MARKETTING IN DAILY LIFE

Its important to be able to sell our ideas for finding acceptance, whether in business or in daily life. Nothing works in an absolute way ever… everything is compared, assessed and accepted, as I am rediscovering in life.

I was sort of good at doing this, at one point in life. In 4^th year collg, my prof had asked me to “jugaad” a bunch of 15 people for a weekend (the next day) at Indian Bank office in mylapore, Chennai, for some vague officers interaction with IITians for better expectations in personal banking. Now having boring discussion with PSU banking people is the last thing on our junta’s minds. So, with 1 day to go, I had to come up with something our guys wouldn’t really want to refuse.

Now, usually officer’s meetings had good lunches, and by “good” I don’t mean 5-star class but good by undergrad standards. Also they had offered us reimbursement for travel to-fro. Another good thing which worked to my advantage was that it was a day when everyone would be getting together for an official morning group class photoshoot. So here was the email I shot to our group:

Here's your chance

Do you wanna have a grand lunch tomorrow absolutely free ?
And that too free travel to the place where this grand lunch is being organized ?

And there is absolutely no catch.

Indian bank is having its manager's training program tomorrow at a place in mylapore. They want to invite some IITians to answer some of their questions regarding expectations from a bank w.r.t. job and things related to this from final and pre final year students. Dont worry guys, you dont need any kind of preparation for this. Just go there and answer their questions.

There is no restriction on the number of people they want to invite. Travel to the place and back will be reimbursed at the venue, so you can go by call taxi. You ll have top be there by 12, so be ready by 11. And the thing ends at 2.

Anyone interested can contact me.
6 seats taken already.

Vishwa

Ahem… and the rest was history (read as: me in, me too, how many seats remaining? ,I will be coming 10 min late so wait for me… etc). Some 13 people turned up finally. Once there, I was only afraid that if the lunch was not good, I might get ass kicked, but fortunately food was hot and ordinary and everyone was hungry by the time we ate. And there was a 50ml ice cream cup too :)

Karnataka Sarige Night bus

It was a memorable trip I had on a red color Karnataka Sarige night bus from Bangalore to Trichy, on the even of Diwali. I booked bus just 2 weeks before the journey and every luxury bus was fully booked by that time, leaving only one seat on 8pm bus, in the last but one row! I knew beforehand that the journey was definitely going to be memorable. And how.

The bus had two columns of seats: two seats on the left column and three seats on the right column. I was on the last but one row, in the middle seat of the right hand side column. Bus started at 8:30pm. Guy to my right was around same age as me. Guy to my left was some stereotypical rural-uncle-in-city with a big suitcase. The three of us were jammed so tightly in the three-seater that made the uncle start grunting the moment he sat. Plus there was a pole hitting the left shoulder of the uncle so there was a constraint on how much he could shift towards his left.

Anyways, when the bus started, I was on phone for around two hours so didn’t really focus on my seating discomforts. Further small talk with the guy on my right went till around 11 pm, when I started feeling sleepy. So it was time to crash and now started the fun.

11: 10. Right guy adjusts his left shoulder pushing it backward. I move left. Uncle is squeezed between me and the pole and decides to move forward and rest his head on the rod of the seat in front.

11: 15. Bus hitting speed breaker at 80 kmph wakes me up and uncle damages his head on the rod. Uncle moves back with a jerk, his shoulder pushing my left shoulder away. I raise my right shoulder and place it over shoulder of guy on my right. He gets pained and waits for his turn. Uncle gives a big Captain Caveman grunt and all of us try to sleep.

11: 25 Guy on my right decides to counter my position by expanding his leg base. I find my leg space is confined to 20% of the total available. I end up pushing uncle to adjust my position in a half asleep state.

11:40 I wake up and find my legs twisted and my body bent. I decide to be aggressive, push myself back and expand leg base.

11: 45 I gain victory and find that it is still only 11:45. More grunts from Uncle follow. Uncle wraps a towel on the rod to provide some cushioning effect and rests his forehead on it. Speedbreakers follow immediately. Uncle roars!

