27/07/2014

27/07/2014; 23:23:

Great. My today’s post managed to get lost in transition from a word document to my blog mainly thanks to the errant internet. The internet’s been acting a little moody, these last 2-3 days. We’d visited the IT Department and it’s a lot better. Action here is pretty prompt, on most such matters. This afternoon, we let the authorities know about our fan – it had only two speeds- zero and everything’s blowing away- and, our fan was promptly fitted with a new regulator by 6 p.m.

‘Kick’ was screened on campus, yesterday. I hear that it had no storyline but was almost entertaining. The ‘no-brainer’ / ‘leave your brain at home’ concept is being followed a tad bit too literally by our Bollywood. Apparently, the Telugu version, of which ‘Kick’ is a re-make, was a lot better. Of course, I wouldn’t know, for I haven’t managed to learn any Telugu yet.

The Introduction to Engineering classes are rather interesting. Sir alternates between theory lectures and activities. Our first two sessions were spent making a bridge out of popsicle sticks and glue. The next theory lecture was spent understanding the working of two & four-stroke engines. The very next class saw us building steam-powered boats to put theory into application. We built dainty vessels out of a tetra pack, a soda can, a candle and straws.

The form inviting nominations for SAC-Coordinator and Treasurer were sent to our batch yesterday. There was a follow-up e-mail in the evening, asking for more nominations for there didn’t seem to be quite enough responses. The selection procedure has been altered from being a democratic election were the person with the highest votes wins to being a three-step process. There is to be a pre-process, an interview and elections. This evening, a mail asking for the pre-process submission was sent to all the aspirants. They were asked to send in a Résumé and a Statement of Purpose, the deadline for which is in about half an hour.

My room-mate unfortunately managed to discover my post about her. It was purely accidental. Kavya was on my laptop, approving my Résumé and my blog was open in the background. I was on the phone; my post was spotted and my room-mate promptly informed. Fortunately, she’s taking it quite well and I even heard her boasting about the post, over the phone. Phew! Trouble averted.

There’s a play happening on the 15th of August. My room-mate is to be the narrator in said play and is now missing from the room, for practice, every night at the perfect hour from 11 to 1. In nicer news, we discovered a ‘South Indian Supermarket’ in Indore, yesterday- it had all types of exotic-looking spices, vegetables and duck eggs for sale. I picked up Jack-fruit and Tapioca chips, both of which I rather enjoy. Today evening thus had a large supply of snacks.

And, there are 40 days to go, until the first-ever edition of Atharv- our very own IPM fest, in September. Our Instagram & Twitter accounts were inaugurated today and we’re hoping to acquire a large follower-base soon!

24/07/2014

23/07/2014; 19:16:

There were two mid-terms today, one on International Relations and one for Drama. We’d been grouped in pairs and had to create a short play that revolved around a piece of paper. The piece of paper could be used to roll up & eat bhel-puri out of, as a photograph, as a piece of evidence, the works!

24/07/2014; 16:26:

There was just a meeting with the Hostel & Student’s Affairs Office, regarding the progress of our fest work. It was such a different atmosphere from the last time we were there. Last time, we were all clueless and enthusiastic. This time, we were happy to see that good progress has been made, while enthusiasm is now coupled with pragmatism.

The Hostel & Student Affairs Office is sure having a busy day. They were here, to ‘check’ our rooms, mainly for substance and prohibited items in the morning. They also looked over the rooms that are to be allotted to the new batch girls. Then, the fest meeting that took a good 2 hours. And, now, they’re planning to shift some IPM boys from one block to another, to make space for the new batch!

20:34:

The last patch of undone road, near Gate 3 has been spotted and work is in progress, even in the rain! It should be ready in a week or so. Our very own 26 Hills which had ceremoniously moved inside campus has now shut down. They’d decided to move onto campus when the PGP batches were out, which obviously let to a large decline in their footfall. I hear they’ve moved back to their original location, near Mashal. Which is not too far from campus either, so , it’s a win-win for everyone!

