23/12/2014

23/12/2014; 00:00:

Christmas preparation is in full swing, on campus. A beautifully decked-up Christmas tree sits right outside the main mess and decorations adorn parts of the campus.
Also in order for Christmas are a play and Christmas carols. The IPM Drama Club has been working hard, for almost a month now, on a Christmas-themed play- it features Wonderland in all its glory- with elves, Noddy and Santa Claus! Dances and dialogues are being painstakingly gone over, multiple times.
Props and costumes are being arranged to make everything feel magical.
Meanwhile, the Music Club has been planning to get everyone to learn and practice Christmas Carols in under a week.

A Special Christmas dinner has been arranged for, for the night of 24th December. Of course, there shall also be cake!
The call for presents, as part of the Secret Santa game, has been sent out; the deadline to ‘submit’ your gifts to the representatives is end of day, 23rd December.
i-Help has been planning to hold a Christmas Celebration for the kids of the schools that we are engaged in teaching.

In other news, the 2013 Batch went on a ‘Happy Trip’, on the 18th of December, as part of their course on Positive Psychology.
The 2014 Batch, meanwhile, is busy with exams till the 23rd, post which a large number of them are heading to Mumbai, to participate in IIT-Bombay’s Cultural Fest, Mood-Indigo.

I intend to give my secret ‘santee’ some food for Christmas, just like last time, when my gift to both (we had a separate ‘girls only’ Secret Santa too!) my ‘santees’ was a buffet lunch at Sayaji, with me for company, of course!

21/12/2014

21/12/2014; 00:47:

And, after a week at home, thanks to a long break between two IGNOU papers, it was good to be back on campus!
The place is buzzing with activity, what with the PGP Placement season having begun and Christmas just around the corner!
I tried and abandoned a blog post, on the 15th, right after I was back on campus; it sure was a busy few days!
10th Evening saw a guest lecture by Dr. A Sivathanu Pillai, Founder-CEO-cum-Managing Director of BrahMos Aerospace; he spoke on ‘India’s Global Leadership’. Later in the evening, the Activity Club arranged a screening of the 1952 movie, ’12 Angry Men’.
On 11th December, a third visit ,since the Social Committee has undertaken various projects this year, to Aastha Vridha Ashram was arranged. The arrangement was expanded to include the orphanage, the juvenile home and the home for victims of abuse; IPM students guided by the in-house counsellor Dr.Prarthana Sharma spent time with the inmates, spreading positivity and learning outside of their sheltered environments.
12th December – Rajnikath’s Birthday was celebrated, with a mass movie screening!
Saturday (13th) evening saw the prelims of ‘In-Quiz-itive’ being conducted, by our very own Literary Committee. 6 teams made it to the finale that was held a week later.
I was back on campus on 14th morning and spent a busy day talking! A part of the afternoon was spent trying to study for the next day’s paper; there was a SAC-EC meeting in the evening, where a proposal for a seminar on ‘Innovation in Management Education’ along with the Music Club’s proposal for a campus radio were discussed. Also certain ideas dealing with increased student safety in the light of the recent Uber-Delhi incident were chalked out.
This meeting was followed by a team-bonding exercise organized by the interim I-Help team. A treasure hunt which had a series of interesting clues to be solved with the team in tow went on for a good two hours. The interim team business, which has been set-up to help finalize the team for next year is a rather useful idea. Practical experience at running the operations is a better judge than any interview or essay can ever hope to be.
Later in the evening, a Chiraag meeting was held where the idea for the year’s ‘Secret Santa’ was discussed. ‘Secret Santa’ as the name suggests entails a random draw being made from the entire set of people participating. Each participant receives a name- of his to-be ‘Santee’, for whom he must act as a ‘secret’ Santa, leaving a trail of clues, leading up to a grand gift on Christmas Day! Apart from being great fun, the Christmas spirit is felt in all its glory.

It was a rather mundane paper, on the afternoon of the 15th- mostly because I sat all alone in a classroom meant for 60 students, writing a paper on ‘Introduction to HIV/AIDS’; so much for opting for random papers when everyone’s pursuing either a BA(Economics) or B.Comm.

