Paragana 2005

Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (Deemed University) in its 25th year of celebrated existence and stupendous growth is one of the premier business schools of the nation and now at the threshold of a new chapter. Quarter of a century old, and already a hallmark of quality management education, NMIMS has strived to produce young managers capable of taking on challenges faced by corporations across the world. The incessant interaction with the leading beacons of India Inc and the academia is what makes students of NMIMS the thought leaders of today and tomorrow – which is tangibly reflected in awards like Crisil Young Thought Leader bestowed upon them.

This belief in the significance of student-corporate interaction is the premise of Paragana, the flagship seminar of NMIMS, which year after year, attracts the best brains and management gurus of the Indian industry. ‘Paragana’, Sanskrit for pollination, does exactly that - Pollinate young minds with seeds of knowledge and stimulates an independent and holistic thought process in the minds of the budding managers.

Paragana, in its previous chapters has seen stalwarts like Dr J.J. Irani, Mr. Subir Raha,
Mr. K. Ramachandran, Mr Sajjan Jindal and Mr Suhel Seth orate and share their insights on Indian businesses and management perspectives. Paragana ’05 comes to you with the theme “India Evolving – A Montage of Promises”, and the aim to delve into the evolution of India Inc. and its stakeholders, its present and the opportunities and challenges it faces in the near future.

Paragana is a 2 day event, the 1st day being dedicated to competitions among b-school students from across India, and the final day sees perspective building sessions conducted by the industry leaders, followed by the annual corporate dinner which is conducted with sole aim of providing a networking platform for all participants. The Event will be held on the 29th and 30th of November 2005 at the ITC Grand Maratha Sheraton, Mumbai. We look forward to your participation in the same.
For details contact:
Shanu Singh – 9322121459 Achan Deep Singh - 9867025425

Don't Mess with me

This is why you should not mess with Bloggers...
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In continuation with the IIPM debacle...

Rambling...

Nothing much to write.... Niranjan Hiranandani on campus as part of the ongoing CEO series by Colloquium, the guest lecture cell. Though on most occasionsi am appreciative of the efforts by the cell, in getting good speakers on campus and also the discipline they (try to) maintain before and during the lecture, but today was one of the rare occasions when i did something rather irrational out of anger. Anger was at the fact that colloquium dudes stormed into our class while the spanish lecture was going on, demanding the teacher to leave the class early coz they hadn't filled in enough number of seats in the lecture hall. And that irritated me no extent.
Being the instinctive rebel that i am, i declared that i would not attend the guest lecture, whatever the consequences may be (these dudes promise strict action against people who bunk industry guest lectures, when attendance is compulsory).
Though an hour later, i did repent not attending the lecture, not because i was afraid of being penalised, but for a ling time, i had been looking forward to hearing this guy speak.

Another bad news is that due to very irresponsible behavior of some students, a big financial services company which had come to campus for summer placements, left in a huff leaving the placement coordinators red-faced and now they fear that the entire group of companies under the umbrella of the parent of this fin services company might not come to campus. Not acceptable. I would personally look into it that the people who are responsible for this are severly dealt with and taken out of the placement process through the campus, which is also the most likely thing to happen.

The press release for Paragana '05 is ready and i will be posting it in a while.

53 More hours to go before i board a Boeing which takes me 1000 miles...back to my pind (punjabi for village), Delhi. And hopefully this time, i will convince my parents to let me take my beautiful Honda along, before it rusts to death. I dont know what shape i will find it in, i left it gleaming and graceful in good 3 coats of showroom gray paint. Mummy i will ride slow and will not zig-zag and will not jump the signal and papa i will not give it to anybody else....sachchi muchi!

The Homecoming

4 months and 16 days, since i first landed in the city of dreams.
3 months and 1 day, since i last smelt the Delhi Soil.
3 days, before i do it again.

The late risers are shuttling to the nearest travel agents, checking out all the ticket-booking sites, to get 1 ticket, any ticket, any plane, any train to their hometown. But yours truly, was wise (not really, you'll know in a short while) to get the tickets booked months back, as soon as the schedule for this trim was finalised.

But it turns out that although i have saved a good 4k on the spiceJet ticket, but a couple of days back an AirDeccan ticket was available at the same price i booked my spice ticket months back for, so not such a great ,move after all :-P . Plus, i am going to be the last person out of this hostel, as everybody us going to be out by at least the 28th. The ones who couldnt take it anymore have already left and are leaving in droves.

