Author: SK

Robin Uthappa has been selected to the Indian cricket team for the last 4 ODIs. that makes it yet another karnataka lad in the team.

and given that he’s a josephite, i’m wondering how I’m writing about this before

For this one month gap between leaving college and joining my job, I have to contend with a dialup connection at home. numerous pleas to my dad to get a data one connection seem to have fallen on deaf years and it looks like i’ve to make do with this connection. Just come online once every night and maybe once in the morning to check mail and BRacket, and that’s about it.

anyways, 2 things I wanted to write about in the last couple of days but couldn’t because of the lack of immediate access to a comp.

1. the box i tried to open, and almost succeeded, but just managed to fail and get my finger jammed.
2. about how Kathriguppe is becoming a retail haven. don’t think too many others can boast of having a Big Bazaar as their closest retailer!
3. about how an alarmingly high number of people from my school seem to have generally given up in life; and how I can’t seem to even remotely connect to a number of people from my school.

More later.

Woke up this morning with a slightly painful left shoulder. When I thought about it carefully, I figured out I had had a near-death experience yesterday night.

was driving home after a dinner out yesterday night. i was somewhere betweeen the Forum and Christ College when it happened. A branch arbitly broke off from a tree and fell on my head. Thankfully, i was wearing a helmet, so the thing just bounced off, brushed my shoulder and fell down. And I just continued on my way as if nothing had happened.

i’m so lucky i was wearing a helmet. I swear never to drive a 2-wheeler without a helmet again. and yeah, despite this experience, I would any day prefer a 2-wheeler to a car. If not for just the ease of manouevre it’s about the wind hitting you, you feeling involved in the traffic around, or as Robert Pirsig put it, feeling the ground six inches below your feet!

bike, I’ll miss you when I go to bombay next month!

guess this will be my last post from IIMB. I’ve packed up most things in my room (everything except my comp). I’ll soon be moving everything to my car and driving off. moving home for the next one month.

finally it seems to be hitting me that I’m not part of this place any more. feeling really lousy right now. have worked on the packing as slowly as possible. initial plan was to be home for lunch; i’ve overshot by a full seven hours!

slightly embarrassing but yeah, i’m almost in tears right now. last time i felt this senti while graduating out of a school was a full eight years ago, when I finished my tenth standard from Sri Aurobindo Memorial School.

all good things have to come to an end i guess!

I’ve started packing up my stuff to take home. The books and reading materials have been sorted out. the ones i’m taking are in one neat pile.

I’m currently gathering my stationary. Just put in that Hero pen with which I had written my JEE. And the reynolds pen-pencil which I had used for my CAT. 🙂 Then there are sundry Add Gels and Reynolds Racer Gels. Damn MARS for not stocking refills for the pens they sell. Ah, my mom would be really pleased to see a working stapler, adn so many pins. She won’t appreciate the post-its though. She thinks it’s some pseud fancy item I’ve picked up.

found a lot of money on the table. almost 20 bucks! put them in my wallet. then there’s that old blue penstand I’d bought when i was in 5th standard!

a whole lot of CDs. some empty, some with course material, some with music.

premier bookshop coupons. i heard it’s closing down, so better cash them fast.

passport size photographs. the rakhi my cousin had put on me last august. a lot of other sundry stuff.

they’ll all go to my car in a couple of hours and then go home! That day when I walked in and picked “G004” seems like it was just yesterday! how time flies!

i graduated yesterday. a non-descript graduation ceremony, except for the fact that Mukesh Ambani decided to bunk it so a SN Agarwal gave us our diplomas. Parents turned up. And we went for a dosa dinner after that.

Hit the dance floor at L^2 after a 3 hour long phone conversation, which left me with very mixed emotions. feeling fairly lousy actually. as soon as i hit the floor, i put in 2 glasses of whisky with coke and was instantly high. don’t remember being so drunk before. a wills classic milds didn’t help matters.

An hour later, figured out I’m wasting away my last L^2 by getting drunk! Then started the process of trying to become sober. Two cups of tea, two cartons of Frooti and a short chat with Neha all helped. This is the best part of the whole thing. On one hand, you’re totally in control of what you’re doing, and on the other you have enough josh left in you to hit the dance floor wheneve you want without feeling awkward!

Anyways, this is the first time I’ve been through a complete L^2 party. And stayed on the dance floor most of the time. The bandana moved to my right hand, I imagined a guitar in my hands, and didn’t mind making the knee portion of my jeans dirty. Helped stay on the floor!

A mixture of emotions now. Happy I’ve graduated. Sad I’m leaving this place. Excited I’m going to start on a corporate life. Sad I won’t have those carefree student days again. Looking forward to my one month of vacation. I’ll miss a lot of my friends. And yeah, some parts of my phone conversation still rankle.

That little bit of indiscretion. The little bit of getting carried away. And then, that little bit of my foot in my mouth – I could’ve probably wriggled out of the situation, but i chose not to. Yet another relationship in limbo.

I’m all set to graduate. The convocation is scheduled for 6 pm tonight and our gowns will be handed over at 4 o clock. i just collected my “IIM Bangalore Batch of 2006” sweatshirt. however, the thing is yet to sink in. i still somehow can’t believe that I’ll be exiting IIMB so soon, and moving into the corporate world a month from now!

It’s totally different from two years ago when I got my BTech. I had bunked one day of IIMB to make the train journey to Madras. I knew that most of my friends were moving to the US for good, and it was one last chance to meet many of them. I had felt the buzz for almost the whole day. And then there was euphoria.

No such excitement now. Once again, I bunked the rehearsal. Went home in the morning for breakfast and lunch. Have done little else all of today. Parents, however, seem damn excited (it’s their first convo – they got all their degrees mailed home, and decided not to attend my IITM convo). The excitement, however, hasn’t quite percolated to me.

Anyways, I’ll get back to you people later in the evening after I’ve received my diploma. I know I’ve been quite irregular in updating of late, and it can get only worse as time goes by. I’ll be at home for the next one month, so won’t be updating much (dialup sucks). After that I’ll be starting work, and don’t know how much time I’ll have to write. However, the fact that at least one consultant I know blogs regularly gives me some hope!

Given the latest antics of the congress (the attempts to push through the ordinance, the resignation drama, et al), I seem to have lost whatever little respect I had for the party.

Thanks to the press conference I attended yesterday, I seem to have gotten some footage in the papers today. Mostly arbit.

The Hindu has written one huge article on IIMB placements (mostly numbers, straight out of the printed press briefing), and to accompany it, has put my face along with three others! Don’t know what value that picture adds. Probably the public is interested in knowing what the average IIMBian looks like! Or probably there is an aura around all our heads which people are curious to see! Or maybe the photo just adds credence to the story.

Vijaya Karnataka has also apparently done a similar thing (haven’t seen it yet; no link also). Translated the official press briefing into Kannada, embellished it with mine and three other faces, and published it. Interestingly, my parents failed to notice this though they subscribe to this paper! Got wind of this from a friend who lives outside Karnataka and has no access to this paper late in the evening!

The Dhakkan Herald has also written a story on placements. They decided that our faces add no value, but my name sounds local enough to add value! What I’ve been quoted as saying hardly makes sense, and I’m sure I didn’t say anything close to it. God, it’s so easy to get misquoted!

One side-effect of all this is that apparently the phone at home kept ringing this evening. Over the last few days, I had been careful to not give my job too much publicity in family circles. Today everyone saw my photo/name in the papers and decided to enquire. Thankfully, my parents didn’t give out my cellphone number to anyone so I was spared of doing some explanations!

And yeah, I seem to look thinner in profile than in elevation.