Random thoughts on a lazy Sunday

Successfully complete two months of self-imposed exile from the blogger space. Reason was to penance for the hopelessly cryptic and unfunny post below. Readers complained of nausea, prolonged constipation and other such depression symptoms during and after reading. I am not surprised thus that the endorsed product was left unsold.

Anyway, so a few days ago, I flew back to Scotland. They have work for me they say and I am thrilled. I was beginning to get worried as I was falling behind schedule in my work for the biggest regulatory project of the year. For those thinking Solvency II and RDR, please go take a hike. There is a world to be destroyed by the end of the year, did you forget ? And here they were still gathering requirements ......Sorry what ?... Oh I beg your pardon, we shouldn't say requirement gathering anymore, It's called Consulting these days.

And boy is my knowledge quotient expanding or what ! Have been finally introduced to the magical world of Conditional Formatting in an excel spreadsheet. Oh what wonders it can do ! You feel like a conjurer when you see those cells automatically colour themselves in so many different hues. No one really cares about the underlying data anyway. As long as you can make your sheet look like one having returned from a Holi bash, half your job as a Consultant is done. The remaining half would be to re-arrange the colours when the sheet comes back to you. I tell you, you feel like such an accomplished artist when you make your way back home after a hard day at office.

Speaking of colours, there is not much to be seen during the days in Edinburgh. Parents are having to show pictures available in the internet to make their kids believe that something known as a Sun does actually exist. The dour climate is however compensated for, by the lively colours that come out in the weekends, most often in the form of very short skirts. Designers here must be so frustrated with such lack of cloth material to express their creativity on. Indian designers on the other hand must be so thankful to our traditional sarees, salwars and the likes of Ram Sene. (Where the hell have they disappeared of late by the way ?)

But of course we are never short of exciting things happening in our country. The flavour of this season happens to be gangrapes. From Calcutta to Indore to Gurgaon , men are competing tooth and nail to get their team the Best Gangrapists award. And in this race, when chief ministers pass comments referring to the rape as a mere figment of imagination on the part of the raped woman, I'm sure it must cause severe heartburn for these men. How can some politicians be so stone-hearted , I wonder !! After all the effort these men put in , they surely deserve better. There is no justice, I say. And the women being raped.... Oh I'm sure they must have dressed so to get the honour.

At times....the word depravity makes so much sense.

So Pranabda came up with another Annual Budget and with every passing year , he and his department are mastering the art of copy-paste and we thought we IT guys were good at it. Just to avoid being caught, they introduce minor changes here and there. This time some bugger thought that the service tax column has remained unchanged for quite some time. Lets play with that and so he changed it to 12 % instead of 10%. No one noticed. More importantly no one cared. The bugger should have used some discretion I say. Tax on service is so very ironic for this government.

"I must be cruel, only to be kind" said our FM. Shakespeare must have died a few more deaths on hearing Pranabda quote his work in the context in which he did.

There is one thing however that strikes me every year about the Budget. They touch upon every damn thing! From match boxes to refrigerators, to complex derivative instruments to almost anything that you can name around you ! There would be a mention of it in the Budget. For e.g. this year they have an increase in excise duty for ice-creams and flavoured milk !! I mean, who the heck comes up with these ideas man and how? What could trigger a thought in a man's mind to raise duties specifically for ice-creams and flavoured milk !! With each passing day, I realise why our Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh neither speaks nor smiles. Often his constipated attitude is attributed to the bamboo treatment that Mamata continually gives him.....but I beg to differ. These ice-cream hating people too must be giving him a torrid time. What a life the man leads. My heart goes out for him. Maybe some day, if ever that day comes, when he gets his speech and spine back, we shall know the truth by God !

Anyway today has been a good Sunday. India won a match with Pakistan with the always angry Kohli scoring a marvellous 183 runs. I think the wounds of the Australian rape saga are already healing. Just as we don't care about the rapes happening in the country, we should forget about the ones that happened with our cricket team in Australia too. The boys are back home now.

Hip Hip Hurray !

The heading says it all. Really didn't have anything in mind but for an urge to write :)

Tol Mol ke Bol

For the last couple of days, I have been going through my Marketing books. I have been checking out the chapters on how to price a product and ruing at my gross inattentiveness during the classes in which these theories were taught. This sudden interest in this topic owes to this very interesting newspiece where a Chennai couple have sought out a sperm donor from an IIT. The news immediately sparked some dormant entrepreneurial instincts in me. If an IITian can command a sum of twenty thousand rupees for his sperms, how much should the same product be priced for a person with an REC+IIM background ?