The skies finally held up, after almost 48 hours of non-stop rain. It’s gotten nice & chilly; I even see people with hoodies. I absolutely love the weather; standing atop the IIM-Indore hill (Prabandh Shikhar), looking out across green fields. You see mountains afar, capped with mysterious, voluminous bundles of clouds and a sky that is banded in dull silver, an almost purple, blue and black. The late-evening sky is a dreamy amalgamation of the darkest blue and the lightest purple; the sky is deep blue, like an endless abyss leading to the bottom of a still, swift-flowing river.

22/07/2014

22/07/2014; 15:30:

It was my room-mate’s birthday, yesterday. I felt like James Bond, sneaking a cake into the room & hiding her gifts, all without her managing to even get a whiff of my plan. Now, since it is her birthday, like a good room-mate, I ought to make her day special. Of course, I fully intend to.
Everyone has quirky room-mate stories, some even borderline disgusting. This isn’t the latter; it might not even qualify as a story, but, well.

10 reasons why my Room-Mate is, well, for sake of politeness, different:

1. All the students on campus have laptops, for a lot of our studying happens through online source and power point presentations. My room-mate has a Desktop; she claims that it is mainly for the 23 inches that it has to offer.
2. Most of the girls have pillows (I couldn’t say the same about the boys!) that are rectangular, you know, regular-sized. She has two tiny cotton-stuffed squares that she tries to pass off as pillows.
3. There is a large bag of GoDiva exotic chocolates on our coffee table that I was thrilled to spot. I eagerly opened it and extracted the contents only to find several green-tea bags. Such deceit!
4. Most persons use their bed-side tables to stash alarm clocks, tablets, chocolates and buttons. Ours has been deemed to be a shoe-rack, ever since my room-mate spotted it.
5. Adding insult to injury is a tin of delicious-looking butter cookies that houses Jalani Jal Jeera sachets.
6. The Executive Residence beds are all box-beds, to allow extra storage space. Most people have dumped rarely-if-ever accessed items here. My room-mate keeps her notebooks in here, notebooks that are used every day.
7. Most non-engineering students cart their dysfunctional mobile phones to a service centre, my room-mate calmly opened up hers and diagnosed the problem herself. I am actually in awe at her deftness with a screw-driver in specific and all tools in general.
Currently, one Wi-Fi router has been set-up and delivered and another lies on our spare chair, awaiting her attention.
8. Okay, so much for 10.
9. She’s fun!
10. Happy Birthday, Room-mate!

20/07/2014

20/07/2014; 09:32:

We were supposed to have an 8:45 International Relations class. It's one of the few times when Section B had the morning class instead of Section A. And, of course, the class has now been postponed to 10:15.

One of my batch-mates has decided to get a 'temporary permanent tattoo '(the 3-month kinds) for her 21st birthday. And, we did even find a tattoo parlour in Indore. Life's good.

Our fest promotional activity has been nicely constructed – details have been charted & permissions have been arranged. We’re planning to hold two events at Treasure Island Mall in Indore, where, Games shall be organized, we shall perform a gig and we will set up a registration desk. Successful participants shall be given vouchers and tickets to our pro-nite which shall be on the 6th of September. We’ve scheduled the Clean-up Drive and the Tree Plantation to both happen once the new batch is here! We’re making good progress on our social cause.

16/07/2014

12/07/2014; 22:40:

It’s nice to see the campus all full of people and life. The junior batch is finally back from their rather-long vacation. One of them related his vacation experience- an almost-life changing event, up in the mountains. Stricken with a love for trekking and the mountains, going on multiple treks, with different groups of people and putting photography skills to use sound like a perfect break to me. This coupled with the trepidation and later relief melting into ecstasy at saving the life of a fellow-trekker who very nearly drowned. This incident is chilling and calming, all at once.

Indian summers are hot, and a lot of people found themselves in the cool of the mountains- in Leh, Ladhak, Uttrakhand, Kashmir and travelling the breadth of Himachal Pradesh. Trips were made with family, friends and solo ( accompanied by a camera, to document the trip). Of course, there are some infinitely lucky people that LIVE in the mountains, full-time. But, of course, we resent them only during the summer break.
Summer Internships that the seniors returned from do sound like good experiences. From joining CRY in Bengaluru which meant easy access to Goa to working on research projects in Delhi, the experiences are varied and vast.