12:30 I wake up to find myself sleeping comfortably till that point of time. Uncle is missing and no one on bus is standing. I find a dead body of uncle lying on the floor of the bus! There is hardly any space to walk and uncle in his desperation decides to find his resting place. I thank god for uncle’s departure and the 5 hours of peaceful sleep yet to come. I adjust my seating to give me comfortable spacing.

12: 45 There is some disturbance and I open my eyes, hardly awake. I find everyone in my back and left standing. In my dream, I find them wishing the Class Teacher good morning. I tell them that even if the Head Master is to come, I am too sleepy to stand up.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

And I am wide awake. All these people were standing because the current section of road was filled with speed breakers. Infinite of them. For the next 45 minutes, all of us keep watch for speedbreakers. One person takes initiative and all the others join in wishing the Class Teacher good morning. More THUDs follow. Uncle roars from the floor.

01:30 The speed breakers end. I sleep finally. Bus stops at the highway roadside hotel to take a break. People start sweating and leave the bus for some cigarettes and tea.

01:45 Bus finally starts and I finally manage to catch some good sleep till 5 30 in the morning.

The Dream

This post is a tribute to Captain Vijayakanth and his movies showing the war on terror. Well, he is one man who has tried his best to make people aware of the terrorist activities of the Pakistani militants through his varied and theme based movies. However peaceful the times were, his constant motivation to emphasize the importance of war on terror in his movies has puzzled many experts because of the amount of flop movies he churned out eventually. Of course, after the connection to SIMI and Pakistan which everyone sees in all the bomb blasts in various cities of India, even U.S. acknowledges Pakistan as the breeding ground for various organizations openly. We all now understand that our Captain was much ahead of his times, and the govt. got his message too late. No wonder he has decided to join politics. Chk this out:

Anyway, coming to the main story, I wanna tell you about the dream I had last night. Don’t throw stones at me after reading this, but it was just too funny when all this happened. To be frank, when I was having the dream, I was laughing my ass off and when I woke up I couldn’t control my laughter either. Well, during the day time I had seen the news of bomb blasts in all the news channels and in one channel I saw our Captain giving a speech before a huge crowd about his electoral plans. Probably it was the mix of these two that gave rise to my dream. Just get drunk or high and read this to enjoy it even more. The dream:

I am watching Captain’s latest movie which, as it unfolds, shifts from the theater screen to my own living room. Captain is a big shot in the military intelligence and uses unconventional techniques in his daily duties. In his personal office, we see his assistant who works on the computer like how a Linux geek does. I am supposed to understand that this is Captain’s gadget guy, just like James Bond has one. Except for the fact that the gadget guy is supposed to be this dude who comes as a rowdy in many movies and has appeared even in many of Captain’s movies:

Ok, so he has 6 spy crows in his office and he takes attendance of all the crows everyday. The 6 crows are perched on two rods one behind another and they are in formation of 2 rows of three. The crows in fact look rapt in attention during the attendance. The attendance is so funny.

Gadget guy: Rakesh (the crows have names)

Crow 1: CAW!!

Gadget guy: Ramesh

Crow 2: CAW

And so on…

This was the part I was predominantly laughing about the whole time.

Of course, now coming to the plot; the movie moves so fast that the movie has come to its halfway mark where the plot takes a U-turn. The ultimate terrorist that our Captain has been searching for is revealed after the morning attendance of the crows. However, this time only Rakesh, Ramesh and 3 others are there. Captain finds out that his gadget guy is the Pakistani terrorist and he is simultaneously puzzled as to how that is logically possible. But our Gadget guy laughs in the usual villain like manner and tells our Captain that the 6^th crow was not absent during the attendance because it flew to Pakistan and took the bomb across the border to Chennai (apparently Chennai is on the border with Pakistan). And the bomb is none other than a big gas cylinder, which again confuses the Captain. (This was probably because gas cylinders are on a shortage that they couldn’t even find one to set a bomb with, so the bird had to fly to Pakistan). The bomb is in Captain’s house ready to blow up anytime. So what if there is a bomb in his house? Captain is in his office.