16th was one crazy day, most of which was spent planning for the first Media Comm. ‘Event’ of the year, the ‘Journalist Face-Off’. From preparing questions for the Quiz round, to picking the best set of pictures for the finale, everyone worked hard at what they do best. One of the members who was looking after the visual round of the quiz managed to turn up with an entire series of impossible-to-answer questions. It was heart-breaking to explain to him that most of us have absolutely no knowledge of the topics that are so dear to him and that he ought to pick simpler (well, more mainstream) questions that dealt with the Russian Economy and Hollywood instead.
We spoke to IIM-Indore’s PRO, Dr. Akhtar Parvez and our cool English faculty, Dr. Shweta Kushal, both of whom consented to be the judges for the event.
Some volleyball later, we’d also spoken to the media, arranging to send them a report and pictures as soon as the event was over. We were excited; a Media Comm. Event definitely called for media coverage! Plus, it was going to be the best event, ever; the happy moment was when one newspaper we’d left out actually called us – ‘There’s an event happening, right?’. ‘ Yes sir, there is’. ‘Do give me the details’. !!

After a frantic morning of trying to get through at least half the syllabus and a rather decent ‘Drug Abuse and Counselling’ paper, I got working on the event that was to begin in under an hour! Round 1 entries were marked, final run-throughs of the Round 2 questions were done, Wildcard entries were watched and the lucky winner decided and soon enough , the event began.
The event had three rounds and culminated in a charged finale. The first round had the contestants write out an op-ed, an opinion piece, on a topic of their choice- writing a coherent editorial piece is the mark of a good journalist. The second round was a quiz that tested how up to date the contestants were with the currents news, for every journalist ought to have all the current happenings at the tip of his tongue.
The Quiz happened in three parts- one with visual clues, one set of MCQ questions and one Audio-Visual round where news clippings were shown and the news piece in question was to be identified.
There was also a wild-card entry round, where the students had to cover an event on campus, make a video and send it across. The winner of the wild-card round received a direct spot in the finale! 8 teams qualified for the finale, on the basis of the scores of Rounds one and two. The finale was a Face-Off, a show-down of sorts, where one team was pitted directly against the other, in a live-TV presentation round. A series of pictures that depicted the story in question were put up on screen and the teams and to run a live coverage of the incident. The final show-down saw one team impersonate the perpetrator of the crime in question, all with a funny accent and everything; other fun bits included a reporter reporting live from a comet, dazed by the diamonds that she found there; a reporter who became part of a zombie apocalypse and one team who had their very own ‘Snow White News’ channel.
The event made the students aware of the hectic schedule and the crazy demands that every journalist has to meet- it’s not all glamour and glitz, but a lot of hard-work.
The event had large participation and was successful- prizes were given out to winners, runners-up; there were also two consolation prizes and two separate prizes for the winners of Round 2; audience prizes were handed out too!

We left for Khargone on the chilly morning of 18th December. After the successful workshop on job applications, résumés and job interviews, a second edition of the workshop was held for a different set of students. It saw much larger participation than the first and it even had a small entry fee for the participants! The Digital Literacy campaign was also kick-started in a big way, with two schools being reached out to, on the very first day! The first topic that’s being covered is PowerPoint Presentations, mainly for their wide scope of use and the fact that the pictures and everything make them very attractive.
I left campus that night, getting on the late-night train home, courtesy tickets booked by my parents. I’d surprised them earlier in the month, by showing up at home, unannounced; they surprised me by informing me one night before that my tickets were ready and waiting.

Around this, the Secret Santa process began; ‘santees’ were matched with Santas by 19th night and the game is in full swing. I’ve been sending clues to my ‘Santee’ too! I haven’t received anything from my Santa, yet, though.

In other news, Canara bank has agreed to offer loans to IPM students, without a collateral, unlike the mandatory ‘with collateral’ loan offered by SBI till date.

On 19th evening, the finale of ‘In-Quiz-itive’ was held; the event was won by a team which goes by the name ‘Victorious Secrets’!
On 20th evening, a panel discussion on ‘Innovation Challenges’ was held on campus, for both faculty and students to benefit from; the discussion was moderated by our director, Dr. Rishikesha T. Krishnan.
Also, keeping with the directive on ‘Good Governance Day’, a solo speech event was organized for all IPM students, at 6:30 in the evening; the topic for the same was ‘Use of Technology and Innovations in Promoting Good Governance’.


Also, Christmas preparations are in full-swing; that ought to be another post!

10/12/2014

10/12/2014; 00:50:

An IPM 2013 v/s 2014 Football League began, on Friday. The highlight of course was the girls' game which the 2013 batch won, 4-1.
On the evening of 7th December, a guest lecture was organized courtesy the IPM E-cell. The founder of Housing.com. Mr. Advitiya Sharma delivered an inspiring talk, speaking of his journey as an entrepreneur and the obstacles he encountered.

