Simpliflying Insanity

Wharton – The week ;)

I am surprised. I didn’t expect to get settled in this fast! Its been just over a week since I arrived and life has moved pretty damn fast. This post comes directly from within Wharton, just after a lil dinner since today was the official first day of preterm. The Wharton Class of 2008 is 800 junta strong and boy do you get to meet amazing people.

As soon as I landed up at Philly, I had two class mates pick me up drop me at my apt and then help me settle in. The next entire week revolved around shopping for furniture, food, utensils and those parties and err… a little bit of sleep. Shopping is TOUGH. More so because none of the gang here has a car. Wharton is bang in the center of the city and almost all the junta live just around 30 mins walk from the place. Insane parking charges and insurance charges ensure that almost no one has their own vehicle. That left gangs of us to shop, lug stuff around and WALK for miles! Hey, I’ve walked more in Philly in the last one week than I’ve probably walked in a month in Mumbai!

Major thanks and cheers to the amazing classmates without whom, it would have been hellishly tough for me to have settled in here. I got free food, free advice, free furniture assembly and more importantly am getting to know the people I would and can bank on. With respect to people, I am so sure that coming to Wharton was the right thing to do! Ofcourse there are niggling concerns when I think and talk about my companies, but heck – I am sure they shall remain sorted out

The junta at Wharton is err.. too humble I think. Almost never, have I gotten around to seeing someone talk about themselves and their accomplishments. The Indian gang is damn well represented. Looks like there are close to a 100 Indians (Indian passport holders and Intl. passport holders) and its a great support group as well. All it takes is a few calls and a mob assembles at any given place for food or for helping out

People are so willing to share and help out & that is a great hallmark of this place. All you need to do is ask and voila someone, somewhere out there just makes it happen. I’ve learnt more about the finance sector in the last one week than I did in my life and classes haven’t started. I hope the luck continues, because I know I would need all of that and more to get through my math exams and other stuff scheduled to happen soon. Wharton is going to be, what I make and push myself to make out of it. Nothing more and nothing else. It has humongous resources at its disposal and sometimes I really wonder, if I am even capable of leveraging what needs to be done.

First semester is supposed to be hell and beyond and I guess I am going to find it extremely tough to keep it all together. Heck, I’ve never studied all my life and now I have to study along with the best in the world. So its back to academics for me and um.. wait.. may be I should find a way to interview bill g and donald t. (btw, the donald is a wharton alum )

Starting on !

¶ Posted 03 August 2006 † PaGaLGuY § Gibberish ‡ Comments (12) °

I’ve got to visit your website ..

Me: This is my card
PK: It does have your website URL on it, right?
Me: Yes
PK: I’ll make sure I visit it to see what you’ve written up about me!

Ordinary conversation with an extra-ordinary person! But when the person was as extra-ordinary as PK, this simple piece of communciation meant more to me that anything else at that point of time!

PK was none other than Dr. Philip Kotler

Just back from interviewing the living legend, the father of marketing, Dr. Philip Kotler – 1 on 1. I was able to hitch a ride with him all the way from the airport to the taj hotel where he was staying for the night.

Story for grandkids ++

Stay tuned at www.pagalguy.com for the full story and the interview!

¶ Posted 20 July 2006 † PaGaLGuY § Gibberish ‡ Comments (14) °

On my knees

~~Sister – ill~~
Grandfather – in hospital
Grandmother – not well
Other Grandfather – ill
Me – pincushion for blood tests
Work – Hasnt seen me in days
Wharton – No clue what to make of it
Life – Pushing me hard
Me – Spending 16 22 hours a day at the hospital
Rains in Mumbai – my only break
Sleep – Cluttered
Mind – Muddy
Wake up time – 4 AM to wet sponge my grandfather
Sanity – Challenged
Belief – Shortchanged
Ambulance rides – 6
Temper – Brief outages
Sleep time – Determined by nurses
Holding myself together – challenging
Deadlines missed at Wharton – 2
Tickets to Philly – no clue

Everynight, I am on my knees looking upto him and hand him my cross so that I can start carrying it the next day, again.

Updates: Had to cancel a trip to bangalore for the IBA Scholarship selection event because my grandfather had a surgery scheduled. This surgery was then postponed due to him having some blood clots in his legs. I have mucked some major stuff with respect to Wharton since I rarely have been at home for the last 10 days. Hope I can salvage it on reaching there. Havent been NASEOH in almost a month now .. its painful to not be able to go there ..

I have so many loose ends here to tie up here at Mumbai and I hope I can get to half of them before I am forced to leave this place. Where is my angel ?

Update: Surgery postponed from Saturday to Wednesday and then preponed to Tuesday. 15 hours from now is the surgery. On my knees.

Further Update: Surgery postponed again to Friday. He is getting weaker and his kidneys are causing problems.

Surgery Done: Four hour surgery later, he is in the ICU. Doctors are sure he will recover soon. After his condition stabilizes, he will be moved into the general ward. Docs have mentioned that a lot of physiotherapy will be required to get him back to walking.

