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!

29/06/2014

29/06/2014; 11:06:

Shruti and I went on a long walk around campus, the other day. It was intended to be only a walk, without the preceding adjective, but, a newly constructed road resulted in a change in plan! A new road that runs from Gate-3, along the under-construction hostels and merges with the existing road at the faculty block has been recently completed and discovered by us!

The next evening was spent cycling along the newly discovered road. The hardest part about fixing cycle chains isn't even fixing them, it's getting the grease off your hands!

The course on Introduction to History picks up History from a very different perspective than the one we were exposed to in school. The Professor spent the first two sessions in letting us know about why history is important, how history works to shape the thought process of the people, why the government is scared of historians and what it means to actually be a historian. These were all things which, even if we had known, we had never considered.

The course on the Essentials of Human Values began with Sir wondering if there were any atheists in the course, since the course has been designed from a theistic perspective. I was surprised to realise that there are a good number of atheists in the batch. Faith & belief in some form of God was something that I had wrongly taken for granted. Of course, I believe, as seen by the careful usage of capitalization. We've been discussing the idea of self and selfishness. True Selfishness actually leads to selflessness.

The geography of a place affects the business & trade. Of course, as future entrepreneurs of the nation, this is vital information for us. I mean, it obviously makes sense to open up a beautiful sea-side resort in Goa. I'll work on it!

25/06/2014

25/06/2014; 00:00:

I'm pretty sure that I've entered the date as 'XX/07/14' at a lot of places, in the last 2 days. Well, I probably just decided that June needed a promotion.

I got up this morning, to the news that the institute lorry employed for the purpose of helping cart our stuff from this hostel to the new one was to be coming, soon. I decided to begin packing at once, since there was a class to be attended later, at 11:45.
I threw open all my suitcases and began to pack my room up. I was thankful that I do not have a lot of stuff and hence did not have to go through the entire ordeal of packing tape, cartons and labeling. I was packed soon, right in time for the lorry. Those of us (well, the lazier ones) who hadn't shifted yesterday dutifully loaded our stuff.
The entire process of packing, loading and unloading my stuff took me less than two hours. I mean, it HAD to be a record. And, then, I outdid myself in the evening when I unpacked in just half an hour!

The entire process of shifting interspersed with classes kept us busy through the day. A few of us plan to spend one last night in our old hostel, for old times' sake.

Everyone has gotten lots of food from home. Good for me, I shall eat ALL of it. Harika got me biscuits from The Karachi Bakery in Hyderabad. In salty food, there is extra crunchy muruku. There was pasta, prawns, chicken, Bengali sweets, home-made cake.

Okay, I'm getting hungry. I shall also make detailed notes on my favourite eating places in Indore, some time soon.

24/06/2014

22/06/2014; 19:00:

The last time I sat writing here, outside the Girls’ Hostel, there was a warm breeze blowing. It’s been 22 days, there is still a warm breeze blowing. Indore has yet to seen any of this time’s rainfall. The post dated 31/05/2014 is the only thing open on my browser.
It’s nice to be back to campus. It’s been a long break and the campus feels eerily familiar.

I see someone with a basketball. I’m off to investigate.

23/06/2014; 22:35:

Okay, that was a pretty long investigation. I played basketball with three French girls, whose names I didn’t quite catch! They’re exchange students, here to spend the first term with the PGP-II Batch. There have been plans to start a Foreign-Exchange Programme for the IPM Students too, but, it is still in the pipeline.

It was nice to see everyone back, after a refreshingly long break. It was nice to see people sporting new hair-styles, new wardrobes and sun-tans.

We had our Orientation today, at 10:30 this morning. The revised IPM Manual was unveiled. The first thing that we were informed of was the changed rule that mandates a minimum 5% of the students be awarded D’s & F’s in every component of a course. This was originally 0%. So much for good news at the beginning of our third year.

In happier news however, we have very few credits left to complete to meet our reduced minimum of 360 credits. So, our co-ordinator eagerly urged us to spend our free time productively, participating in fests and working towards building our CV’s.

24/06/2014; 00:57:

In non-academic news, all the girls of the batch shall be shifting from single accommodation in SR13 to ER-2, on twin-sharing basis. The boys shall similarly move from SR11 to ER-3. The whole day has seen cartons being taped and filled, cupboards being emptied and packing tape being passed around. Once packed, the cartons were all loaded onto a lorry and transported. While about two-thirds of the girls have successfully shifted today itself, some lazy ones like me are still here, not even having begun to pack. Anyway, the last date to shift is 25th.
Having stayed in our respective rooms for well over a year now, most people are actually attached to them and really do not feel like moving.
There are people who have moved all their belongings save a pillow & a bed-sheet to their new rooms but will be spending a last night in their old beds.

