One of the great thing about an MBA is that you get to meet a lot of very interesting characters during the course. Most B-Schools claim that they love “diversity”, which can be translated as “We love Characters!”. Incidentally, this is also the slogan of the (American) TV channel “USA”, which explains why going through an MBA program is as mind-numbing as watching soaps on TV, but I digress.

I met Doctor Domnath (name changed to protect anonymity) 1 week into the course. As he was a real doctor (you know, the MBBS-MD kind, as opposed to the fake PhD kind), I had assumed that he’ll be those nose-in-the-book bookworm types who spends most of their time mugging books that are so thick that they can viably be used as attack weapons against terrorists. While this was largely true of Doctor Domnath, he also had a very unconventional trait that was very interesting: He was one of those “Super Networkers”.

What is a “Super-Networker”, you ask?

Simply defined, a super-networker is someone who wants to “network” with everybody. They feel like they have to get to know every single person that they come across. Most of them do this out of sheer curiosity, others in the hope that sometime in the uncertain future their “network” and “friend-of-a-friend” will help them out when they are in need of something. To a true super-networker, however, getting to know people is something that comes naturally, somewhat like snoring. They feel an irresistible urge to get to know anything that moves and many things that don’t, and they do it effortlessly, simply and delightedly.

Doctor Domnath was one of those true super-networkers. Let me explain with an illustration.

Doctor Domnath and I were walking towards our dining hall one evening, speculating about why it is socially unacceptable to send a life-sized carboard cut-out of yourself to a wedding that you don’t want to attend. At the dining hall, we are supposed to sign in, so that they can keep track of who’s eating what, and while we were doing that, I recieved a call on my cell. I answered the phone, and maybe spent 2-3 minutes explaining to the lady on the other end why they shouldn’t give me a credit card now that I was a student and had no income.

While I was chatting on the phone, Doctor Domnath had noticed that a lady was talking to the dining hall waiter in Bengali, which also happened to be his native language. That was enough to trigger the super-networking switch inside the doctor. He immediately swung into action.

He walked up to the two, and introduced himself. What followed in the next 2-3 minutes was sheer magic, the kind of thing that takes your breath away. Doctor Domnath managed to network with both the lady and the waiter simultaneously. He found out that the lady was the wife of a professor who taught on campus, and that the professor’s dad’s gardener had been his grandfather’s driver’s 2^nd cousin. He also established a connection with the waiter – His second wife’s uncle had been Doctor Domnath’s neighbor in his previous life.

Not only was Doctor Domnath’s ability to establish networks across languages, time, space, species and rebirths remarkable, he immediately managed to gain the trust of people as well. The Professor’s wife invited him to dinner the next day, and the waiter agreed to supply fresh fish to a restaurant Doctor Domnath was planning to set up 20 years from now.

I later complimented Doctor Domnath on how cool it is that he manages to remember all the people he meets and how well he maintains his networks. I asked him to teach me some of this skill, and he told me something very insightful. He said

“Teaching someone to network is like teaching a pig to sing. It wastes your time, annoys the pig, and in the end what you get is just a pig that wants to mud-wrestle other pigs.”

I didn’t really understand what that meant, but I guess that’s why I’m not a super-networker.

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I joined ISB last year, graduated and joined my previous employer again, this time as some sort of Manager. The Wife™^©® has joined ISB this year, which means I’m living in ISB as a spouse now.

There. That should more or less explain why I’ve not posted in such a long time. However, it also means that I have lots of stories to tell. <evil smile>

ISB was a very enriching experience. It allowed me to broaden my horizons and study in detail the state of the art of management research, and has enabled me to leverage my strengths and to equip myself with the requisite understanding and knowledge of the tools, processes and frameworks of modern management science that allow for efficient administration of 21st century businesses.

ROTFL. Got you there, didn’t I?

As you can see, I’ve spent most of the year honing my Jargoneese skills. It was great fun being in the company of like-minded people, people who believe that God has given us only one mouth and two ears, so we need to talk twice as much as we listen to compensate.

For the duration of the course, which is a year, the Wife and I had come to an arrangement – She would work hard and earn money, and I would blow it away spend it reasonably on living expenses. I tried to convince her to extend this arrangement to a more permanent basis, but she refused. More on that some other time.