So I opened Kotler, the Bible of Marketing to go through the basics again. With a production rate of 1000 per second (Source : The endocrinologist sister) at almost zero input cost, this is a product that challenges the very foundations of all pricing principles. We cannot follow any of the cost-oriented pricing strategies and thus concepts like break-even analysis, markup pricing etc are of little help to me.

However like every other product, it must be priced and priced rationally for it to succeed in the market. I analyse a few theoretical concepts to throw some light on this subject.

Value-Based or Cost-based pricing - This is the first choice that a seller has to make and the choice is fairly obvious given the nature of the product. With insignificant costs of production, the pricing strategy needs to be Value-based. But therein lies the catch. Value-based pricing method needs the seller to set a target price that would match the customer's perceived value of the product which becomes a tricky proposition. A good idea would be to follow a value-added pricing plan. Thus instead of a price war with competitors, one should attach value-added features and services to differentiate the offers. Maybe something like a contribution from a batchmate can go a long way in establishing market credentials of the product. I am currently in touch with a few who are interested to contribute.

Pricing as per Market : To understand this we take a little help from the concepts of economics. Now there are primarily four types of markets.

a) Pure competition - Many buyers and sellers trading in a uniform commodity and individual sellers cannot cause changes to market price.

b) Monopolistic competition - Many buyers and sellers trading over a range of prices owing to differentiated offers for different customer segments.

c) Oligopolistic competition -Few sellers who are highly sensitive to each other's pricing. Entry barriers exist for new sellers.

d) Pure monopoly - Single seller.

Of the above, though we may fantasize of an Ideal world where a pure monopoly exists with us being the single provider, in reality I think the market for our product would fall in between monopolistic and oligopolistic competition leaning slightly towards oligopolistic at this stage but with the government opening up a plethora of IITs and IIMs , the market is expected to move more towards monopolistic competition and thus as sellers, we must quickly start devising plans to differentiate our offerings.

The Price-Demand relationship - An increase in price is usually followed with a decrease in demand but to what extent is the question. That must be analysed with proper market research data and I suggest opening up a Facebook community for say IIM Sperm donors to keep record of sales. Also every donor should immediately update his Twitter account on a successful transaction to maintain a real time check on market prices. However such updates should strictly happen only when the transaction has had some commercial value attached to it.

New Product Pricing Strategy :

Kotler says that pricing strategies should change as the product passes through its life cycle. Now the life cycle of a sperm while inside the production warehouse is hardly of any interest to anybody and thus we will directly jump to the stage when he has successfully managed to come out to see the world outside the factory gates. The stimulus to see the outside world may vary greatly depending on the mood and circumstances of the factory owner. The life cycle of this product depends largely on that. If the gates were opened under the pressure of some adult content related stimuli or some fanciful thoughts interspersed by special appearances of beautiful unobtainable women, then the product is doomed from the very beginning. Inhospitable external environment, most often tissue papers, lead to immediate destruction of any commercial value of the product.

If however, the exit circumstances are enabled by the physical presence of another person of the opposite gender, then it may have a completely different cycle to follow, which this time would invariably depend on the mood of this other person. Most often than not disaster would strike again in the form of a thin plastic sheath that prevents any further transportation of the product. The product gets an unceremonious fruit-flavoured farewell.

(Note : If the product finds itself getting a vigorous rinse and then looking down a basin hole, then the circumstance leading to its predicament regretfully cannot be covered in this blog owing to its 12A rating)

Coming to the case, when the product manages to transfer itself successfully to a hospitable foreign destination. The word hospitable here is only used relatively as the acidic recipient environment allows the survival of only a couple of hundred of sperm from an enormous pool of about 300-500 million that arrive with each incoming batch. These few hundred who survive are left to shoulder the responsibility of the product. Depending on ten thousand other factors, details of which are beyond the realms of our understanding, one robust swimmer, out of those many millions that started the journey with him, may successfully swim across the complex matrix from the vagina to the cervix to the uterus and reach at the gates of the fallopian tubes where it would do what it does best. Wait ! The wait may or may nor bear fruit and the life cycle of the product again becomes dependent on factors beyond its control. The heroic journey may be cut short simply because of the timing of his visit. The sign on the gates 'No Ovulation - Come back later' brings his world crashing down and he too dies a tragic and unsung death like so many of his compatriots. The task would be left for another brave soldier from another batch who, after braving all these above mentioned obstacles, may finally meet a coy little egg at the gates and complete its Karmic cycle by fertilising it !!!

