Life in Gujju Land......Life at Baroda Part 1

Lot has happened over the last 2 months. I had officially became an Alumnus of TISS. In fact its exactly 1 month i joined in my job and 15 days in Baroda ( i know its called Vadodara, but there is still a charm in saying it Baroda)

As a day job  i manufacture quality bulbs and tube lights at affordable prices ( Actually i don't , but did shahjahan ever built taj mahal on his own?? :P)

I remember watching a telugu movie some time back, where the hero after a lot of drama announces the dawn of a new don by letting out a huge shout " Ab gangu ban gaya gangu bhai " ( to be echoed atleast 2-3 times). Thankfully i dont have to strain my vocal cords . One naturally becomes a Bhai as and when they enter gujarat. so now i am officially called Anvesh Bhai . In fact for most people here Bhai is incorporated as part of their name

Going a few days back to my induction days in CG, we (2 of the 3 who joined in HR function) were seriously hoping to get our posting in Goa but then its announced that i would be working with "Baroda Lighting Works" which is located some 40 Kms outside the city of Baroda. Info on Wiki says that it is one of the safest city in India and people are quite friendly and 15 days here i can corroborate for both the facts except for the discrimination shown towards non vegetarians .

The first condition you find in house hunting is that u can neither cook nor bring non veg home . ( yes, there is KFC in Baroda and by looks it seems to be the most profitable in India :P ). Ofcourse there are good no. of restaurents all over baroda .People here are quite outgoing and one can see all restaurents and shopping malls occpied all the time with families . There is one night market with eataries from which i came back a few minutes back and there are families with kids who are still coming there at 1 AM

Girls are damn good lucking in baroda ( Dare to call Gujarat  a dry state ;) and almost every one here understands Hindi which makes life quite easy to live by ( not for those who had to bear with my kichdi of Hindi and English 

will write more about the city and work as days pass by .........:)

Life in the last 2 years

Lot has happened in the last 2 years ..whether in terms of aspirations , priorities in life ..


When i started my preparation for MBA entrance exams , my objective is pretty clear. I want to land up in a job which pays me a Lakh per month and do some thing which is not technical ( some thing not related to programming, which i never got the hang of) and also for once study in a college of repute that i no longer need to explain the exact location of college for people to identify (@Vignan: i still love to say i studied in Vignan engineering college located near Duvvada railway station :P )

Now when i stand at this juncture almost at the end of my 2 years at TISS , where i achieved every thing i set out to do ,I am blank and clueless to say the least. Most probably this is my last formal education culminating when i am fast crossing 26 years . Ofcourse still there are plans of doing one more masters either in psychology/law/labour studies ...but nothing in immediate future

Placed with "Crompton Greaves" in final placements and hopefully and most probably will get a factory role ( which i had been romanticizing for quite some time) and so soon will come to know how much fun it is ...

One remarkable change i can observe over the last 2 years is the changing priorities with respect to life style and what kind of work i do ...Money has taken a backseat ( ofcourse still there are expectations but it is no longer a decision maker). I am sure of what kind of organizations i enjoy working with ( thanks to all the Fieldworks at TISS) and especially those i never want to work irrespective of what they pay 

Succesfully organized and concluded "Manthan" , been part of traditional senior-junior trek, danced for the first time in "Meghamudra", lived the dream of staying in a hostel ( Room no 17, Hostel 3 , Old campus..u will sure be missed ..), Made some really good friends, found true nature of some ..at the end i had grown ..hopefully more mature and confident than i started with 

Though this look like a farewell speech , there is still a long way to go : One NGO stint to complete, Research Thesis to be submitted and four exams to be cleared before i can proudly call myself an Alumnus of this great institute "TISS" which provided me more than what i achieved in 24 years of my life time

Chronicles of Life at TISS - 8

Some how today i feel like writing some thing in the blog  again and what better topic than happenings at TISS 

Last few days were few of the quite hectic days , we organised the first rounds for various events of Manthan(www.manthan2013.org) which is scheduled to happen from 25th to 27th Jan . Beyond that the heat of placements can be very much felt . 
Dinner conversations shifted quite comfortably to discussions on law and whereever 2-3 students meet , the discussion always surrounds around who has a chance of going to which company and dream companies :)