And of course, it is now revealed for the sake of logical consistency that our Captain’s office is inside his house (whatever happened to the military area). Captain has a pet monkey at home to detect such bombs. But the monkey is shown to be sleeping as the crow which set the time bomb gave the monkey sleeping pills to rest.

And the dream is over.

Hospital Blues

I somehow feel proud gaining good experience in visiting a variety of doctors and hospitals as compared to the normal populace, but none of them on the grounds of illness. However, this whole situation arose for me in my institute hospital for all the wrong reasons and all the more convincing circumstances.

It was at the end of first year, with the final exams due in a couple of weeks and was looking forward to it since I had done the quizzes quite well. This however, wouldn’t be the case for a long time to come in the rest of my life in IIT. Anyways, I had got rashes all over my body and didn’t feel quite well, though I didn’t develop a fever or anything. So I went to my institute hospital wanting to check it. And what a drama in real life it was.

First, the doctor inspects the rashes on my body, checks my temperature etc. Then he asks a fellow doctor to come and asks her to inspect the rashes and confirms something. And they go on to have a minute of talk between them in a kinda low voice, which psyched me out completely since anyone in my position would have got the feeling that he’s got a rare intestine worm, found only in the deeps of Pacific Ocean. And then they break the news finally: I have got chicken pox/small pox, I don’t remember which one. And they show another guy from a different hostel who has got the same symptoms as me. They inform me about some kind of epidemic that is going to dawn on the whole student body, and that all the students who suffer from this are going to be admitted for week and a half. (Gulp!) This buildup of things was certainly the kind that people see only in X Files. And seeing such drama in real life was a bit too much for me, especially in my innocent fresher year.

They immediately command me to get admitted into the hospital. I walked out to the corridor slowly and then stopped. My legs were giving in… I couldn’t face the truth. And as I stood there in the middle of the corridor I saw three paths winding away from where I stood: One, which led back to the doctor’s room where I could go again and ask him whether he was really sure of what he told me; Second, which was the exit to the hospital which I could take and run back to my hostel and deny all that I had heard; The third and the darkest one which lead to the room where the patients were admitted which I dreaded taking.

I suddenly had the feeling that I was going to die, and I would see all my friends, studies, my precious IIT life snatched away right in front of my very own eyes. Another part of me told that I would be missing my exams and staying back for a year more.

What was going to happen?

Would I die?

Would there be the great epidemic to gulp everyone in a big sea of madness and misery?

Which path of the three was I supposed to take?

Part II

After all the options that I went through, my intelligence of course made me agree to take a bed in the hospital. And so I made some arrangements for my stay here. I had two more people staying in the dormitory that I was put in. One guy in 2^nd year had a fracture in the leg and the other was a final year dude who was ill. I stayed at the hospital for the next 4 days and how.

I was skeptical of getting bored like anything, but fortunately these guys had some good books to read. Lord of the Rings is one book really suited for such an occasion when you take a long break with nothing much to do. And another book which I completed was: Surely You Must be Joking Mr. Feynman. The hospital had a brilliant service for the in-patients. We could order the type of meals we wanted and they would buy it from the campus canteen “Nandini”, which was extremely good at that time. What a brilliant time pass it was. It’s very nice when someone decides to put a full stop on life for you and gives you a 1 week vacation to read the nicest of books and be at peace getting a 24 hour service at your disposal.

Though I was ill, it wasn’t fever or anything. My rashes slowly disappeared and I was just a bit weak. I really started doubting what the doctors had said was true. Then I remembered some great hospital incidents which had happened earlier, and understood that I was just too hasty in judging these stupid doctors.