Urination on a strip thereafter may lead to congratulatory messages being exchanged or a broken nose for the factory owner. Thus discretion is supremely advised in any transaction related to the product.

Apologies for digressing from the primary intention of this blog but the above information was necessary to understand whether the price of the product should vary as per its life cycle. As per my conclusions, the pricing should remain constant due to the complex nature of the product's life cycle.

Some other very pertinent points which I think are worth considering when setting the price of the product:

• Market-skimming pricing - where we charge a high price initially should be justified here as the competitive advantage is soon to be affected with the arrival of new competitors. Though some of the earlier batches who passed out in the 60's and 70's may not be much of a competition now but they cannot be completely discounted either. Also I am pretty sure that very soon, fake products would flood the market that would bring deflationary impacts on my product price.

• Time pricing -where a firm may vary its price by the season, the month , the day or even the hour also is relevant here. Research shows that the demand for the product fluctuates largely based on the global economic climate. Recessionary trends that may lead to lesser than expected salaries during the placement season significantly brings down the perceived value of the product. Thus the pricing too should be need to be adjusted accordingly.

• Competitor's Strategies and Prices - Kotler says , "Consumers will base their judgement's of a products value on the prices that the competitors charge for similar products ". Thus I guess an all IIT-IIM meet should be organised where the directors of all these institutes should agree upon some basic principles of pricing that would be applicable to all alumni and current students. This would ensure a level playing field for all. The products should be graded as soon as the placement season is over. The following table can be used as a guiding principle :
  
  

  Recruiting Company	Product Grade
  I-Banks, Management Consulting firms	AAA
  PE firms	AA
  FMCG firms	BB
  Indian IT firms	Suspicious Quality of product

I am a little groggy after all this study. No one single theory seems to be giving me a definitive direction to my pricing strategy. Thus after considering all relevant and irrelevant literature , I have come to the conclusion that Psychological Pricing which prices a product based more on the psychology of the consumers rather than economy would be the most ideal way of pricing this product. A higher priced product comes with the natural perception of having a higher quality. So in order to shine out in the competition pool, I have decided to put up my product for auction.

The shortlisted sites are Khuljasimsim.com Bazee.com, Nilaami.in, Mastibids.com .

So all couples who are looking out for this great product, please don't miss this opportunity to buy this guaranteed product. Register yourself today and start bidding. Let you, my dear consumers, decide what the price of my product should be ! Looking forward to doing great business with you all.

Jai Hind !

Happy Birthday Bloggie !!

My blog is six years old today. Named after the iconic Coffee House at College Street in Calcutta, I guess laziness was something that came in its DNA. Yet, 55 posts that averages to 9 posts a year is not that bad, considering that the author was recently diagnosed with chronic PAS or Posterior Adhesion Syndrome, a rare disorder that immobilizes all locomotory and sensory activities for considerable periods of time as soon as the posterior gets a resting place. Often this is diagnosed incorrectly as being a Bengali. (The symptoms may be similar but this disorder is far more severe.)

On this joyous occasion, I must also observe a minute's silence for those many thoughts that did crackle out of the brain with the enthusiasm of a Oliver Ridley hatchling, only to take the expression of a severely PMS affected woman and fizz out with a whimper without ever seeing the light of the blog. And there were very many of them. Let those fertile aborted thoughts rest in peace. Amen !

Meanwhile a quick month long trip to Scotland happened between the last post and this. The trip wasn't meant to be this quick but one can never truly qualify as being from the IT industry if he hasn't been part of a project that was scrapped when in full steam. So now here I am beaming with pride at the completeness of my mandatory IT credentials, as one fine Monday morning soon after completing a status call , we were all invited for a meeting that announced the immediate closure of the project. Just like that ! Not much work is done in the Western world when the birthday of Jesus is around the corner and when you have developments such as these, the people affected are left as directionless as a cow in a busy Indian thoroughfare. You can chew cud, you can stand in the middle of the road amidst honking cars wondering about how the universe was created or you can just smack the dog nearby with your tail for all anyone cares ! Such was my case too as no one had an idea of what to do with me. So I loitered around for some time before the think tanks realised that the financial impact of my liability was not helping the recessionary economy at all and decided to send me back. But not before I celebrated the 25th Dec birthday. And boy is the birthday celebrated with pomp and show !! Not a single shop was open, not a single house had any fancy lights hanging outside, not a single public transport vehicle on the streets !! Much similar to a curfew after a riot in our country ! Its a private celebration they say.. Wierd , we say considering this is the only thing close to a festival that these guys have !

