Global MBA schools can be found here. Predictably this piece of news has sparked off celebrations in my alma mater. The school is probably the youngest one, at 6 years, to enter the top 100 in FT’s list.

The key to the rankings calculation is provided here. ISB’s ranking in other parameters can be viewed here.

ISB has scored very well in “Weighted Salary” and “Salary increase” factors which has helped it get into the top 20, as these factors have the maximum weights. Other notable parameters and the corresponding ranks for ISB in those alone are:
- FT research rank, where ISB is 88th among the schools in the list
- International experience rank, where ISB ranks 73rd
- Value for money rank; ISB ranks 68th here
- Aims achieved rank; ISB is 68th
- Alumni recommend rank; ISB is 85th

However it is viewed, this is definitely a great accomplishment for an MBA school in India taking into consideration the fact that this school has almost zilch recognition or support from any academic body of the government (like UGC or AICTE). This success is attributable to a great extent to the founding fathers, most notable among them being Rajat Gupta. Based on the other parameters mentioned above, ISB definitely has a long way to go before it catches up with its elite company. However, the right start has been made…