Out of the ICU: He is now out of danger and has been brought out from the ICU. Tomorrow and day after are going to be crucial because the doctor wants him to try to keep his feet down, but its going to be tough because my grandfather is one tough cookie and refuses to listen to anybody! He is feeling a lot better though and I hope to see him try to walk and then we can get on with the physio sessions.

Angel status: Found
Back home: We brought him home a few days back. He is feeling a lot better, but still can’t try to walk. Physio sessions start in two days and the stitches will go out at the end of the month.

¶ Posted 05 July 2006 † PaGaLGuY § Gibberish ‡ Comments (19) °

Some updates on life and beyond ;)

I am done with my visa and tickets and will be heading to Philly on the ~~13th of July~~ (Dates being changed due to office priorities) . Havent started packing and I guess I wont start atleast until two more weeks. In the last two months .. I’ve done things and been thru things I wouldn’t have ever imagined. The pressure has been intense and rather painful, but its been worthwhile to learn more about myself!

Its heart-breaking for me to leave behind what I have here, but I need to go for a whole different set of reasons. In the last couple of weeks my beliefs have been challenged so much that I lost myself for a few days. Yesterday I had a rather interesting conversation with my youngest sis who has proved to be wise beyond her age. I had no clue that she had grown up this much

We were talking about relationships and their ilk and she said .. “people grow and not always into something better”.. that struck a cord with me. There are things that I have always held close to my heart and I guess I always will. No point in growing up. Thanks dudette. I am glad we share similar genes

That said I am taking a break from work and everything else to head out to conquer a few mountains. Once I am done with em, I will know what I need to do with my cross.

~Adios and wish me luck for my future.

¶ Posted 17 June 2006 † PaGaLGuY § Gibberish ‡ Comments (14) °

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¶ Posted 03 June 2006 † PaGaLGuY § Gibberish ‡ Comments (3) °

Decision time, keep pushing on.

Tis that time of the year again when I get to see hundreds of people getting admitted to b-schools in India and hundreds of them not making it. Some drop the idea of an MBA, while others get ready for another shot at entering their fav school. I have seen the kind of drive it takes for people to make it to some of the IIMs. A hell lot of slogging and preparing and ofcourse luck on the CAT day determines the fate of an individual and his bschooling future. This so reminds me of where I came from .

4 years ago, I had interview calls from IIMA, IIMC, IIML, MDI, SCMHRD, XIMB and a whole bunch of other institutes. I remember being rather elated. Keep in mind this was pre pagalguy.com time and I didn’t have access to even an IIM grad. Since I was a commerce grad, I had basically no network to turn to. No one in my college ever went to an IIM and whenever I spoke to the coaching class dudes I was misled . It was sheer determination that pulled me thru and got me my calls. I slogged like a possessed soul to prepare for the interviews, so much that I still feel I was way over prepared . I had printed, collected and archived approximately 6000 pages worth of material so that I could go through them and prep for my interviews.

My interviews went rather well and I was pretty sure that I would make it to an IIM. The result days were a different story altogether. It was a lost cause. One after the another, I was rejected at all the IIMs. I remained hopeful that I would atleast show up on the IIML 2nd or 3rd list. But that wasn’t meant to be. Interestingly I made it to MDI and a whole bunch of schools below it.

Decision time – I was asked by my parents to consider MDI , but I refused. I refused for a very simple reason. I didn’t like the people I had met that day on the interview panel or the students who had come in for the GD. Looking back, I cant even begin to imagine how arrogant I was in this situation. A 20/21 year old kid not joining a school because he didn’t like the people at the GD. Arrogant or plain marked stupidity, I wouldn’t know. Although I didnt care much about infrastructure or professors, for some god forsaken reason I didn’t want to goto a place where I couldn’t learn as much from the students. Till this day I dont know why I was that way and I remember explaining it to so many people and pretty much every one thought I was nuts.

I think I was being plain arrogant and cared about myself. I cared about the people I interacted, the place I learnt, what I learnt. I stuck to what I thought was right and ended up starting two companies. Its been an accelerated course in business if you may so call it and here I am sitting pretty with a Wharton admit and am probably one of the youngest indians to have made it to Wharton.

What went right?

The fact that I was rejected everywhere? I had money to start my businesses? When my friends graduated from the best schools in India and made more money than I ever did? When I was bleary eyed working 20 hours a day just to sustain a dream without a clue of whether it would work out ? The pain of losing my first client? The hit in your gut when you plan an advt. campaign with the only money you got and you get no response? The challenges of hiring people and sustaining them? The challenges of not whining when almost nothing ever seems to work out? The times I have had to work nonstop for 4 days only to find that it was a lost cause?

See, I brought this all upon myself because I didn’t get admitted to my bschool of choice when I was 20/21. I am sure many of you will make it and more people wont to a school of your choice. But you know what, stick to what you believe in. Its the only thing that will remain with you in the long run. When you wake up every day of your life and realize that you have lived life on your own terms, you will be a lot more happy and satisfied with how life turned out for you. You may be destined for bigger things in life, keep pushing on. The gods have to relent at sometime and give you, your due