And thats not all. I think i should be awarded for being the most diligent student, for missing the least number of classes, as i am leaving the last and coming back the earliest. Effectively taking only a 9 day break as against the 2 weeks most of the other guys are taking, at the expense of some classes though. Even a biggie is planned to come on campus for summers on the 7th, a majority are not coming back before the 8th of november.


Meanwhile teams working on Paragana '05, our annual Corporate Seminar, the biggest event at NMIMS have started warming up to working over time and between lectures, and i have chosen to work in the PR-Media team again. And for that the first task is constructing the press release, which, is already on.

But for now, all i can think of is Diwali in Delhi, Fun with friends, and Frolic with Family.

3 more days........3 more days.........

Aur main tha ki sach bolta rah gaya

You must've heard this ghazal, and the lyrics, till today were these. But today i heard a different version, by Jagjit himself. I realised it was different when i was trying to do a karaoke but suddenly realised that either i had completely forgotten the lyrics or Jagjit uncle was making a mistake. But it turned out to be a live version and uncle is known to enthrall audiences with new poems at the good concerts.

The one first is the one that was the older version : -

Aap ko dekh kar dekhta reh gaya

Kya kahoon or kehne ko kya reh gaya

Unki aankhon se kaise chhalakne laga

Mere hoton pe yoon majra rah gaya

Aise bichhde sabhi raat ke mod par

Aakhri hum safar rasta rah gaya

Soch kar aao hue tamanna yahi

janeman jo yanha rah gaya, rah gaya

And this one is the latest version i heard today -

aapko dekh kar dekhta rah gaya

kya kahoon aur kahne ko kya rah gaya

aate aate mera naam sa rah gaya

uske hothon pe kuchh kaampta rah gaya

woh mere saamne hi gaya aur main

raaste ki tarah dekhta rah gaya

I loved this couplet :-

jhooth waale kahin se kahin badh gaye

aur main tha ki sach bolta rah gaya

aandhiyon ke irade to achhe na the

yeh diyaa kaise jalta hua rah gaya

Was the quake not earth-shaking enough?

I was about to write my own comments on this article after i read it in Mumbai mirror a week back, but i dont think i would have written much different or could have written much better than this.

I think somewhere, somehow, the militancy in Kashmir and North-East is justified, and this is also what i told Puneet when we were having a discussion on the same.
We dont treat them as our own and want them to call themselves Indians. What have we given them till today?
The least we can give them is some self respect and an identity, different from the "Indian" tag. The day we make them feel like Indians, there wouldnt be half as much problems for the aforementioned regions of (as yet) undivided India.

I also read in today's TOI that the toll in the South - Asia Quake has reached 79,000. Mind you, the news was a snippet in the 'briefs' column on the front page. Does it not deserve a little more ink?

"
Is the quake not earth-shaking enough?

Saturday, October 15, 2005 City

Mirror reader Arnab Das asks why the October 8 earthquake hasn’t aroused as much sympathy as other disasters

"
I am beginning to understand why people in Jammu and Kashmir feel alienated from the rest of the country. Just compare how people have reacted to the earthquake crisis in Kashmir and the way they responded to the Tsunami, the Orissa cyclone or even the Mumbai flooding. Especially during the Tsunami, corporates, NGOs and even many celebrities rushed to the area with aid and relief.

Over 1,300 people have died in Jammu and Kashmir alone and over 20,000 in Pakistan. Where are the ‘concerned’ people now?

Why isn’t there a hue and cry about the plight of the people in J&K and what we can do for them?

Is it that we have had too many crises and we don’t have the appetite for any more?

Or is that we can’t see beyond our noses and something that is out of our sight is also out of our mind?

The relegation of the earthquake-affected to the periphery of public awareness is, of course, also because this particular disaster has shifted out of the news headlines rather quickly. After July 26, in Mumbai we pursued the issue of disaster management for weeks together. But this is not the case with the Kashmir coverage. Even Katrina, the hurricane in New Orleans, was covered in the Indian media in such a way that your heart went out to the suffering of victims and you felt angry about the government apathy. But, somehow, I have not seen or heard anything that moves me as far as the ‘Asian earthquake’ is concerned.Are these thousands of victims of the temblor going to find a place in our consciousness and our conscience?"

"

IIPM?