Back to the MBA: It was a very valuable learning lesson, and the 1 year added to my already vast knowledge-base. Some of the top new things I learned at B-school that immediately come to mind are:

1) Jargon Matters:
You know how the ancient roman army had “passwords”? Everyone in an army battalion would know what this secret pass-phrase was, and if you wanted to enter the camp, you had to say the password to prove you were one of them. The MBAs have a similar thing going on. Allow me to demonstrate:

MBA1: “How’re the reports coming along?”
Correct Answer: “We need to pull data from the excel pivot tables and perform conjoint analysis to leverage insights from intermediate business process frameworks and polish it on the powerpoint”.

Wrong Answer: “They’ll be done tomorrow!”

The wrong answer is wrong not just because it doesn’t have any jargon, but also because it shows a firm commitment, something which is a strict No No.

2) Networking matters:
They say that the most important thing you take away from B-School is your wide network of future industry leaders and captains. This is undoubtedly true. B-School is the one place that suffers from the all-leader-no-follower syndrome. Since everybody is a leader, the only things that are following are stray dogs, peacocks and the occasional mosquito. The mosquito might be following only because it wants to suck your blood, but that is besides the point.

The goal of the MBA, as far as I can decipher, is to do spectacularly smart and/or stupid things, so as to etch yourself permanently in the memory of the rest of the batch, so that later when you call them asking for favors, they remember who you are.

3) MBA students can consume unbelievable amounts of alcohol:
No explanation needed.

So there you have it. Over the coming days and weeks, I will reveal all the secrets of the much-hyped MBAs, everything and anything you’ve ever wanted to know. Watch this space!

• 9 Comments

A close friend of ours got married recently, but the wife and I couldn’t attend his wedding. So when we decided to catch up for dinner with them the first time after the wedding, we thought a nice, sweet little wedding gift would be appropriate. The wife was quite excited about buying them a gift, so, off we went to this store “@Home” to buy them a wedding present. We had about an hour before we have to meet them for dinner, plenty of time to shop for a simple gift.

Vases are lame…

But this store is nuts! They have 4 floors of random stuff that you can buy for your house. Most houses are 3, maybe 4 bedrooms at max, and I can’t imagine why you would want a 4-story 10,000 sq-feet shop dedicated to filling up your 1,500 sq-feet house. It doesn’t make any sense. There are rows after rows of vases, and I could have sworn that half of them looked like they were shipped straight from 5th century BC Indus valley – All broken and with worn off paint. But apparently all that is very fashionable these days.

Anyway, so we’re browsing the vast collection of crap in the store, and the wife is having trouble deciding what an appropriate gift should be.

Me: “How about this vase?”
Wife: “Too tacky.”
Me: “How about this steel-rod-thingy?”
Wife: “Too loud!”
Me: “How about this painting then?”
Wife: “Too wannabe”
… and so on …

After about half and hour of this, it was clear that the wife was not making any progress, in any direction. She was getting visibly agitated, and in a moment of weakness, she made a fatal mistake:

Wife: “What do you think we should get them?”

Aahaaa!!! She needs my opinion! Now is my chance to shine and prove my worth as an able gift-getter. All I needed was to come up with an idea that was thoughtful, useful, unique and would be fondly remembered.

Me: “I think we should get them a dustbin.”

History is witness to the many occasions where great, inspired ideas have been scoffed at and have been lost in the mists of time, simply because the elite intellectuals could not bring themselves to admit that an outsider had broken their code and had come up with an original idea that triumphed everything they knew. Here was an ordinary mortal, who, in a moment of divine inspiration, had come up with a deep insight, but the rest of the world was, unfortunately, not ready for his brilliance.

There was a stunned silence. The wife was giving me The Look^©. A few shoppers around us also overheard and gave me some dirty looks.

Me: “What? Its a great idea!”
Wife: “You want to get a newly married couple a dustbin?”
Me: “Yes! It’s a brilliant idea. Think about it. They have a new house, so they can always use more dustbins. No one else would have given them such a useful gift, so they’ll remember it. Plus, it shows that we really thoughtful in selecting a gift for them”
Wife: “You’re crazy. What does a gift like a dustbin say?”
Me: “It says: ‘Look, Life is full of crap. Marriage, even more so. You’ll need a place to dump all your crushed dreams and forgotten ambitions. So, the next time you’re throwing away crap, use this dust bin and think of us and how we’ve helped bring order to your otherwise chaotic life!’. I think its very original!”

…Dustbins are cool!