Once, my friend Aziz drank petrol from a plastic bottle thinking it was Sherbat. Well, he rushed to the hospital just in case some internal combustion happened. And lo… what treatment do they give him? They make him lie on the bed and put an Oxygen Mask on him!!! Another time, another guy goes to the hospital because he had a fever. They checked his blood pressure and sent him back. One of my friends went to hospital because he ran out of cough syrup and he needed one. These people check him for cough & cold and give him 7 sets of medicines including 3 antibiotics, brufen and aspirin. Hospital was such a great risk. But as they say… high risk, high returns. I guess I just took one and got nice returns.

What an idiot I was, to think that even doctors in our campus were equally well qualified to serve us and make great judgments on epidemics and alien landings. Only a freshie would think that way out of sheer ignorance. Even the other 2 guys laughed at me for believing the doctors. They said that there were more facilities added in the hospital than before. There were a lot of testing instruments, new pharmacy etc which were much better than before. I was told that the hospital earlier had only 3 sets of medicines available, and I was asked to guess which ones.

I thought it was paracetamol, aspirin and maybe brufen. But it wasn’t.

Take a guess…

Wanna know?

Ans: Red, Blue and Yellow tablets (ROTFL)

The Big Bet

Environmental Engineering… It is one of the most boring courses that I have ever taken till now. This course was about waste management and related process descriptions. The prof. was doing his utmost to keep up the spirits of the class (he was in fact tolerating our wtf-attitude) and everyone felt themselves to be on an alien planet where nothing seemed to make sense… even if one tried hard to follow whatever he taught, it was futile (especially attending his classes after a heavy power packed mega mess lunch). Of course, there is at least one such course in everyone’s life where life is sad.

Usually people play games on their mobile, send sms to their friends, or do something like that. I usually bunked most of his classes, so resented coming to this one (I merely wanted to check if he took attendance or not). One thing which I can never ever stand, is to be idle and waste time away (not to be confused with doing something useful, but rather to do something to entertain yourself). So Ashish kept a bet with me for TEN bucks (wow!!!). It was plain and simple… interrupt the class and engage yourself on a one to one talk with the prof. for over 5 minutes on the timer without breaking the conversation. Well, it seemed easy at first, but then I really couldn’t come up with anything to talk about. I couldn’t stand up and start talking about movies and heavy metal with him. Neither could I follow what he was teaching or even properly read his writing on the board describing some diagram of what looked like a landfill site.

So this was my strategy: let me first ask doubts about the diagram on the blackboard, then repeatedly beat around the bush on the same topic. And so my hand shot up in the air… timer 0:00 (min: sec).

Me: Sir, can you explain the diagram over there ?

Him: Hmm ?

Me: Sir, that diagram…

Him: This is a landfill site. We have been discussing the various ways of disposing wastes on a mass scale. So what is your doubt?

( Eh? My doubt ? Hmm… that didn’t mean anything… and the whole class was staring at me as if I am showing off my ability to concentrate in class and increase the breadth of my knowledge by asking such irrelevant doubts and waking up all the sleeping dudes. Ok, bad start… but don’t lose your continuity. Timer: 0:15)

Me: Oh… what are the other ways of depositing waste? This should be the most effective way possible.

Him: No… there are other methods which are effective. (Wow, this was a point of contention that he definitely seemed to want to counter and explain… so now I had the upper hand). There are processes like…. blah, blah… and so they can be used as an alternative. So that should clear your doubt. Anyways, let me continue the features of land fill…

(OH Damn!!! wait a sec… I thought this was supposed to continue as a conversation and not anonymously be decided by him as a monologue. Timer was just 1:45. And junta again stared at me like I was trying conspicuously to be a nuisance. And Ashish gave a small smirk which just put peer pressure on me. All right then... it was now or never. I didn’t mind getting my face in the mud as long as the target was the achieved. The ends justify the means. And there wasn’t any topic left to discuss… nothing common between me and this course except for this class and the tests… Oh ya!! The tests…)

Me: Sir, isn’t the next test this coming Monday ?

Him: No… the slot for our subject is on Tuesday at 8 in the morning.

(Of course everyone in the world knew that … In fact I knew the whole schedule for the approaching test by heart. But this was not the time for intelligent conversation… the ends justify the means… come on… way to go…)

Me: Oh… what are the topics covered in the approaching test?