In other news, Religare securities shall be on campus on the 10th, 11th and 13th of December to offer a special scheme on Demat accounts for IIM-I students, courtesy the Finance & Investment club. They also organized the first round of Bazinga- the online Finance quiz, on the 9th. Another two rounds are scheduled, later this Wednesday & Friday.
Karwan- the Poetry Club of IIM-Indore, mentored and run by our Economics professor, Dr.Rastogi held its first session of the season on 9th evening! It's a perfect platform for budding poets- language no bar- to come, express themselves and share their poetry with like-minded, enthusiastic participants.

As a close to the day, the IPM Constitution that the SAC-C has lovingly drafted and the SAC-EC has pored over was shared with all the participants. Wow, we have a constitution now. Way to feel important!

A trip to NM's fest, Vaayu - on the 17th to 20th of this month- had to be cancelled, courtesy upcoming mid-term exams for both the junior batches. Plans to attend Mood Indigo in the last week of December are still in place, even though they are rather shaky.

05/12/2014

05/12/2014; 00:13:

Right before people left to go home, on the 30th, there were meetings held, to come up with parameters to evaluate the SAC-C and the SAC-T. Each club coordinator had to come up with a set of parameters according to which the members would be evaluated in the future. The club members had to come up with a similar set for the evaluation of the coordinator. All this is being done as part of the efforts to draft the IPM Constitution. It feels good to be in the Drafting Assembly!
The selection process for selecting next year’s Atharv team was discussed in another of the series of meetings that evening. The final meeting of the evening detailed the recently approved Sports Fest proposal. Ranbhoomi- the IPM Sports Fest is set to happen in the last week of February, tentatively from the 27th to the 1st of March. We hope to draw in participation from across the country! Almost all of December shall be spent planning!

It’s been a leisurely four days, with the December vacation in full swing. Some people (like my room-mate) had a paper on the 1st; I didn’t. I spent most of Monday (1st) sleeping; evening was spent playing volleyball and then having dinner at Pishori – we ate mostly Tandoori Chicken. An institute-wide initiative has been undertaken, in the form of Oscar Wilde’s play ‘The Importance of being Earnest. Auditions were called for, at 7 p.m. on the 2nd of December. Practice is now in full swing!
At 8:00 p.m., the Activity Club had arranged for the screening of the movie ‘Inglorious Bastards’. I have no clue why they suddenly did so; people did, however enjoy the movie.


After sleeping in excess on Monday, I was up in time to get some breakfast, on Tuesday. The FST- Foundation in Science & Technology paper is on the 6th- it’s the only compulsory paper as part of the BDP (Bachelor’s Degree Programme) 2nd year curriculum. I pulled out the books on Tuesday, mainly to ascertain their number. There are a total of 8 books; hopefully, we’ll read through them all, before the paper. We did read them in bits and pieces to solve the assignments, but never once through.
After the All-IPM meet, where the Khargone project was discussed, a volunteer form was sent across to everyone. Later in the evening, the music club sent out a mail detailing its newest idea- practice groups- to hone different talents including singing and playing different musical instruments.

On Wednesday, we put together a 3-member team to conduct the skill-building workshop in Khargone. Another set of volunteers was organized to interact with the children at Aasthagram.
By mid-night, we also received a good number of entries for the Journalist Face-Off event that Media Comm. is planning to hold.
i-Help has been in the process of picking out the team that shall call the shots, next year. Basically, we’re getting old and it’s time to hand over the reins to the junior batch! As part of this, every week, a different set of interested juniors are appointed to interim coordinator roles – 2 coordinators and one vertical head each for the HR, Media & PR and Academic verticals. Everyone is thus being given a chance to actually put their skills to a practical test, because that’s what is finally needed! Everyone is taking their roles seriously and working really hard; the Academic vertical has been meticulously preparing worksheets, Media & PR has been preparing weekly reports and HR has been working and re-working the time-table to get the perfect fit!

We left for Khargone at 7:30 on Thursday (4th) morning in a white ‘traveller’. The traveller was also unique- the last row of seats had been replaced by a bed! Of course, since it was early morning, to people immediately settled in to sleep! We stopped en route for poha-jalebi and once to click photographs. Once at Khargone, we split into the two assigned teams. We headed to open the registration desk for the workshop while the other team headed straight for the kids! The workshop covered the whole job application process – finding the right job, filling out an application, preparing a résumé and facing the interview. The participants included students of the Government P.G. College at Khargone. Their feedback (after an almost 5 hour long workshop!) suggested that we did manage to do a fairly okay job of making them aware and guiding them.
Meanwhile elsewhere, our other team visited the Sports & Cultural Competition that was being organized for the differently abled children, on the occasion of World Disability day which was on the 3rd of December. They also spent time with the other children, playing games like Fire on the Mountain and Dog & the Bone.
The whole Khargone experience just makes everyone who goes there so happy; by the end of the day, you’re tired and yet unwilling to leave, promising to come back; of course, on the way back everyone falls asleep (except my room-mate!). We were back on campus by around 9 p.m. post which dinner was had. A large amount of vanilla ice-cream followed! We took good advantage of the newly launched sachets of Hershey’s chocolate syrup while we were at eating the ice-cream!