Even after making such a powerful and convincing argument for my original gift idea, the wife was not convinced. But since she couldn’t think of anything else to buy, and since we were almost out of time, she HAD to give in and we finally bought the dustbin.

I carried the dustbin over to the checkout counter, but the wife was walking 5 steps behind me. I wonder why. Anyway, I paid for it, and took it over to the gift-wrapping counter. “Gift wrap this, please. Use a fancy gift-paper”, I said, and collected my gift-wrapped dustbin from a sales girl who had a puzzled look on her face. She clearly didn’t see this as the defining moment in mankind’s gift-giving history that it was.

As we drove down to the restaurant where we were supposed to meet the newly-weds, I was very confident they would like it. After all, it was such a thoughtful, useful, unique and memorable gift. Who wouldn’t like it?

• 16 Comments

It’s 10:00 AM already, and I’m late for the exam. It feels weird to be back in exam mode. You know how you get that sinking feeling just before walking into the exam because you don’t know anything about the subject? I thought I’d left that feeling behind when I finished my Engineering, but apparently, its a feeling you carry for life. It’s like learning a bicycle – You never forget it.

Today’s exam is Marketing. Marketing is one of those subjects where you never know what the hell is happening in class. We had a text book prescribed to us – The infamous Kotler, for those in the know – but on the first day of class, our prof said that he’d never liked the text book, and he recommended we NOT waste our time reading it.

The Prof saying the recommended text book is of no use. That’s new. I wish all of our Engineering Profs had come to this realization.

Even without a text book to do last-minute mugging from, the familiar exam-hall scene doesn’t disappoint. There are scores of people reading through some printouts and notes, trying desperately to grasp on to the subject – to get hold of something that sounds familiar, but no use. It’s like a drowning man in the middle of the sea, desperately splashing about trying to get hold of something to float on to, but finding nothing. And you all know what happens to the man next – He drowns into the vast ocean, which has euphemistically been called the ocean of knowledge. If you drown into an ocean, even if it is the one of knowledge, isn’t that a bad thing? ‘Cause you’re drowning for god’s sake! How can that be a good thing?

Anyway, we enter the exam hall. The Question Paper is sitting right in front of me. Everyone in the room is tensed, even more so because this is an open book exam. We’re allowed to bring in any textbook/notes/reference material into the exam, but all of us know what that means – The answers are not going to be in any text book. That makes matter worse.

“You may begin” the TA announces, and I gingerly open the exam booklet. ‘Please let me understand the first question. Please let me at least know what the question means’ – I utter my silent prayer to myself.

And then there it is – The first question. Just as I finish reading it, I feel the sudden juxtaposition of fear and humor. That feeling where you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry – to smile or to bang your head against the desk.

“How will you go about selling razor blades in Afghanistan? Discuss.”

The Prof wants us to sell razor blades in a country where beards are all the rage. And that too when a large percentage of the population has not brushed their teeth EVER, let alone heard of toothpaste. How am I supposed to sell razor blades to these bearded tribesmen? The best use they have for razor blades is probably to shave their sheep and goats. And I haven’t heard of goats trying to shave.

This is just awesome. I spend the next 10 minutes staring at the ceiling, because, well, there was nothing better to do.

Since I don’t want to leave the exam paper blank, I go to the extent of recommending selling razors to women – I had to write SOMETHING – to help penetrate the Afghan razor market. After the exam is over we all sit and discuss the paper. No one knows what’s going to come of it, but at the end of the day, it was fun.

I hope I get marks for my handwriting at least. Not because my handwriting is good, but because it is so bad that he won’t understand what’s written and give me the benefit of the doubt. That’s my only chance!

• 15 Comments

The wife and I were discussing the meaning of life the other day, and she was a bit surprised when I said that “The purpose of my life is to buy a BMW 7 series car!“. That she was surprised surprised me, because everyone knows that the ultimate goal of life is to buy luxury cars. I haven’t confirmed it with the Dalai Lama and The Pope yet, but I think they agree. (Just FYI: The Dalai Lama has a Land Rover and The Pope owns a modified Range Rover.)

Anyway, as the discussion progressed, I made a very persuasive and passionate argument explaining my position. I think my argument was very logical and consistent, but the wife disagreed, and her exact words, I believe were: “You’re full of nonsense!!”

So here is where I need your help, faithful readers of my blog. My brilliant argument for buying BMWs is below. Read it, and tell me whether you agree with it or not! Make me proud!

