Mushkil kuch bhi nahin ... kuch bhi nahin

Watched Iqbal again with Mom yesterday, I love Shreyas Talpade, what an amazing actor! The sister is as good, lovely lovely movie. And of course, Naseeruddin Shah needs no praise.

There's this scene where a girl comes up to Iqbal for his autograph and NS has this knowing smile on his face ... his expressions are matchless.

Blisterless

And now coming back to all the blog-neglect. Well, initially was busy 'cause Blister was in the process of moving to cozier quarters. The d-day arrived (a haircut can make so much difference to your looks!) and life isn't as different as I thought it would be, probably because staying at college meant that I didn't get to see her that often anyway.

When she and Mister Blister were leaving, I was busy clinging to my dad and crying my eyes out (since the wedding was quite a sedate one, one thing that no one who stayed till the end will forget about this wedding was .. that everyone was crying except the bride! Phah! She musta been too excited :| ). Pakistani aunt no.2 (very sweet and grandmotherly) made a gesture to my dad, asking bout me, to which my dad said 'Ro rahi hai, ab ladegi kisse?'
'Usmein kya hai beta' replied aunt no.2 with a smile, 'Wahan jakar lad lena' and I burst out laughing. She's so swit!

Surprise, surprise!

Somewhere during that period, the CAT results were declared. I was hardly bothered, entered my hall ticket no. at the A, B, C and L addresses, the first ones to declare the results and got what I expected, nothing. Two days later, while sitting in the library and preparing half-heartedly for XL, I told Sat that I hadn't checked K and I and he was like 'Kar le na' to which I said 'Nah, what's the use'. Well you know where this is going, two more days later, the scorecards were out, I checked my percentile and thought (comparing it to my mock performances) 'Wow. Not bad' and then thought would check I and K in any case. Aaaand whaddyuknow, K!

I is trodden upon

Then started the whole gadpi business (Group Discussion and Personal Interview). To all my teachers in school who were forever complaining to my parents on every Parents' Day, 'Your daughter is very talkative', you should have heard what the mods at Time had to say!
'You hardly opened your mouth'
'You're not talking loud enough'
'You're inaudible'
'You're inactive, I didn't hear any point from you'
'You were out of the group the whole time'. W00t! This was on a day when the gd was so chaotic that it would have been useless to have said a word. I was so mad that day, I was shouting at the top of my voice and it was making me tremble with all the energy I was using up, yet I was still inaudible! Why did God have to give guys such loud voices and deafening shouting power? Eventually though, I moved on to level decent.


Then followed my first pi, needless to say, it didn't go well.
'You're not very confident, not clear, not assertive and you seriously lack enthusiasm'.
'What amma, get some enthu amma, prepare better next time, okay?' (dear old RKP)

Went home to meet NY mama, mami. They started interviewing me while at the dining table WHILE my mom, two more aunts stood there and kids kept walking past.

Mami: 'You're making too many uhs' (She continued to count the number, I think I went up to 9 once. I might as well have been taking part in JAM)
Mama: 'Is that how you answer a question?' 'You think? Say it forcefully!' Blah blah and the third degree went on. I was getting nearly desperate by then and I knew if I continued the way I was, i'd be getting nowhere. I told him I'd come meet him again the next day and he could have me give a proper mock (if there is such a thing :D). I got a score of 1 on 10.

The next day, I forcefed myself some you're the bests and you can doits while thinking over some important answers. Voila, it worked! I made very few uhs that day and mama and mami thought they could be generous enough to give me a 6, other mama who also interviewed said they were being very miserly and gave me a 7. I was finally getting somewhere.

