journey 9 do 11

Journey 9 do 11….. 2009-2011 (Part I – First Year)

It all started back in 2008, when I very proudly graduated with a Science degree from Himachal Pradesh University. I still remember our last exam and the day our results were declared. Yes, shockingly but with good percentage (as per HPUs marking strategy:-p) all of us, from our batch graduated. Sitting on the staircase of Science Block I and Swati were wondering “what next”, just when one of my friend came with a M.Sc. prospectus of some college. I had plans for MBA since my last year of graduation, but nothing seemed to be on papers yet :D .

A month later I went to Chandigarh for MBA coaching. Let’s skip to the next part fast. Having cleared all the entrance exams well enough; I selected Asia Pacific Institute of Management, New Delhi as an institute to be a management graduate from. That’s when this Journey entitled 9 do 11 started.

March, 2009

Orkutting was at its peak those days, creating communities, having discussion forums, adding friends were the addictions at that time. That is when I joined AIM – PGDM 09-11 community created by a few students who had enrolled for the course. I belonged to PGDM – International Business batch and could hardly find anyone from that batch in the community. So, I made a few very good pals like Pulkit Tyagi – the guitarist, Shuchi Vaish – an engineer, Tavleen Virmani – still pursuing her graduation, Prateek Nayal – a mechanical engineer, Avinash Khanduri – mowgli, Gaurav Oberoi – the community owner, Devkant Rath – An IBIAN, Sanjeev (sorry your last name is very long :-p) – an IBIAN, etc. (sorry if someone’s name is not there in the list, you all are still there in my mind :D). These are the people who need a special mention because they are the ones who are still standing with me and are a part of my friend circle.

June 13, 2009
The evening I left Nahan – Himachal Pradesh with an idea of being a successful MBA :-p. My mumma and papa accompanied me to Delhi and on June 14, 2009 I shifted with Shuchi Vaish (my rumie) in B-234, Sarita Vihar. I remember I cried just like that kid of Taare Zameen Par, the only difference between the two of us was that I wasn’t suffering from Dyslexia. I felt I have been left all alone. The next day went very boring and dull as we belonged to the specialization batch, so we had our induction on June 16, 2009.

June 16, 2009

I met all these virtual people and had a very good interaction. The faith we had in each other for months was evident from the smiles on our faces as if we have met a long lost friend. Pulkit and I had been a subject of discussion for all the people who had joined the community, and I guess that’s what made us ‘Best Friends’ for life. He has been a friend I could totally depend on or could blindly trust. Our egos did clash many a times and we have fought in these two years but still whenever we confronted each other we had the best relationship of all.

In evening whole of the “orkut party” used to be in H-Pocket, that is when Shobhna Gautam, Avinash Khanduri and Tavleen Virmani were found running like dogs in the H – Pocket Market. We would have definitely killed each other then.. :-p, but thankfully we are still alive to cherish those moments.

Those early days of induction I used to think that I should change my specialization, because all my friends were in other specializations.

July, 2009

The classes for specialization started, and the first person I talked to in IB was Anuj Batham aka Badam, after I made lot friends in the initial days of our classes and in no time whole IB batch became like a family away from home. We had Father Teressa – Sumit Mamtani, Mumma of whole batch – Prasanna Srivats (bhabhiji for some), our very own Gopal Pathak – Mukul Dua, Himachali Classmate – Sumit Dogra, Admirer of Pink (Pinky) – Deepika Gulati, Etawah ki Gundi  - Neha Mishra, Calligrapher – Gagan Anand, Phuljhadi – Sahisi Tiwari, Photographer – Devkant Rath, Dhiru Bhai Ambani’ s follower – Fahim Sheikh, Bunkuwalas – Aadhar Shukla & Nishtha Singh, Advisor – Megha Bhatnagar, The Punjabi and  Bengali Gang, etc.

The memories of watching hangover, 2012, atithi tum kab jaoge (yuck), Band Baajaa Baaraat, the industrial visits to Sportsline and Parle – G, the trip to Red Fort and Chandani Chowk, all mark the events that made us closer to each other and made the parting so difficult for us.

February, 2010

Video Presentation for Consumer Behavior – Dev and group’s video: wo Fenny ki ek jhalak pe ooooooooooooooooooooo chillana, Mamti and group’s video: BTW ka wo round and unn sabka full talli hoke aana; finally asking me to summarize the video; the song ‘satisfaction’ in our video; making it an awesome party experience and winning the best video recognition J, HP and Group’s video: “kahin ki eit (brick) kahin ka roda, bhanumati ne kunba joda” the bits and pieces from various videos resulted in the best video.