While we’ve been having a gala time, what with the vacations and everything, both the junior batches have been writing an assortment of quizzes and mid-term exams! And, a play is being prepared for Christmas Eve, by the junior batches! Christmas Eve is fun time, with mid-night carol singing, cake-cutting, movie screenings and even a theme-based play, this time around!
In other news, Chiraag, our very own IPM E-magazine has sent out its monthly call for articles. They seem to have this thing for all the unusual themes that one could possibly come up with! The theme this time is ‘Hard to get’. It’s been rather hard to get what exactly this latest theme could mean; I’ll probably figure something out and write out a piece!

01/14/2014

01/12/2014; 00:47:

It’s now been a whole week of crazy. 28th evening was scheduled to be AMPLIFIED- the biggest music event at IIM-Indore, organized by Amplif-I- the IPM Music Club.
The event began at 7:00 p.m. but, of course, preparations had been in progress for a long while. The event had heavy logistical requirement and over 12 hours and a small lot of human resource were spent getting a stage put together, getting mikes, speakers, a mixer, lights, karaoke versions of songs and musical instruments.
Talented guitarist, Mr. Aishwarya Dhoble had consented to be the judge for the evening. The event was aimed at getting everyone involved and feeling the music- providing a platform to the bathroom singer in everyone. The first event of the evening was ‘Tune-in’ where a tune was played and the participant had to identify the song in question and sing it- the more lyrics you got right, the better!
The next event was a Theme-based singing event, with themes ranging from Death, Violence and Rebellion to Love, Forgiveness and Freedom. This was followed by a Jingle Making event- with topics ranging from Smokin’ Joes Pizza to Indore and IPM. The best part was that prizes for all events were food- courtesy the Smokin’ Joes Pizza and Buddy’s Café stalls that were doing brisk business all evening. The other events included a Music Quiz and a much enjoyed Face-Off.
The evening was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone present; with the food (including pancakes at JAM) and array of events on offer. I had the privilege of being the MC for the evening and, did I have a gala time! I even tried my hand at playing the drums! It was nice to see so much undiscovered talent come forth and find a platform.

And because one crazy, event-filled night wasn’t enough, another immediately followed it. 29th evening was Lit-Night, courtesy Literar-I- the IPM Literary Club. The events for the evening included hourly scrabble matches and word games. The first event was fun- a picture was to be identified, and the interpretation and its anagram found! A total of 30 pictures had been procured. The event was intellectually challenging and fun! The next event was called ‘Rhyme & Time’- all contestants sit in a circle, a syllable is declared and sentences that rhyme are stated one after another. Inability to come up with a new rhyme results in elimination. The last man standing wins it all!
The third event for the evening was called ‘What’s the good word?’- it took place in 3 stages. The first stage was a set of 10 jumbled letters that had to be unscrambled to arrive at the correct answer, in accordance with the clue provided. The second stage included correctly identifying the word that met the prescribed criteria, a total of 15 such words were to be found, with a different, interesting clue for each. The final stage was challenging- a set of clues, one after the other were given and you had to identify the word using the least possible clues.
The last event for the evening was a Spelling Bee. The evening was very enjoyable and it wasn’t all done! The event concluded with an online crossword round that began at 12 a.m. and added the last dash of awesomeness to it all.

We were out for dinner, on the evening of Sunday, the 30th of November. The evening ended with a walk around campus, ice-cream and a birthday celebration in the Girls’ Hostel.

The month of December is off, for the IGNOU exams. A lot of people left to go home, on Sunday evening. A few shall leave this morning, in a few hours. Others who are in love with this place shall give the exams in Indore, with the IIM-I campus functioning as their exam centre. The first paper is tomorrow; of course, since IGNOU has a very large variety of subjects on offer, not everyone has the same exam schedule. My first paper is on the 6th of December- the compulsory course titled ‘Foundation Course in Science & Technology’. The B.Comm. guys have 7 papers while I have only 4.