THe next week, I went for my second mock interview, this time by someone I hadn't seen before. To the guy who was being interviewed just before me, this person gave him the same feedback I'd gotten the week before and from the m&m 'Not assertive, not confident, unenthusiastic, monotonic ...' That helped a lot. At the end of that interview I got a 'You answered everything fairly well, but if you're saying you've got a good sense of humour, at least tell me a better joke!' (In my previous mock they'd asked me to act out a declaration of a lau scene because I'd written acting as a hobby. they were pretty convinced :D)

This is the joke he told me:

There once was a man who needed a job and went to a theatrical booking agency. When asked what he could do he said, "I am a good bird imitator." The manager said, "I am sorry but we have so many bird imitators that we can't use you. The man looked dejected, walked over to the open window, jumped out, flapped his arms and flew away.

And then we finally move on to ...

Ahoy Bangalore!

My IIM K interview was in Bangalore (chosen centre). Uncle accompanied Mom and I, I bought some business magazines to stuff my ittle head with and we were on our way, chugging off to B'lore. Met at the station by the most hospitable people ever, will never forget how much they helped us, friends of my aunt. This lady brought along with her, one of her friends who, I told my mom, looked a lot like one of my superseniors (his name was G. Ashok and people used to call him gazzok). We were staying at 'Pai Vijay' and this dinner was at Pavithra.

Right next door was this shop called 'Cool Joint'. (Bangaloreans seem to love the word cool, I saw a 'Cool Zone' somewhere close by). Bought some icecream from there, (suggested by gazzok lookalike) and went back to the hotel. The icecream was an absolute delight. Plans to stuff ourselves there the next day were immediately launched.

Caught an auto and went to the IIM B campus. I used to crib that people in my own city did not know where my college was, this autowala did not know what we meant by IIM ... and so we ended up at IBM. Took more directions, finally landed there. The campus is b-e-a-yootiful.

No manicured lawns or trees, just wild growth, buildings completely made of grey stone, such a nice backdrop for the many coloured flowers! Sigh! It made my mom tell me 'thoda aur padhlena tha' :|

Walk into the gadpi building, and who do I see? Gazzok! He too had gotten a call from K! My jaw must have bbeen trailing on the floor for the next five minutes. Thanks to his being there, I got someone to talk to, was a welcome relief.

Then followed the gadpi, it went just about okay. I had some stuff that i'd planned to say and never got a chance, so was pretty disappointed, It was like a conversation, not like an interview! I have no idea how good or bad I was. All I know is, it could have been much, much worse, so I shall be grateful for that. After I got back, I saw that other people too had had similar experiences with one guy having all his questions only on Chandigarh, just because the interviewer was also from the same place!

Since mom and unc had gone back to the hotel and unc's phone was switched off, I caught an auto and went to the hotel by myself. Even as I did it, I knew it would probably become more significant than the interview itself. And so it was. 'What if you'd gotten lost? Its a new city!' The news must have covered the whole country by now. Everyone I went to meet after th e interview had the same thing to say 'You took an auto alone? In a new city?' What's the big deal? I've been travelling in autos since I was born!

Anyway, we then proceeded to Cool Joint and had 'World Cup Special', 'Traffic Jam special' and so on. Lurvely stuff. Were stuck on brigade road for a while in search of a minimum Airtel recharge.

Finally, back at home. For sometime at least, there shall be no stuffing of brain with businesswordly crap. Yay! Not that it came of any use, but well.


Why

do we have such a pathetic drainage system for toilets on our trains? There has to be a better system than to have a perpetually refilling urine railway network of India!

And what the HELL is this?

http://www.aipac.org/pc2006/

At AIPAC's conference YOU can help stop Iran!

Now is the time to ensure that Iran is referred to the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear weapons program (Now they have a nuclear weapons program too? Just like the WMDs?). In March, while the IAEA is deciding whether to finally act, the pro-Israel community will be mobilizing to demand that Iran be referred immediately in order to keep the world's leading state sponsor of terror (since what? Iraq?) from acquiring the world's deadliest weapons. Do your part to help stop Iran. Join AIPAC as we mobilize in March and enlist the support of our leaders before it's too late.

My blood boils. I wish somebody gonna get hurt real bad.