Him: Well… It should be covering whatever I have taught you after the previous test.

(Great answer… Sigh! I desperately wanted him to be a bit elaborate on everything, but he seemed to be answering all my questions to the point on purpose)

Me: So does it include the topics covered in today’s class too?

Him: Well, yes.

Me: And yesterday’s class?

Him: Eh?

(Good thing that I only muttered this dumb question and not many people were able to hear what I said, including the prof… fortunately)

Me: I mean, will you be including the topics in the next class too?

Him: Yes, please read all that is covered until the day of the test.

Me: Sir, btw, if we have to read whatever you have taught just after our previous test, wont that be a break in the continuity? I mean, since the topics covered come in a sequence, wont we have to get back to the topics covered in the previous test?

(Wow… what a logically appealing point!! If I was a prof and someone told me something like that, I would gladly oblige him. Now, I was putting everyone into trouble by forcing all to read whatever was there for the first test, and this even increased the probability of me getting beaten up by my classmates. There was a sudden outbreak of protests and grunts surrounding me. I was just counting on the prof’s generosity of rubbishing my claim and get the situation back to normal)

Him: Well, if it does come to that, then you must have all the principles of environmental energy imbibed in you… blah, blah…

(Hmm…what a relief… But I did expect this sort of dialogue to come from the prof. Nice… I just had to continue this sort of bullshit… the prof didn’t seem to get offended or see anything fishy about my questions.)

Me: Fine. But what sort of questions would you be asking in the test?

(Hmm… this was the last straw. The old man lost all interest in finishing the description of the diagram on the board and turned his attention on me instead. I was intimidated at first, but then he didn’t seem angry. His face expression just said that he wanted to get done with me and my great list of questions. Nice… I was just hoping that this won’t turn out to be a fiasco)

Him: (Breaking into a smile) Well, you should be knowing it from the experience of your first test. There will be some questions testing your analytical skills and some testing your understanding of the processes. Why should you be bothered about what comes in the exam as long as you have understood everything?

(Hmm… a very logical point. But logic is not I wanted… I wanted the magic of irrational persistence. Timer: 4:11… victory was soon to be mine. Even Ashish was impressed because he didn’t imagine that I would make it this far… or rather impressed by how I made it this far. Oh yeah baby… time to finish it off with a punch dialogue)

Me: Oh… ok. But I was just wondering what kind of question would come for the test.

(… If you can call that a punch dialogue)

(But now the whole class started laughing at why I was making a fool out of myself by engaging relentlessly at such a rhetorical conversation. The prof was grinning at my pathetic question while still trying to answer my question)

Him: See… just read for the test. It is going to be a very simple one as long as you have read everything. All the things which… blah. blah…

(And then he went on putting philosophy about how easy any test is when you are prepared with all the knowledge that you have been expected to understand and comprehend. Well, this was more than I could ask for. I wasn’t even paying attention to the prof as much as to the timer. At the end of it, I managed a 6:21. That’s nearly one and a half minutes across the border of victory. All the class junta got pained because of my six minutes of prolonged bugging)

In the end, it was the pride and honor of doing something daring and entertaining that filled my senses completely. Now, don’t copy me and do bullshit like that in class. If you do wanna improvise on my technique, try it on RKK you M*********************** (put as many stars as you like to conceal the wordJ)

TRIP TO VANDALUR ZOO

It was one of the vettiest, meaning one of the laziest & most idle days in the summer holidays after the 12^th std. Two of my cousins were staying with me in my one bedroom house, which was on the top of the two storied independent house that we were staying under rent. The house was so over ventilated and well lit that during the day, the ambient reflection from the red-sand-road that lay in font of my house provided a ultra-mega-power-punch lighting to my house. So glaring it was during summer that, forget facing the sun, it was difficult to even face the reflection from the veranda. And of course, staying on top meant facing the blazing direct heat too.