Tommorow marks an important day for the batch of 2011-13 as the next batch (2013-15) who are eager to oust us from the comfort of TISS campus and take our place :) are writing their written exam . best wishes for them 

Never realised how 2 years just went by .......hardly few days left for us in the campus but deadlines of research and the course on "Leadership" ( Mulla sir already shared a 800 page compendium beating his own record of ACB ;) ) sure gonna leave little time to feel nostalgic 

Now its all about placements for the next few days ...Situation looks quite optmistic and wish best things happen for the batch of 2011-13 :D 

Chronicles of Life At TISS - 7

I am back in Mumbai yesterday once again to complete the last part of the Journey called "fourth sem in TISS". Its kind of sad and exciting feeling for that i would no longer be in the campus after these 6 months but at the same time excited that in another 6 months i would be starting my career on how i wished it to be years back when i started my MBA prep .

 I traveled  to LTT terminus like the way me and Hemanth( My team mate at Infy , classmate at TISS and an eternal enemy :P ) traveled when we came to Mumbai for the first time to face the TISS interview . We knew nothing about the city then except the fact its not much far from LTT to TISS campus in Deonar and we need to ask the cop there on what is the best way to reach campus and the way to sub urban train station ( the famed mumbai locals from that day onwards became part of the Journey in TISS) . Yesterday when i got down things were different . Now i have a fair understanding of the city ,language but one thing remained the same , i still need to ask for directions to  Tilaknagar station :P .

Coming to the campus is a warm feeling , its a feeling of being at home .From the past one and half year TISS had become second home for me . The campus bore a deserted look for hardly there are any one in the campus except for those from outside college who are undergoing some training sessions in TISS. I miss familiar faces but thanks to few of my idiotic classmates (just like me) who were back few days ahead of campus reopening , i had some company
In few days we would be facing our laterals , go for the last fieldwork ( by the way i am equally excited about which sector i would be sent this time and which company , My guess it would be FMCG  , will know in a week) . There are only 4 subjects to be done this time ( would have been only 2 had i credited the optionals i had audited) and completion of research work .
Come May , and like many batches who had done before us and many more going to do later , we become Alumni of the institute which gave us everything and we remain as Batch of 2013 ....Wish the time freezes in the last semester ( though the juniors would curse , as second semester is the HELL semester in TISS :P )

Chronicles of Life at TISS - 6

Its been quite some time that i updated the blog ,Initially it was the work at my internship and later being at home 

Disclaimer:

This post is more of random events put together (just like a journal entry and nothing great, so even if there is remotely any thing else interesting , don't bother to read this post)

I never had looked for reopening of college any time during my school or B.tech days , its been like back to the place where i truly belong , the protective environment of TISS with good old friends (not so good when we meet on a day to day basis  and i should say they are good as some of them do read the blog ;) ) .

There is not much action that happened in the last one week except for the fact that "SHE" (hehe..its nothing but Safety, Health and Environment ) is back to haunt yet another batch of Tissians

16 Brave souls dared to take  "Advanced Compensation and Benefits " shortly and sweetly called ACB ( i know its gonna fill most of my days in 3rd sem) and we already recieved the first shock with 650 pages compendium.This time the deadlines for Mulla sir's assignments are sunday nights which essentially mean there are no weekends for the next 3 months 

This season is the best one to be in Mumbai and rains already started , its time for some good trekking and hopefully we go for the traditional trek which we go at this time of the year 

PPOs and PPIs started flowing and excitement is just begining in the class 

Lastly, my long time dream of staying in the hostel did come true and i am fortunate to stay in one of the oldest hostels in TISS (i know its not cool for some , but not for me) and i stay in Hostel 3 Room no 017 ( the room with the best view in the entire campus, one have to be here to know about this :P)

Might be will get some thing interesting to post in the coming days :D

The Saga of My Singing Career 2

Continued...................