The junior boys have been moved to a hostel off campus, for paucity of space. While it is only 600m away in physical distance, they’re missing out a lot more otherwise. But of course, the interested ones do remain on campus until 11 p.m., post which of course no movement is allowed in & out of the institute gates.

16/07/2014; 21:29:

The Director paid the junior boys a visit at their new hostel, promising most of the changes that they need. It was a rather positive gesture.

We’re just back from eating dinner, after camping on the water tank on the terrace, earlier in the evening. It had been raining most of the afternoon, today, and the weather was lovely. There is a slight nip in the air, with a thin blanket of humidity, ruffled by well-paced wind.

We’ve been planning a couple of promotional activities for our upcoming fest—our plans include entertainment/games at Treasure Island- Indore’s most happening mall, a clean-up drive, a tree plantation drive for Independence Day and work towards our social cause- The Stigma attached to Menstruation. We hope we’re able to pull off our rather ambitious plans successfully.

The skies spent all of yesterday evening raining and we spent it playing Monopoly. I must admit that it was a rather fun evening. I was reading last night and have absolutely no recollection of when & how I fell asleep.

Our Business Etiquette course is almost half-way through, and we’ve had a few new things to learn- from dressing for white-tie & formal dinners to electronic etiquette (telephones, video-calls, e-mails). Also, our professor has advised us to dress in smart casuals for the class, and it’s nice to see everyone smartly dressed, hair combed & shirts ironed!

11/07/2014

11/07/2014; 04:09:

The FIFA World Cup 2014 has beautifully altered my sleep schedule. I’m surprised that falling into a routine of keeping up till 4, to watch the 1:30 game in entirety has proven to be easier than falling out of the routine.

I discovered what I shall deem to be an ingenious way of carting laundry to & fro the Laundry. Sharing a room has led me to the discovery that an entire large shelf cannot be devoted to the sole purpose of housing dirty clothes. So, I shifted to housing them in my largely unused bucket instead. Now, this bucket is my tool of practice. Once full, its contents shall be deposited at the laundry and the freshly-washed & ironed clothes shall be placed in the safe interior of the bucket to be trudged across campus.

Indore saw its first rain of the season, yesterday in the form of a slightly extended light drizzle. It rained some more today. I sat by my window reading. Suddenly, I was hit by splashes of the incoming rain. I was forced to put down my book (well, Kindle, but I’ll let it count as a book for now) and sit staring as the rain came down in sheets. Falling hard, uninterrupted, the sheer strength of the sheets not allowing them to be drifted apart by the wind , but merely making them fall at an angle, as the ground soaked up the drops with eager conquest.
I sat watching till the clouds ceased to let up any more raindrops down to earth.

I reckon, and with good reason too, that there is a certain curse that looms over the fateful person who is elected to be the CR of our Batch. Starting with our CR in the first year, who suffered all sorts of (health) complications trying to adapt to the food & water of Indore to our last year’s CR who actually received the news of her appointment in the hospital, the curse has found its way to this year’s chosen ones. One CR has a ligament tear & damage to the soft tissue in her foot that has earned her 3-weeks of bed-rest and a wheel-chair; the other CR managed to hurt his knee during a game of basketball; and a third CR is seen with a crepe bandage around her right thigh/knee. We’re all watching the fourth CR anxiously.

Cool, almost cold breeze is blowing as I sit perched on the stairs outside my new hostel. In the distance I hear the call for prayer, for it is the holy month of Ramzan. The sanctity of prayer.

07/07/2014

07/07/2014; 10:05:

It’s strange being up in the morning, when the first class of the day is only at 11:45.

21:13:

And, I fell asleep right after writing that one line. So much for change.

Talking of change, new Class Representatives for the year have been appointed. There are 4 CR’s – one male, one female from each section.

The last couple of days have been weird, with no Football Matches keeping me up till 4 am. So, the lot of us have begun playing cards, late into the night. On our very first tryst with cards, Oshin promptly informed us that playing cards in the hostel is not allowed. Of course, we explained that gambling isn’t allowed, but, our perfectly innocent card games are fine! I’ve learnt 4 new card games in 2 nights. I’ve also managed to reinforce the fact (well, to myself) that I’m terrible at ALL card games.