I should be packing too. Instead, we called up the Night Mess and have ordered Schezwan Fried Rice and Pepsi. Of course, I would’ve wanted Thums Up, but, well, life is all about compromises.

It’s funny how we talk of compromises as if they are unusual. Truth be told, we wouldn’t really get anywhere without them! It is the foundation of a civilized society, not even necessarily human.

19/06/2014

19/06/2014; 00:13:

And, the IPM Office is being super efficient. Our third year starts on the 23rd of June and we’ve already received the Session Schedule for the first two weeks.

There’s a Term Registration to be done before the start of a new term. For Term VII, this was achieved even before we’d left for home at the end of Term VI. Here, we pick the subjects out of an array of elective courses offered.
Course Outlines- a brief idea of what the course entails- the topics to be covered & the content to be discussed in each lecture – are shared with us , in order to enable sensible decision-making.

The Orientation for the new term is at 10:30 on the 23rd of the month i.e Monday. It's one if those few times that I'm looking forward to a Monday. Well, it's not all about the orientation, it's also that we'll be back to campus & our friend after the longest term-break we've had!

It's something about an 'adventure holiday' that is intriguing to every young adult. Charged with adrenaline and a spirit to do something enjoyable, a trek through the mountains or a jump off a helicopter serves as the perfect outlet! And, it doesn't even have to be That level of extreme! To each his own. This is anyway a maxim I enjoy, but, more on that later!

13/06/2014

13/06/2014; 00:00

We could fairly easily go around the lower-most strata of the campus in a perfect circle. Walking across the whole (fairly large) area under construction would bring you back to habited hostels.

There are SR-11&12 with SR-13&14 right opposite each other, with a lawn in the centre. The IIM-Indore logo has been cut into the grass in this lawn. The stairs that lead up (well, and down) to the other hostels is on one side of SR-11-12-13-14 & Student Mess-3 is on the other. The top of the stairs is always buzzing with activity. The upper floor of the Mess-3 building houses the New Gymnasium (the one in the Sports Complex is older).

Walking straight along the road brings you to the Faculty Housing Area. Ahead, to the right is the Children’s Park and the Radha-Krishna Temple. Turning to the right leads you out of the Institute Campus through Gate-2. Continuing straight leads you to a round-about.

Here, the left road leads up to the Acad Block area while the other road leads back to the Main Gate-1. En route is the way to the Rain Water Harvesting Pond, which is dry during the other months of the year.

Learning a different language opens up a part of the world you never even knew existed! It allows you to feel very close & connected to an alien culture, one that is very different from your own. And, of course, it decreases the number of cities that you will get lost in!

12/06/2014

12/06/2014; 00:00:

Today, I was at my work-station at a little before ‘twas the next day. Since two posts on one day and none on the next is bad for symmetry, I decided to sit around twiddling my thumbs till the time changed. There is only so much twiddling that two thumbs can do, so I had a bath instead. I feel cool, relaxed and happier.

The lower-most strata of campus has all the three Main Gates. Let’s simply begin by entering through Gate-1. Take a right immediately, to be on the road that leads to the sports complex. The Sports Complex itself is a roughly rectangular building. The straight road leads you to the main entrance of the Sports Complex, with a large porch and a car-parking across from the entrance. As you enter, there is the New Auditorium to the right side and 26 Hills (our campus’ very own restaurant) to the left. The New Auditorium is much larger than the Old one and is equipped with the latest Lighting & Sound Equipment. Every Saturday, the week’s release (mostly Bollywood) is screened here, for the students & staff. 26 Hills is very popular with everyone on campus, serving both vegetarian & non-vegetarian food. Right above the restaurant is a large hall where Aerobics, Zumba & Power Yoga classes are conducted, everyday.

On entering from the other side of the Sports Complex, well, the ‘Back-Entrance’ , one has to the right the Squash & Tennis Courts; to the left is the Gym with the Weight-Training Section on the ground floor and the Cardio Section on the first.
Also to the left is the Steam & Sauna Bath. Right in front of the entrance is an Olympic-size Swimming Pool.

Further ahead of the Sports Complex is currently a Construction Site, where new, IPM-Exclusive Hostels are being built.

Walnuts are a rather interesting dry-fruit. With two hemi-spheres, ridges & grooves, they are shaped just like the human brain; I’m sure that there is more to this than mere coincidence and the fact that walnuts are ‘good’ for the brain. I hope we find out soon enough!

11/06/2014

11/6/2014; 00:00:

I’m one of those people who gets excited whenever it happens that I check the time and it is ’00:00’ or ’20:20’. So, I’m pretty pleased, right now!