E-Cell Paisa Builder Competition, we sold roses and chocolates in and around college. Cant forget the marketing techniques we used… :P

March, 2010

Our annual college fest – Indradhanush, how could I forget the models of IB walking down the ramp :-p, here I cant miss to mention the ooooooohhhhhlalaaaaa walk of Ms. Neha Mishra – she was really looking (okay leave it) :D, Father Teresaa and Aadhar Shukla finding it hard to teach their partners :-p.  

My anchoring for solo song competition – a forced effort of Pulkit Tyagi and Megha Bhatnagar to embarrass me in public :p. Dev D’s song , the blast on second day of fest.

Holi celebration on my birthday with cake replacing colors is one day that I can never forget. The most horrible pictures were taken on that day.

That’s when we all parted for our summer internship break from April to June, 2010 just to have  a break from each other  :-p

The second year of this journey….To Be Continued…. 

THE LETTER

The God,

Beyond Sky,

Heaven – Infinity.

February 22, 2011.

Subject: Request for throwing some light on my “LIFE”

Dear God,

This is with reference to our last conversation which was approximately half an hour ago. I would like you to devote some time on my life. These days I am not demanding anything from you. I have not asked you to present me with certain things which I feel are very obvious for you to understand :P

I have been a good kid who is not crabby about things happening in her life. I am very happy about the way you are guiding my life, it has been a rosy road till now. Keeping this fact in mind I decided not to bug you regarding those small ‘lil things in life, but for last few months I could see that you are not acting the way you used to. You have started ignoring me these days. I love you like anything but then you are taking me for granted these days (well this is not the right expression since you are the creator and can take me for granted..LOL..but still I felt like mentioning it :D). I am not asking for things because I feel you could understand the unspoken feelings and demands of mine.

It is a humble request that you pay some attention to my life also. I know you have a very busy schedule up there, but then I am also worthy of your love and affection which I know from my past experience with you. I don’t want you to give me materialistic things but I want you to give me courage to fight all the downturns in life.

Love you loads J

Regards,

Shobhna Gautam

(Your kid)

When you feel wasted ……..

When you feel wasted ……

Days seem so long, nights are spent tossing and turning;

You don’t have a single bit of work to do or maybe you don’t feel like doing anything.

You stand firm in a crowded place away from your family and old friends (who know you from the core) feeling so isolated and alone;

Its not just you but whole world seems sluggish and above all you encounter winters filled with smog.

That’s when you feel wasted; you feel you have been fighting through this all alone.

You hear people bitching about others and slapping them is the first thing that comes to your mind but you have to maintain your cool, because that’s what differentiates you from others.

Everyday you open your eyes full of positive enthu hoping that it would be your day; but by night you are forced to believe that your day is far away.

Every minute your heart lets out a sigh that, “I did MBA and that’s it; it never meant anything and it never promises you a job; Mumma I don’t want you to be tensed about me but deep down my heart I feel that its all so wasted; Papa I know you will never tell me that you want to see me walking firmly in that corporate world but I know somehow I am shattering those dreams; Bhai I know you were never convinced with the idea of me not getting IIMs or equivalent but yes its true and I am facing it all now.”

But when I feel like this: All I want is that slight ray of hope that could enrich my heart and ask me to stand up and fight this slothfulness with courage.

Now the first part of the blog tells you that when you feel wasted what you go through; I have jotted down some common reactions when we feel wasted:

1.         Some start eating more and end up gaining weight; for some start skipping their meals and end up getting a size zero.

2.       Some watch ‘n’ number of movies and they could even find a job at some movie rating agency.

3.       Some are 24*7 online at social networking sites; which includes doing following stuff:

a)      Sending friend requests to almost all the people available on the sites

b)      Playing Farmville, Cafeville, Frontierville, Mafia Wars, etc. which could give you some business ideas and jobs like you could be a farmer, a café owner, start your own catering business, the last one is not that good coz by playing mafia wars you could get a job with some D-company but being an MBA that doesn’t suit your profile J

c)      Commenting on pictures of your friends and that could result  in improving your analytical skills  (so this is a thumbs up for all you HR aspirers J )

d)      Some are found working on their vocabulary by updating a new Facebook status almost every other hour

4.       Since most of the people I know right now are feeling wasted because they are not getting good jobs or they are not satisfied with the existing ones, so these people are found working on their knowledge and in this journey they end up grasping all the relevant awa irrelevant knowledge which makes them over qualified for the jobs they apply to.