Argument for buying fancy expensive cars:

We can generally agree that I am young and foolish. And young and foolish is the best time to buy expensive cars, because if I become old and wise by the time I buy a BMW, I will know better than to waste money on ostentatious display of automotive excess. If I gain wisdom before I gain a BMW, other priorities of life like owning a house, saving for retirement and children’s educations will take priority over my precious BMW. Therefore, it follows that the main priority of my life should be buying a BMW.

There is an advertisement for an insurance company, I think, that shows a young man wanting to spend money on himself, but doesn’t because he ends up thinking about his wife, his kids etc… You know what happens to that man at the end of the ad? He jumps into a river! I don’t know if he drowns or not, but the important thing is that he doesn’t get his Mercedes.

No one wants to drown in a river. Therefore, one must strive to buy a Mercedes as soon as one can to avoid a tragic end like the man from the advertisement.

So, my dear readers. Are you convinced? Is buying a BMW the sole purpose of life? Let me know in the comments!

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Here in Whitefield, Bangalore, the roads are totally jammed all the time. There is a very small road that leads towards ITPL and much of the IT companies. Especially in the morning, the traffic scene is very bad.

But something weird happened this morning. On the road leading out of the IT area, there are only 2 lanes, and at the signal, the left lane usually turns left, and the folks in the right lane usually turn right. This morning, a cab driver was in the left lane, but was waiting for the traffic signal to take the right turn. Predictably, this piled up the traffic on the left lane causing plenty of honking.

Now this is not a new or novel scene in Bangalore at all, but what happened next was quite interesting. There was an auto driver behind this cab in the wrong lane, and he was getting increasingly frustrated, because he wanted to turn left, and this ass of a cab driver was blocking him. After 10 seconds of frustrating honking, the auto driver got out of his auto and went up to  the cab driver and started yelling at him.

An Auto Driver, yelling at a Cab driver. For being in the wrong lane. Can you imagine?

What is Bangalore coming to? Are we all getting so westernized that we now expect to drive in the correct lane? Are the Auto Drivers, the custodians of Bangalore’s roads, also coming under the corrupting influence of westernization? If the Auto Drivers don’t protect our culture and traditions of driving like drunk maniacs, who will? We must all rally against this moral degradation of our culture and wipe out these modern notions like lane discipline. THIS IS AGAINST OUR CULTURE!!!

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Man, I hate shopping. I feel so uncomfortable in a store that I often compare myself to prisoners of war and start thinking of what strategies they must have used to get over their tortourous environment.

But shopping is an inevitable exercise, even for me, so I have adapted some strategies to overcome the near-death-experience feeling I used to get when I went to shopper’s stop earlier.

The key is to think of shopping as a commando operation to strike deep into enemy territory. Just like how British spies didn’t like to spend more time than was necessary in Nazi Germany, I too want to minimize my exposure to departmental stores. There is a lot of planning involved ahead of time. I will usually create a mental map of the store, mark out all the places in the store that have the stuff I need, and plot a course through the store that hits all the targets and has a clear and fast exit strategy.

On the day of the assault, I come mentally prepared. I will also prep the wife for my shopping trip, warning her ahead of time not to get distracted by enemy installations that are scattered all around the store, which are designed to trap the weak mind. And once you are trapped in shoes-surrounded enemy territory, its the end for you. There is no way out.

The wife, however, deeply objects to my interpretation of shopping. She prefers to think of shopping trips as an excursion to a museum. The store has all this art work on display, and it is our duty to respect the artist and sample all the merchandise that has been presented.

As you’ve all probably guessed by now, these two strategies are deeply incompatible, and whenever the wife and I go shopping, we somehow end up in a situation where I think I’m about to be shot by an enemy sniper disguised as a perfume salesman, and the wife thinks she’s in deep philosophical discussion about human nature with Socrates disguised as the friendly fashion consultant at the store.

Anyway, I had a bit of an epiphany today when I saw a glimpse of what the wife did with her shopping strategy. She bought me a suit today, but the interesting thing is how she paid for it. Through a combination of discounts, a sale, store loyalty program, gift vouchers and credit-card points redemption, she bought the suit which was marked at Rs 7,000 WITHOUT PAYING ANY MONEY!!! That’s right, she effectively got it for free!

And since how much I like stuff depends inversely on how much it costs, I absolutely love my new suit!

• 6 Comments