This time its not about me, about NM or life here.
I came accross a link in Manpreet's Page which took me to Gaurav Sabnis's website and i, for the first time, came across the crap that has been happenning with the IIPM expose. I think it was long overdue. And i am in awe of Gaurav for having done what he has.
Quit a cool job at an even cooler company, all for principles. Not many do that these days....standing by their belief.

What Gaurav and Rashmi have done is brave and the whole blogosphere seems to have erupted in their support. Although both are facing the heat right now, but like Gaurav said, Truth never hurts those who are right.

Thank you for giving that self styled management guru what he deserved.

But like Manpreet, I too am of the opinion that Gaurav shouldn't have quit. It would have been quite a sight watching IIPM students burning IBM laptops. I wonder if one soul would hurt its own machine for the cause (?) of IIPM.

What Gaurav has to say about Parnab Mukherjee is funny, and i quite agree with his opinion about the bandar, having witnessed him in the act (of being a queez-master).

Woh 10 din

The exams are over. So is the 1st trim. I am 1/6th of an MBA now (given that i pass all the papers). I think the last 10 days (9 exams and a sunday in between) have been the best and laziest days in the past 3 months. I havent slept more, played more NFS Underground, Hitman2, seen more movies on my laptop than in these few days when my contemporaries were burning the midnight oil. (just a finger of speech, we have uninterrupted electricity at the hostel :-)) ) Not that i was too confident, just that dint feel like. I did study for Quant methods, finance and economics though. Marketing and IB papers were as expected, full of cases. And no amount of last minute study can help u with case studies if ya havent studied during the sem and attended lectures. At the risk of sounding immodest, i did well to listen carefully in the class.

Exams ended saturday 1st. Saturday night was the biggest party GR Jani hostel has seen. And we were allowed on the rooftop for the first time. And what fun we had. There was alot to consume, about which i cant post over here, but..... u get the drift.

Then early next morning we left for Lonavala. And i found the 2nd good reason for living in mumbai, the serene hills are just 2 hours away. From Delhi, one has to drive at least 8 hours to get respite from the heat, whether u goto the hills of Uttaranchal or the Himachal Mountains.

Some really breathtaking sights and an amazing drive up the hills. The roads are in a decent condition. I was missing my camera and thought would have to live with the 6600 - sub 1 megapixel cam just when i saw an Nikon SLR with Chetan. And my eyes lit up. An extra roll of Kodak 400 and i went on shooting spree. I thoroughly enjoyed the SLR experience, but think i would rather get myself a 4-5 megapixel digicam than get a second hand SLR when i am not a good technical photographer, plus not in a very good position to bear the prohibitive costs of film and film development, filters for the cam etc.

After lonavla, we went to powaii and the Hiranandani gardens. I thought the DLF thingy in Gurgaon was big. Wait till u see the hiranandani sub city. It is really done well and architecture is everybit european. We went Go - karting there.

Monday morning, i met a pakistani for the first time. And who else but Dr. Syed Zahoor Hassan, Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (L.U.M.S.)
He was here for the leadership convention on wednesday and the NMIMS' Panel discussion today, and i was entrusted with the task of receiving him at the airport. The short interaction from the airport to his hotel was nice and enlightening.

Monday is also when we had our first class of the 2nd trim, that was on 'Values and Ethics in Business'. I dont know good or bad, but now they're takin it too far. WE have entire papers on such gassy subjects. I mean we can have one subject covering other facets, but CSR last trim and now this.
Anyway the teacher is definitely more interesting than the subject, Mr. Nadirshaw K Dhondy is a Supreme Court lawyer with 35 years of law practice and a little less of teaching.
Next day was Business Law with Prof Antara Ingole. Mixed reaction in the class over the new teacher, but anyway the subject is less gas than i expected. Anticipating some debates and lawful discussions.

Wednesday was when we went for the convention at the Nehru Centre in worli. The convention was organised by the Dr. P.N. Singh Foundation and ITM mumbai. In between we sneaked out to visit the Haji Ali dargah. I guess this was the first time i went to a mohammedan shrine. It was a nice experience, just wish that the approach to the shrine was cleaner than what it is. Otherwise the sight is quite amazing. from the coast line to the shrine and from the dargah looking towards the towering buildings of Worli.

Today was another day with the Panel Discussion at BJ hall on 'Need for netwrking in business'. The speakers were familiar from the previous day.

AND i had the first Spanish session and thouroughly enjoyed it. The different pronunciation, different words and the culture. Always enchanting. And once i am slightly fluent with it, i will watch Penelope's Spanish Movies too !!!!!