Well, in such a setting of summer where the roaming/shopping/eating out options all ran in low budgets, since I belonged to the pre college era, this whole experience happened. Since the other two guys had the habit of idling a bit more than me, I had to make a well drafted plan for a good outing that would prove to be overall a rich experience against the heat. So all options of going to places like theme parks etc., ran out quickly since they crossed the budget line. And since I had read somewhere (The Hindu of course) that Vandalur Zoo is Asia’s largest zoo and since it wasn’t that far off from the place I resided, I made the most convincing arguments for going ahead with the trip. So convincing were my own statements that in turn I started to visualize that the zoo even had safari trips to the range of that in Speilberg’s Jurassic Park.

So we started for it with “lots of cash”. Of course this in absolute terms meant that we had 200 bucks in cash for the trip. By today’s traveling and spending standard, I wouldn’t even think of doing such an idiotic thing. Because so great were my statistical measurements of planning for the expenditure for the whole trip, right from the cost of train and bus tickets to the upper limit on the amount that we would spend on food, that my self trained abilities on stingy spending could now get down to the accuracy of 5 - 10 bucks. And ten bucks was what finally mattered.

With the combination of train and a bus, we reached there by around afternoon. The entrance and the connecting “tunnel” to the inside were reminiscent of the thermocol models that were used in the old movies in the sets of a jungle scene. And further walk from the entrance to the ticket area, revealed that there was a conducted tour on a road train for which we had to pay extra and wait for about forty five minutes. Feeling so elite after battling through rounds of entrance exams, we didn’t want to choose the cheaper option of going by walk, especially now that we wanted to “chill off”. And so we waited… Little did we realize then that we had wasted all our money and time on the road trip?

And finally it did arive... the road train which started with all of us inside. A set of people started to follow the train to the places around inside. There was this other group of some farmer and his family which consisted of kids in various shapes and sizes, but all in “summer wear” which started walking. So goddamn slow was the road train that the farmer and co started to overtake us in several places. But of course, I ll not concentrate on them but rather move on with the appreciation of the zoo

Appreciation:

So pointless was the zoo, so tortured and lifeless were the animals all around, so restless were we to move on to the next cage/confinement of animals in the rattling road train because the driver had this intelligent speech planned out to detail out all aspects of the creatures, so common were the look on these animals that I felt that even a cow inside a cage could have been part of the business for them, so exasperated were we because of the heat and so damn far the place was from the rest of the Chennai city civilization and so out of cash were we that I now learnt that in future I must give a “variable cost allowance factor” in my budget propositions.

Now the only thing that mattered was money and time. We had to get home so quickly within as least time as possible. Since we were at least intelligent enough to save a bit for the return journey, we bought off train tickets for the full length... and the miracle happened. Searching the hidden pockets after a long time can certainly prove to your advantage. We somehow managed to get two rupee coins from our pocket, and managed a packet of buttermilk each.

After successfully finishing the return train journey, these two idiots embarked on a further adventure: verifying Bernouli’s theorem. So how did they do that?? There is this fast train which comes on a track and they test whether by standing close enough to the train do they indeed get pushed near to it because of low pressure on the surface of the train. I am quite thankful for the fact that they were alive, leaving the people who saw this terrifying scene, cursing at them.

It was a 2 km back to my home from the station, and we were so damn hungry. And just with ten bucks we could have shared 4 samosas from a really good shop on the way. And ten bucks was what finally mattered. And to increase my woes, just mine and not the others, there was this eunuch on the road which was coming in the opposite direction facing us. I was scared of eunuchs because I already had some bad experience with them on train*. Of all people it gave to punch to my shoulder and went off, leaving the other two screaming with laughter that the whole street was watching me with my embarrassed face looking down and their faces lit up with stupid street punk laughter.

I was planning to write a travel blog to Vandalur Zoo, full of sarcasm making it sound like it s worth going there at least once in your lifetime. But let me not do that, for all such things be reserved for a later point of time when I get really pained in life. Folks, it’s a much better option to go to the children’s park in guindy than go to this god forsaken place which is located beyond all of city civilization.