Anyway a friend from yonder years had come over to share our mutual melancholy and with two more of her friends , we embarked on a climb up Arthur's Seat, a 825 feet hill in Edinburgh that provides some exotic views of the beautiful city. But planning and execution are two wicked step sisters who rarely see eye to eye. Nature that day was in the mood to play frisbee and typical to her playful nature, chose us humans as flying disks. So strong were the winds that it was next to impossible to stand aground and if you belong to the gender with not very heavy hanging organs then God save you on such days.

But we did manage to scale almost to the top where we met a not-very-cloth-friendly Canadian girl. In other circumstances, I may well have spent a moment admiring her visible contours but in those extreme chilly and windy conditions, where my features were slowly but surely turning Mongoloid as the photo to the left confirms, I just left the thought float away with the wind. Some people just don't like wearing clothes and that's that. We were led in this campaign by a very spunky lady of our group, who braving these extreme conditions was more than willing to lead us to the top. It seemed King Arthur's spirit had possessed this otherwise sweet lady and boy was she determined to go and check out the seat !! Her tresses, which kept swinging around like a lost compass needle in frantic search of the north, complimented her possessed state and dare we not have followed her ! Nature however intervened our glorious march and just a little distance from the summit, we decided that birthdays were better celebrated where Gods were not taking their Fluid Mechanics practical exams

The following day was Boxing day, a day traditionally meant to torture the male species. Comes camouflaged as Sales in Fashion stores ! With the friend from yonder years also in a mood to celebrate her womanhood, I had to tag along of course. Thankfully other than the one occasion when she managed to get lost in the crowd with the cellphone obviously left at home and her having no clue where that home was, it was not that torturous a day out. What I couldn't help noticing was an Indian gentlemen who cut a very sorry figure of himself in his desperate attempts to keep track of that wandering kid, the other one pooping in the trolley, those thirteen packets overflowing with female and kid clothing and the red water bottle. As consolation for all his effort , his wife had bought him a bright yellow T-Shirt that said "My wife cutest !" As the happy family made their way back home, with the wife cheerfully chattering away on the phone informing her mother in Ernakulum of the day's steals, the gentleman walked with an expression of having lost a lot more than a mere few hundred pounds on that cold Monday afternoon . "Honey I love you na", she said. He smiled. On his cell phone he opened the Facebook page of his only remaining bachelor friend who had just uploaded pictures of a Christmas in Goa with a few scantily clad Ukrainian ladies. He clicked the Like option and sighed.

I flew back to India in another couple of days and finally saw the T3 terminal which sure is a treat to watch. An Indian origin smart looking female bearing no signs of being married and carrying an American passport lamented about the fact that I being an Indian too had to queue in the common line for immigration clearance. When good looking females pass an opinion , I always agree and this one had an American passport !! Are you kidding me ...I nearly fell on my trolley trying to convey how much I agreed with her. Our paths were destined to diverge in a couple of minutes but her sad expectant eyes did convey to me how lonely she was ! Alas I had a connecting flight and she a kid !

A fortnight later, I am still put in India while my current bosses continue to figure out something that my previous ones have burnt much oil thinking over, but to not much avail ! How can they make any use of me ! Let them take their own sweet time. Its 2012. The world is coming to an end anyway so why bother much !

I had started this blog inspired by mydayzwithmyself, a blog maintained by a fellow IIMCian, which he in those days updated regularly with large doses of his typical humour. As I see his blog too hasn't seen much activity of late. Blame it all, we may on Blackberrys and Androids but then I'm sure every blogger wants to continue writing.

So here is raising a toast on my blog's sixth birthday.

I want to write more. I hope to write more. Maybe I will write more.

Cheers !

Photo Credit : The spunky lady - Divya Iyer

Sazaa-e-Namak Paani

This time the reason for my break from blogging is quite serious. With a heavy heart I must announce here that I have just been released from prison. This piece of news must come as quite a shock to many of you but it unfortunately is true. To arrest your alarm, I owe all of you an explanation here to explain my current circumstances.