Incidence 3: The young singer in me had grown up amidst many small performance in my colony ( there use to be a power cut every day evening and all the colony kids in my street use to gather at a place and play "Anthakshari" ). Its a different story that they discontinued this game and shifted to others with no scope of singing ( i don't know why they keep changing the rules ). Any how now the grown up singer in me had joined Engineering first year and its time for some ragging .
 This time i had a much smaller crowd of 4 senior girls ( heheh..they dont have a chance to escape). At that point of time they don't know what's gonna hit them , they made the biggest mistake of their lives . THEY ASKED ME TO SING" (:D :D :D)


Singing i did , but they are rather particular about minor mistakes like the lyrics ( the actual song from film "Gharshana" which says hero rose from some thing and i said hero drowned in some thing ..what difference does it make ;) )


so after few unsuccesful attempts to correct me and having laughed their heart content , they left me ( now seriously tell me , how many singers out there had this talent of making their audience laugh )




Incidence 4: Its some time during my training in Infosys and we had personality development classes. The rules of the class are simple : who ever comes late should either sing or dance. if they don't , they can ask any of their friends to do so.( wait: i didn't delebrately come late for the opportunity , u know opportunities come knocking the door to the talented)
The strength of audience this time is some 30 odd and they were all well versed with my singing talennt ( thanks to all the nights we spent in classrooms doing boring coding stuff )
Now this friend of mine came late , and the facilitator asked her to sing . My friend, who did had this uncanny ability of recognising talent better than her, suggested my name . The facilitator had no issues , but the class shouted in unison "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
I did come late the next day , but for some reason i had been excused from the rules ( might be the facilitator had deep respect for singers and hence the exception, i would love to believe so )


I prepared more vigorously this time expanding the range of songs i can sing (covering Telugu,Kannada, Hindi and English) for i am going to join TISS and i would sure get a chance during the ragging sessions  but alas, my seniors are far more intelligent or might be the word travelled far and wide from Arabian sea coast(visakhapatnam) to Indian ocean coast(mumbai)..(are the sea names correct???, it doesn't matter). They didn't ask me to sing :( :(


But as sharukh says "picture abhi baki hei" , who knows ..i will try for auditions for "Indian idol" and become popular






so my saga continues............................................

The Saga of My singing Career 1

This time , i promise . There would definitely be  a second part (as i had already wrote that too :P )


Well it might come as a surprise looking at the title of the post , but yes i did tried my hands (rather my Voice) on many platforms ,but sadly my audience do not have artistic heart ( better word would be audacity) to encourage a great talent (:D) like me 



so below are the few incidences on how an upcoming singer's dreams had been crushed, grinded and what ever ....


Incidence 1 : Its year 1997 (or may be 98 it doesn't matter). I am in either 5th or 6th standard and our school won the inter city cricket championship . So to celebrate the occasion , our entire school students (around 800, quite a good number for my first performance) had been gathered in the ground ( The concept of cheerleaders is not yet thought over by Lalit Modi then, so we rather had celebrations after the match ) . One of the teacher announced that who ever is interested can come on to the stage and sing a song . This call is more than enough for the artist in me and immediately dragged my friend (Amaresh) along with me and been the first people on stage to sing the song which i had been practising for the past 10-15 days (not for the occasion though)
   As and when we started the first few lines (its from the famous kamal hasan movie that time , "Indian" )and song goes like this "Pachani chilakalu todunte , paade koyala vintunte (which literally translates to green parrots be on our side and koyal listening to our song...:) ) , we were stopped and asked to get off the stage 


reason: they changed the rules of the game ( does we had a role to play in that , we don't know) and said we should not be singing cinema songs . so that's the end of my first performance


Incidence 2 : Its again some time in the school and this time i had a fool proof plan so that no one would be stopping me midway . I had given my name for district level singing competition ( quite ambitious considering my reputation as singer at school and at home ) . I dragged my dad to take me to the venue on a sunday ( poor dad..can't say No ) and this time i had a modest audience of around 100 people . I did complete my song this time , but i did observe that by the time i completed the song only 50 remained in the hall ( i love to believe that they had completed their singing and after listening to me , would have thought they don't stand a chance).


Result: hahaha...if u still are looking for some fairy tale ending with me winning , u should definetely give me a call to listen me singing ...On second thoughts, u can send me an SMS with ur interest of being my audience , i can call and sing for u :P


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