5.       Some people start partying almost everyday, watching all the new releases in the PVRs and sometimes that includes watching not so good movie twice for the sake of your friends, shopping and reducing your account balance which again gives you the feeling of being wasted because in no time you might step out of the college jobless, but this would definitely help them in networking and as of now that’s something very important.

6.       For the rest like me start blogging and helping oneself to ease this bad feeling.

Therefore being a Mathematics student I have always learnt to get solutions of the problems, here the problem is the feeling of being wasted and we can also see that how this feeling can help us out in getting job or improving our personality :P (There is some good in every bad)

*I started this post with a very negative feeling as I was feeling tired of this monotonous routine of mine but as I started to let out this heavy feeling I added the second part of the post with humor (try) in it. Thus blogging truly helps in making you feel better. 

The Bookmarks

We open a book, we love something stated by someone; we bookmark it, we leave reading the book in the middle and want to open the same page the next time we open that book; we put a bookmark in it. Bookmarks make us relive the moments we loved or we paused at.

We have heard several times that “Life is a book”, and to this I would like to add that “Life is a book with several bookmarks in it”. My life is a book which has quite a large number of bookmarks in it. Those bookmarks are the relationships I have in my life and every bookmark of my life has its own sweet name. They have their distinguished characteristics and serve an immensely important purpose.

Mumma: she marks the time when I wanted a friend badly, the times when I was very sad and she was all that I had. She marks the time when I felt I own this world, the times when I wanted to showoff my achievements to someone, the time when I wanted breeze to blow for me, rain to quench my thirst, sun to soak my gloomy mood. This is one of those bookmarks in this book which always starts a new story. She stayed right there to say that she is waiting for me to say something, when the only thing I said was I don’t want to talk. She is the one who I always want to be by my side whilst my stay on this earth. In other words she is not just a bookmark but she is the creator..oops I mean the writer of this book… J

Papadi: ahhh…the bookmark which opened the pages of my life when I was a child. It takes me to the times when I always said that I want to be like my father, when I needed an expert advice, when I thought of building my own paradise. He marks the times when I wanted someone to take my side, when I wanted to show off to my friends that I have an iron man in my life.

Pai: opening the page of the book or rather pages of the book when I really wanted to fight for something stupid, when I wanted to buy that very expensive sweater, when I wanted something very stylish, when I thought of my career, when I wanted to play games, when I wanted to cry for something really stupid in life, when I wanted to confess something. He bookmarks the most important pages of my life; in fact he is one of my favorite bookmarks I have in my life.

Commoner: Saving the best for the last, this bookmark marks the stages when I needed a mentor, a guide, when I needed a shoulder to cry, when I wanted a punching bag to cool down my anger, when I wanted to sip coffee without any reasons, when I was left alone in life, when I wanted an ear to just hear to what I say, when I wanted to shout. The times when I had to share my deepest secrets, when I wanted to cry for the reason that I am feeling stressed. The best part I remember is the time; when this commoner entered my life and spelled my name correctly, at that very moment this marked one of my favorite pages of this book.

The memories I live, when I open the pages being bookmarked; are the ones none could ever replace. The times these bookmarks appear in the life of this book titled “the unknown traveler” are countless. The life of this traveler would have been a manuscript if it wouldn’t have the bookmarks in it.

How Known is this Unknown Traveler

The day starts with a ray of light, it tells us to open our eyes and welcome a very new day but when this unknown traveler opens her eyes, she talks to a few much known people, searches for some unknown mysteries to struggle with, clicks with some new buddies, calls some old buddies and that’s how this unknown traveler has been spending her life. But what this unknown traveler has been to all these people throughout her life.

For a few this unknown traveler is not so unknown, in fact they are the ones who know what her heart beats for, if her pulse is high than what she wants and if its low then what is it that she is missing.  Those few people in an unknown traveler’s life are her mumma, papa, pai (my big b), a commoner and a few very old buddies. To them this very identity “unknown traveler” has no meaning.

But if I consider other people in my life, it’s very difficult to explain that how known is this unknown traveler to them.

For some I am still a child who wants every other thing from this shop called world, they know if I don’t get what I want then they are the ones who will bear the brunt….LOL….

For some I am a never ending smile, they see me smiling all day long and they feel that I would be the last person they know whom they will see puzzled. But the best part of having these in life is that if at any point of time I feel sad, I prefer calling them because they always make me realize what I mean to them when they call me smile. They make me realize that at times I have also inspired them to smile. Thank you buddies for standing by me when I wanted you and no doubt that is why you are the only ones on my calling list whenever I loose faith in myself.