I was jailed on the 18th of August soon after I came back from a quick visit to home on the Independence day long weekend. Little was I to know how my own independence was to be brutally cut short soon after. The rude jolt came in the form of a shrill phone call on a cozy afternoon when completely unawares of my impending fate, I was busy sharpening my skills in online archery. (Angry Birds was blocked in my office and no matter how angry we were at this, the policies remained unchanged and thus the game beyond our reach ). To come back to the point, the call was from my manager who wanted to see me. Now this itself was a disturbing little thing which sowed the seeds of doubt in my mind. Over the past three odd months, we had developed a very beautiful relationship - one in which we saw as less of each other as possible. In times when the resource utilization was best left undiscussed, it was a mutually agreeable unsaid arrangement.
As I made my way to his desk in the 8th floor, I kept wondering what the reason could be behind the unexpected invitation.
Could it be what I was thinking ? But how could it be so ? It was unimaginable that it would catch up with me so soon . Not after all the effort that I had put in the last year and a half in the desperate hope to never ever tread those God forbidden paths again. But the shadows of the past are lengthier than we think my friends. It was time to face the truth.
"We have identified a project for you. "

Seven harmless little words which came together like a slap in the face. I was just getting so comfortable in the post MBA do-nothing phase but someone just got jealous I guess !
To add salt to injury, I was informed that the project was housed in an ODC. To those unfamiliar with this obnoxious little term, ODC stands for Offshore Development Centre which is an area in an IT office that is earmarked exclusively for any particular client. The client has a free hand to impose any restriction within the confines of this area in the name of security policies. Thus if they were to ask to us to present ourselves in yellow pants and red shirts with blue shoes, we being the typical accommodating Indian service providers would go a step further and add a cowboy cap and maybe orange feathery mufflers to go along with it. Well this particular client was not so much bothered with our attire as it was paranoid with our cell phones and Internet activity. To enter the premises of one's own bloody office, any cell phone that had a camera was required to be deposited to the security chaps who manned the doors 24/7. You would go crazy answering to the daily question " Sir phone aache ? " but the buggers wont relent.

Thus started the jail term. Internet services were completely blocked. Can you even imagine a life without Google but one such existed within the confines of those walls. My brand new Blackberry had to be forsaken for a camera less and a lot many things less Nokia 1800 which however introduced me to a world which I had thought was long lost- The world of the great Kumar Sanu. With FM being the only means of relaxing in an otherwise claustrophobic environment, I was amazed to see (hear) that Kumar Sanu numbers were not only alive but thriving in Kolkata FM channels. It was impossible to surf through all the FM channels at any point in time and not find at least two that were playing old nasal Sanu hits. Bengal does not forget its heroes..So true!!
The authorities were so stringent with data regulations that they thought it wise to not even install Microsoft Office in our PCs. All Excel based flash games faded into oblivion and with it my hopes of being a great Online Archer.( Ricochet Kills Version 2.0 - Just FYI for those interested) So the only thing that the PC hosted was a link to a remote machine that resided in a foreign country and no prizes for guessing which one. So technically I was actually working in US. Aur lagao H1 par restrictions...Aur karo L1 reject.... But Hum desi log tumhare wohan kaam kar ke rahenge !! Karlo jo karna hai.

The prison term soon started to take its toll on me. With no Internet connectivity and continuous barrage of Bengali radio advertisements that were hell bent on making me buy just about everything from umbrellas to advice on sexual issues, I started showing signs of depression. I would go back home and watch Rakhi Sawant's talk show on TV. Yes my condition was that serious and it was then that I decided to do something about it.

I write this blog to say that I did. A few changes in life have followed. I have escaped from prison (read : changed my job). I have landed in Mumbai once again and today morning did something that I always dreaded. Travelled to office in a local train during peak office hours !!! The fact that I am writing this post shows that I survived. In fact it wasn't bad at all. This city makes you a survivor.

A new chapter has thus begun this week. Will keep you posted as the story unfolds.
Till then have fun !!!
I will miss the city of Calcutta nonetheless. Hope to write about that sometime.

Kya hua......Tera vaada

Two months have passed since I rejoined back corporate life following my MBA and boy have I taken the world by storm !! Cutting edge strategy work, shadowing the executive board and winning a couple of top notch deals....All in this short span of time !!!!

Yeah and I also am Brad Pitt .....Read on.

It all started with an induction week in Pune as a part of a batch of MBA graduates, the average age of which was greatly distorted by me being in it. Apart from those excruciatingly boring speeches about company capabilities by equally bored gentlemen , some very interesting activities formed a part of the program. As a part of team building exercises, was one where we were supposed to lie flat on the floor with eyes closed and make weird noises that were to depict different kinds of laughter. As the room steadily started resembling the venue of the annual World Hyena Conference, I wondered whether all those foul sounding noises was actually aimed at me. A person with 7 years of IT experience , frustrated with his job turns to an MBA from the best in the country to get out of the mess and after spending close to 2 million rupees and a very fertile year of his life, comes back to join the same rut !!! Bravo... Bravo I heard and then the howls grew louder and more sarcastic.

