The Consult'thing

After having spent more than 35% of the year interning, Pareto(Mr. 80/20) would be cross with me, if i do not write enough about it. With due credit to a friend of mine who once said : 'Unless you have the courage to make fun of your profession, you would never enjoy it.'

For laymen: The job of consultants in plain English is to compare Apples with Oranges. No wonder they travel back and forth from Shimla to Nagpur. Fondly call them Client Locations. There is less to Consult'thing than borrowing from other industries and countries to facilitate firms to climb the right ladders in a game of you know what.

Again for laymen who question their very existence: A consultant, they say is one who takes away sheep from a shepherd for counting his sheep. The question remains why the shepherd needs a consultant? Can't he count his own sheep? He cannot. A shepherd falls asleep as soon as he starts counting his sheep. Consultants do not. In fact they wake up at 4 in the morning and start out on an expedition to count people's sheep.

There is also a popular view that consultants speak in the air. They sure do. A quarter of their life is spent at 25000 metres above mean sea level. They are the ones who actually use all that useless stuff you report spam from yatra(dot)com and other travel sites. A consultant without a frequent flyer number is like an oil company without a forward. For some of my less geekier friends, both these situations are equivalent to a computer without auto-sleep. Very uneconomical.

Consultants love to sell old wine in new bottle. The older the better. They know the best cures to any problem come from grandmothers book of recipes. Old wine found. Now for a new bottle, just create a D.A.D.I framework. Deploy. Analyse. Develop. Integrate. There you go. A framework that could pull wool over ears of even the most native speakers of hindi.

A consultant without laptop is like fish without water. The laptop search history itself is worth a million pounds. The hard disk is filled with pptx. The mail box is filled with travel details. The trash box is filled with mails from IT department. laptop hang is next only to heart fail.

While making statements, I now ensure that they are equally applicable to shirt button manufacturers, dog kennel painters, rain-water harvesters and precision rocket makers alike (Read Globe). To a great extent, thats how we ensure we are always on the right track. And that is how we handle so many things back to back.

Internship was great. The classic case of - Firm recruits Intern. In Turn it expects power-points. The principal-agent problem. But somehow at the end of it all, I do have a positive answer to learnings from internship. Project mentor ensured work was interesting. Co-interns ensured boredom was at bay. A metallic box of chocolates made up for any glitches. Work place had its fair share of diversity. And I could happily cross off Delhi on the places-yet-to-visit list.

Delhi - The tale of A Fine city

Delhi is a fine city. You get fined Rs.200 for spitting. However it doesn’t concern me. Seems I can afford it. The concern would be if everyone is able to afford it. The rising personal disposable income.

Adds a friend Visky: There is a fine of Rs. 200/- for smoking in Palika Bazaar and you know you can bargain everything here for 1/10th the price.

Delhi fines you Rs. 500/- for walking on the metro track. That is if you are caught alive. (Otherwise your legal heir receives a sum of Rs. 50,000/-) Considering a metro rail speeds at 100 kmph with a 2 minute frequency, I would be reporting Guinness for beating a bat at what it does best. Fines are no way to treat an aspiring Batman. Totally explains the sorry state of Indian Super-heroes who i believe have to pay hefty entertainment taxes too. To some extent also explains the sorry state of Indian Athletics.

Travelling over the roof attracts a fine of Rs. 50/-. Understood what LCC (Low cost countries) meant in the economics class. All, a bollywood director has to do is buy a smart card worth Rs.50/- each for the cast. Under 5000/- you have a pretty decent action shot/dance sequence as the (nonde)script demands. Totally explains why so many movies now-a-days have Delhi in their name. They all shifted base from the costlier Bombay.

Unauthorised graffiti (Assuming politician’s vote-me campaigns are authorised graffiti) will lead to imprisonment of 6 months. What is easier to get out of this mess. Unauthorised graffiti in a prison cell of course, where you can get away with a fine of Rs. 1000/-(Read Bail)

Gurgaon (Pronounced Grr..gaon) - Another fine city. Named after the Fine layer of dust that settles on your skin after a minute's walk. Buildings are tall and slender in the ratio of a 15 cm scale. In spite of the busy schedules people respect each other a lot here. But not so much to replace the tip of tongue Indian slang 'Teri...' with 'Aap ki...' followed by referrals to female blood relations.

People said public transport was worse than Tusshar kapoor movies prior to shor in the city. But it is so easy to get a lift here. People in Audi, Skoda and Mercedes stop and invite you in. The catch however is that they need a local person to guide them along in the annoyingly confusing roads. Don't worry if you are not a haryanvi. Who doubts as long as you speak Hindi with a sense of temper.

Wake up One fine morning to catch the early bird and the lazy worm. Delhi is so fine before the sunshine - that is before you get an overdose of Vitamin D. The remaining vitamins you easily gather over a voracious meal in Old Delhi. Delhi makes a fine dine. (Btw Gurgaon doesn't)

Fine. I stop the whine. I have no complaints. I am only :) at all the places I visited in my first ever visit to the national capital. Delhi keeps me well engrossed in the 9 week stay otherwise dominated by .xlsx and .pptx. Three more weeks before I can tag an album The Fine Nine.