For some I am the green color they feel when I cross their way. I am an enemy to them; I am the jealousy that swells inside them when they see me. The reasons could be many but I prefer to be unknown to them. That’s what the rule says (rule of my life).

For some I have been a shoulder to cry on, for some I am a problem solver while for some I am the Problem, for some have heard my name, for some I have been a voice while for some I am virtual (this one is for all my net friends; I wish to meet you people soon), for some loose hope when they talk to me; while some see a ray of hope in me, for some I am very straightforward and plucky enough to challenge their instinct.

Everyone has known this unknown traveler to a level they feel is essential. I am leading an unknown life in this known world and a known life in my unknown world. 

the story of an IBIAN

U became a part of PGDM – IB AIM (09-11) batch when

On the very first day, u entered the college and thought why dint u study hard for CAT.

U wore formals because you feared Mr. Gopal Pathak would fine you if he catches you in casuals.

U ran out of the second floor corridors whenever your cell beeped.

U entered the classroom to find one known face and walked out laughing with all 56 of them.

U acted perfect just to make sure that you are not the topic for discussion that day, later you realized it’s amazing to see people smile when they discuss you.

U unknowingly became a part of college politics that spoiled your relation with a few, after a year u realized it was so immature of you to fight on such pity issues.

U came to the fresher party with your roomies, but later in the party you enjoyed with the whole batch.

U attended all the guest lectures whenever it was written “Attendance Compulsory” on the notice board only to realize that even those guests are not interested in giving the lectures.

U attended all the events in your first year

U were so tensed for your first term exams, that you started studying more than a week before just to realize that a night before your exam is the only time you can concentrate the best.

Assignments were meant to be completed before coming to the college and ab to bass yehi puchte hain, pages kitne hain..

To enter the class just a minute before the attendance is a subject matter of feeling proud

Only one source of information was known – “Google”….. source mein bhi neeche www.google.co.in likhte the

But now as the time is passing by we realize that only a few more exams are to be written and a few more events are left. The real grilling would start the day we land up in a job. This is for all my friends, to tell you that only 5 months are left of our college life, make the most of it now.

DISCLAIMER: IBIANS ARE A PART OF AIMIANS (UNITY IN DIVERSTY)

“Rush of Negativity – the art of DECEIVING it”

The old favorite phrase of all the wise men “Go for MBA and you will get a good job” has started to take a back step these days. With all the adverse effects of recession, the people with experience are not getting a good job, then how do I stand a chance (Yes, I am doing MBA for everyone's information). I by default have enrolled for the course titled “INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS” but I don’t know the “I” of it. Being a science student I don’t know why management doesn’t have any subject related to science, Eco doesn’t make me feel glad; to say the least unlike other subjects it doesn’t disappoint me though. To do away with this discomfort I have opted for finance. Yes, it does seem to be my cup of tea with a lil ginger in it (Positive Sign). But people around me come from commerce background, ahh…it straight away states that I am in a big trouble. The best I could do is brush up my fundamentals of finance (Positive Sign).

Thus first issue is resolved, but my mind always finds another reason to feel tensed. I have read somewhere that our mind never rests, it thinks of the worst situations that could happen. Another issue knocks my mind’s doors. “Bache study hard, graduation marks matter a lot when you go for job”, my big b always said so. I did pay heed to his words, but my university never did. Our state university believes in the fact that if more people get good marks, then the number of unemployed people would increase in the state, consequently government would have to create more jobs. – “The simple funda of Demand and Supply, what I have learnt in MBA till date, as the Demand increases, the supply has to be increased, and if not then it disturbs the equilibrium”. As a result, “WE” the students have to suffer and I didn’t get good marks. Thus I may not be able to apply for most of the research companies, in spite of my knowledge. If I consider my MBA then I could proudly say that yes I am performing, that compensates for my graduation marks, which would substantiate my reasons for not getting good marks in graduation. I could easily bargain on my lacking 2% marks (Positive Sign).

Remember Aamir Khan’s “ALL IZ WELLL” phenomenon, our heart is very sweet, it believes whatever we say. Keeping faith in our Bollywood industry, I have started manipulating my heart and mind for the most optimistic results. Since I was a child, I have learnt that one should always aspire for the stars, even if we don’t get them, we won’t return with a handful of mud either.

I hope I get a good job. I know this is the same story everywhere, negativity does make us weak, but we need to know a way to convert our negativity into positive energy and it could be done by CONTEMPLATION.

Well I was thinking to post this sometime later, but then one of my sanguine friends “Commoner” said that will you post it after getting a job. Well that vanished all the cynicism I had.