And then I had a second thought, that maybe it isn't directed at me alone ...Here was a batch of 30 odd MBA grads from prestigious colleges hired by an organisation that for certainly had the word Business Consulting in its name but no matter how hard the business owners tried to convince us (or probably themselves) about the consulting aspects of the business, there really was none . This was more a case of selling TT balls in a Rasogolla tin with the label - Made in an Indian Institute of Management !!!

The howls of laughter suddenly sounded like chants of Ulloo Banaya !! Ulloo Banaya !! and those expectations of doing cutting edge management consulting work died at a very premature age. The face of that HR who had recruited me suddenly floated by. He had a sly smile !!

A morning of Salsa camp with an instructor in very tight fitting clothes and a God gifted figure helped relieve the uneasiness a bit but it only confirmed the fact that my dancing abilities are best and probably only appreciated by equally drunk gentlemen. It was sheer decency on the part of my dancing partner that saved me from being physically assaulted by her for repeatedly stomping her feet.

Coming to accommodation, sharing rooms is something I don't mind at all, provided the physiology of the roommate allows for the appreciation of an extra orifice. But my organisation was not very keen on my interests as I found myself holed up with another chap in a very smallish room. So we turned to that one thing that offers solution to so many bachelor problems. Yes, Beer. And the one week of induction passed off peacefully thereafter.

Next destination and place of posting was the City of Joy. I have always wondered which this city alone got this name when Kingfishers Strong is available in every city of this country.

For those under the illusion that Gujarat and Mizoram are dry states, a visit to the nearby asylum for a quick checkup and maybe a week long stay is highly recommended. By the way, if you do manage the visit, then probably you could do me a favour and ask the HR junta (who surely must be permanent residents there) as regards what was the sense in having an induction planned at a location, 1841 kilometers away from the posting location !!!

However, this did give me an opportunity to touch base with some long lost faces from the engineering era, which only cemented the fact that the disorders that those 4 years introduce into your system are unfortunately and fortunately, permanent.

Now if the room in the guest house in Pune was small , the one we got in Calcutta was probably meant to house prisoners for the night who have escaped jail and were being transported to a higher security facility the very next morning. We were also welcomed by a rodent of a size that for a moment made me mistake him for a fellow new joinee. The housekeeper negated that. In this moment of disbelief, one of my colleagues thought it prudent to mention that some of hisbatch mates recruited by one of the two cola giant were received at the airport in a stretch limousine. The irony just seeped in further.

Office started a day later. The person I was asked to report to curiously had to leave for US that very day and to think of it I had barely spoken to him for five minutes over phone ! Its amazing what measures people have to take to avoid my company ! Nonetheless someone else filled in to show me around and introduced me with fellow team members. Of course there was no seat allocated to me but there was promise of one in a couple of days.

The start surely was encouraging !!!!

To be continued ....................

Nearly an article..but

Just over a month since that eventful day when India lifted the Cup and I lifted my degree at my convocation. It has been an arduous five weeks of complete joblessness since then. With a joining date ensuring that everyone in the batch sees a credit of their first post-MBA salary before I even start my first day back in Corporate life, I have given laziness a whole new meaning in these days. Laziness and me have always been very good buddies. We understand each other very well and communicate at the right wavelength and this post, which I started writing when Osama still had twenty days to live stands testimony to this fact.

Okay what can a person in my situation do to make himself useful at home, a place which runs just perfectly fine in my absence ? Fans have been cleaned, a leaking stove repaired, windows sparkled and attempted to learn driving for exactly 2 hours. Now there is this thing about driving cars that I have come to accept. It is just not my cup of tea. Three Mirrors- 2 eyes, Three foot pedals - 2 feet, a machine certainly not as per God's design, crazy fellow drivers breathing down your neck, scratching your bottom and honking incessantly as if he is in a hurry to go and scratch the bottom of another as soon as you make way for him. Its complete chaos and I in all my wisdom have decided to not add to it.

Now a week remains for me to start work and here I stand with a degree from one of the most reputed business schools of India. So what difference has this degree brought in me as a professional?

*******************************************************************************

This is as much as I could write in a month and a half. So instead of sacrificing this unsaid thought and as a tribute to my laziness, I will post this in my blog. Office starts in an hour. A new journey towards possibly newer destinations. Will have to wait and see.