It’s that time of the year when our MediClaim (Medical Insurance) policies are to be renewed. Somehow, the premium keeps increasing every year, though I don’t quite follow how or why.
Anyway, being a group insurance for the whole campus, the premium is quite low.

Our daily library-basement, 10 p.m. meetings, dedicated solely to planning our fest, Atharv are more enthusiastic than ever before! We’re less than two months away and there’s so much happening, so much to be done!

Our course on Public Administration is proving to be a very informative one. The professor is very enthusiastic and very humble, despite being very renowned in his field. Concepts like Authority, Power, State, the Government, Systems and the Bureaucracy are ones that we often talk about, oft with little understanding. It’s fascinating to see how such abstract concepts are well depicted and explained in documented literature.

04/07/2014

04/07/2014; 02:55:

A new seating plan was delivered to us, yesterday. I struck gold. The first seat, in the front-most row belongs to me. The one that is right under the nose of the teacher. This is good; I can't really hear or see anything from the last row(s).

This morning is the Orientation for the new PGP batch. The last two days saw frenzied activity all over campus. State Bank of India & Central Bank set up stalls, offering educational loans, at 10.25 and 10.20% respectively. Vodafone & Airtel are offering CUG plans, for all IIM-Indore users. Most of my batch has Airtel connections. Vodafone seems to be offering a better deal, or so I'm told. All hail MNP! (Mobile Number Portability). Bombay Dyeing has for sale Bed sheets, Pillows, Pillow-Covers and towels.
The other car-park has the Hostel Reception Centre that’s been allotting rooms to the participants, a Hostel Office help-desk, a waiting area and a Pi-Shop help desk, whose aim is to hand the participants maps of the hostel area and direct all of them to the Pi-Shop, where buckets, mugs, soap dishes, ropes, clothes clips, note-books, pens and other essentials have been lovingly arranged.
Of course, my favourite item at the Pi-Shop continues to be the ice-cream.

There are a four hundred and fifty (plus parents who’ve mostly gone now) confused faces wandering around campus. The Institute Bus starts from the parking area close to the Old Audi and moves down to ER-3, then the Acad Block Reception, SR-13/14 area and finally out of the gate. Today, two students and a father stood waiting for the 9p.m bus at the reception. Their bewilderment at seeing the bus moving down to ER-3 instead of towards them was obvious. They were vocal about their confusion and were promptly supplied with the necessary information.

This PGP-I Batch has an increased number of female participants. More females is always good news. One of the new guys informed me that he was the ideal PGP participant- a computer engineer here right after his fourth year. He also shared some wisdom- In India, people first do engineering and then decide what they want to do with their lives!

It rained in Mumbai and my newsfeed was full of photographs of the sky. It rained in Mumbai and my newsfeed is now full of memes aimed at the Mumbai Metro Special Shower. And also full of memes and long pieces of information aimed at Maria Sharapova’s ignorance about Sachin Tendulkar.

02/07/2014

02/07/2014; 12:24:


Our seniors are back from their social internships. They are in their fourth year and shall now be part of the PGP-I Batch.

It had been a while since we'd visited 'Pishori Dhaba'. It carries 'Dhaba' in its name for some inexplicable reason; it's a restaurant all right! It's known for the offering good chicken at even better rates, making it pretty student friendly. One thing I learnt here it that anyone who's a non-vegetarian will necessarily eat non-vegetarian food when going out for dinner, because, and I quote a chicken lover, 'veg food is not worth spending money on'. Which also means that I've probably managed to eat more chicken in the two years I've spent in Indore than I ever did in all my eighteen years back home! One other thing that I learnt is that a vegetarian who keeps non-vegetarian company will be converted, sooner or later!

Mobile Phones are now entirely banned in classrooms. The written code of rules had always prohibited this, but, the rule had never been enforced. The IPM Office has already conducted one 'surprise check', this term. Mobile Phones kept switched off in bags aren't legal either, coz you know, terrorism. That, and the bigger problem of people not paying enough attention in lectures because all of it is commanded by the Whatsapp Messages, FaceBook statuses and Game high-scores!

The TV in the common room is getting used to being nocturnal, with FIFA matches running up 4:00 am, IST. With the quarter-finals set to begin, everyone's excited!