The 9 month Nemesis

At wimwi, you live in analogies. If you look at the 9 months you spent as PGP1 and the 9 odd months in gestation, you beat thousands of competitors to be where you are, yet you feel out of place in the womb. Slowly, you settle, the size of the Globe bulges and the pain increases. And then at the end of 9 months, there is something called 'LIFE'. The PGP1 Survivor.

Strange it is how a place changes you faster than the speed at which you adopt it. And hence you are left asking yourself Why after you have done it. This place has Forever:

• Changed the way I express my appreciation
• Changed the way I consume and prepare Juices
• Changed the speed with which I turn the pages
• Changed the speed with which I walk on grass and concrete
• Changed the way I express my words(Read: Bullet Points)

When I look back I see, some of my most cherished moments have a time stamp of xx:59:59 and some of the most humorous moments had a GPS Location: classroom. Attendance norms ensured it was almost always filled, and like one professor says, it is saturated with knowledge, because only the most talented students enter and when they leave they know nothing. True story.

Time flew really fast. Time flew a full cycle. At about this time last year, done with the interviews, I was busy reading random blogs by seniors about life at iim-x(x is a variable and not a city in the series of newly installed iim's), anxiously waiting for updates on Pagalguy, enjoying x versus y fights, taking advice from biased and unbiased mentors....

And it's almost time to welcome a new batch of Fachhas. On any day, you will be handling no less than a few millions of dollars of company's assets. On some days, you would go speechless, for you would have exhausted all your words in an over-night assignment. On some sundays, all you do is refresh your facebook page. On yet another, you are busy surveying people for a project.

On one No moon day, you might be hell-busy mixing colors to win a Rangoli competition. On yet another, in Prof's words, busy torturing data trying to get it confess something. On some 14th, you might stand embarrassed, with dear friends deciding to play a prank on your crush. On yet another, you might be giving a quiz, unannounced, unconvinced, unsure and unable.

PGP-1 changes your name forever and literally teaches you how to EXCEL. PGP-1 changes the time you sleep, the food you eat and the bare minimums you need. PGP-1 helps you understand your potential. Helps you calculate your modulus of elasticity.(Engineers Read: makes you realize how much you can stretch and yet return back to original state.) PGP1 ensures that every word written on this blog makes sense as you read it.

. . . . . . . . . When I look at my womb for 9 months, I see that the chairs were right there throughout. Every year a few feet sit together. At the end of the year they part ways. Very rarely are twins born. Very rarely are triplets born. Very rarely is life going to be as safe as the womb and as cosy as the room. Very rarely is the same experience relived.

The closest way any to relive them will be to read, like and comment on the incoming fachha's status updates and custom messages as they travel along these 9 wonderful months of Life. :|

Eyes Into Eyes. !!!

Eyes Into Eyes

Yet to Break the Ice. !!!

Eyes Into Eyes

A Hidden Glance. A Guise. !!!

Eyes Into Eyes

Anxious. Rolling like a Dice. !!!

Eyes Into Eyes

Caught on. Paid the Price. !!!

Eyes Into Eyes

Once Bitten. Shy Twice. !!!

Eyes Into Eyes

Yet they yearn & Rise. !!!

Eyes Into Eyes

Unsure & Shy. They Realize. !!!

Eyes Into Eyes

Broke the Ice. !!!

Number Nostalgic

There are a few alphabets in everybody's name. There are also a few numbers in everybody's life. Numbers that bind you with memories. Your first room number. Your Dorm number. Your roll number. Your board examination total. Your B'date. Someone special's B'date.

At Wimwi, you are supposed to come prepared to class with Number-Work. NPV, EOQ, Working Capital, Payoff of a Call Option, Demand Forecast, Market Share, P/E - Everything is a number. Everyday you run into numbers - sometimes 3 places past decimal point. They stay in mind till the class ends or your attention ends - whichever is earlier.

There exists a different class of numbers stamped somewhere amongst neurons.

Over a game of bowling, I witnessed a number. 211. 4 Roommates on first day of the college. Each had a different story before we met. And then our stories overlapped. It remained the only room to have all 4 mechanical engineers. Now we live in all 4 directions of the country - Ahmedabad, Delhi, Jamshedpur & Bangalore.

A few months earlier 178 turned out to be net bill of a Big Bazaar Outlet. For very long in my life it was Just another even number. Came July 2005 and it was my identity. Must have written it some 1000 times in 4 years on exam papers, library book issues, event registrations, fee receipts, doodling randomly, etcetera.

19 was just another prime number. It already isn't. A few years down the line, It could turn up in strange ways. The price of a kilogram of tomatoes. An article of constitution. Points scored in one turn of Scrabble. Minimum temperature on a pleasant day. First Innings lead of team India. Group Size of your Workplace. It could touch you anywhere.

Then there are numbers you are sub-consciously conditioned. 3.14, 22/7 can mean only one thing. 273 will mostly remind you zero kelvin. 9 will be the number of planets. 101 will always be Dalmatians. 200 will be Sachin Tendulkar. 12 will be the signs of Zodiac. Inspite of Ophiuchus.

I do not believe in numerology. I don't care what it predicts. It is so open-ended, I could fit in anything that happens to me in it. Truth is you feel about some numbers consciously or sub-consciously. You Catch up on some old friends and memories and your day naturally turns out to be good (or bad).