Now, we’ll start right from the stairs leading to the Girls’ Hostel and end at the ‘Mandir-wali’ stairs.
There’s a long straight road that ends at ‘Titanic Point’. Full credit for this christening goes to the junior batch. Initially, we did mock their choice, but, by repeated use, the juniors have managed to get the rest of us to begrudgingly agree. Well, to their credit, it is a tad bit more convenient than ‘behind FPM Block’ and definitely more aesthetically appealing.
Now, the long straight road. All the way, out on the left side you can see far & beyond, plains, mountains and the highway. On the right, you pass by Married Student Residence , Student Mess-2, a Hostel Block and Executive Residence-3 to finally end at the FPM Block. (Fellowship Programme in Management aka Ph. D students’ Block). The FPM Block is perfectly circular in shape and is rather cute.

Once behind the FPM Block i.e. at Titanic point, there is almost always cool breeze and good company to be enjoyed. Walk around the block and out from the other side. Walk past ER-3 , the stairs leading up to the library, Student Mess-1 (Main Mess) and the other Girls’ Hostel to find yourself back at the base of the stairs where it all began!

All Hostel Blocks (not the recently constructed ones) are the proud owners of two names- one of the format SR-X (Insert a number in place of X) and the other of the form X-Block (Insert a letter of the English Alphabet here). The ‘X-Block’ format was the older one and the other one is the latest. While the blocks are labelled as SR-01, SR-02 and so forth, everyone refers to them only as ‘A-Block or J-Block’. I shall compile a comprehensive list, of what’s what, to save myself the confusion! Also, each block has its speciality which definitely merits a mention on the list too!

07/06/2014

08/06/2014; 4:11:

Going down the straight road once you're down the 'Mandir-wali' stairs will lead you to Hostel Blocks on both sides of the road.

JAM-Juices And More is on the right side. JAM traditionally served Maggi, Sandwiches , Fresh Fruit Juices and Milkshakes. JAM has recently added Pizzas, Burgers, French Fries and a whole lot of fried goodies to their menu.

To the right is now space for an eatery. There have been eateries that have come and gone and only space remains, now.
Next to this is a VolleyBall court that always has a game in progress!

In the hostel block on the right , SR-10 ( the erstwhile J-Block) is a Printer Room where all through the term assignments are printed, notes are Photo-copied and at the end of the term there's a last-minute rush to get tickets-to-home printed!
Next to this is the Post-Collection Room, where letters , parcels and online-shopping arrives.

Ahead, is the Married Student Residence and further ahead is Student Mess-2.

Okay, now, back to our main road. Ahead, to the right is 'Kachori Point' which sells Samosas, Dhoklas, Vada Pav and of course Poha (with sev & onions on top).

The Lawn next to JAM and the Lawn next to 'Kachori Point' are perfect places to lounge on the grass, drink tea, eat and gossip endlessly.

An endless flight of stairs lies ahead. This leads to SR-13 & 14. Mess-3, SR-11, SR-12 and other buildings are down there too, but, SR-13 & 14 are the most important. Girls' Hostels, you see.

Mosquito Repellents have a very interesting mechanism behind their success. Apparently, they do not kill mosquitoes or anything courageous of that sort. They simply 'hide' you from the being detected by the mosquito 'radar'. Interesting logic.

06/06/2014

06/06/2014; 23:06 :

Now that the top-most level has been explored and understood, let's move to the middle layer.

The stairs that we students most often take are the ones next to the Mandir i.e the second staircase from the Director's Residence, right before the Library.
Once down, the road goes in three directions (well, four really but the fourth just goes back to where we came from!) left, centre and right. Let's stick with the left road, for today.

On turning left, you encounter a Hostel Block on your right side. Also, an SBI ATM and Mytrix -Hair Saloon for Men is seen. Right opposite this is ER-4 (Executive Residence- 4).

Ahead is the Medical Centre, which for unbeknownst reasons is closed on Sundays. Because, of course, illness too takes Sundays off.
Anyway, it's there and very useful- the Ambulance is always on call, medicines are available and the Doctors (more so the nurses) are ever-ready to help! The road downhill leads to the Faculty Housing Area.

Opposite the Medical Centre is the newly constructed Community Centre, that currently houses the Student-run Pi Shop, a grocery store, a fruit-&-vegetable shop and a tailor.
The Pi Shop recently moved shop to this new location. They sell everything that one might need on campus - even selling pillows and buckets, when a new batch of students moves in! They've acquired three refrigerators, progressively, one to stock plain milk/lassi/curd and the other two to stock an assortment of cold drinks/ energy drinks / fruit juices.
Two Coffee Machines- one for Hot Coffee/Tea/Soup and another for Cold Coffee/Iced Tea are the most crowded. Of course, the recently acquired freezer (on 6th May, 2014) that houses an assortment of ice-cream is posing tough competition.

The grocery store next door is perfect complement and competition to the Pi Shop. The best part is that fact that since the owner of the Grocery Store has a much larger shop in Rau (the village in which IIM-Indore is situated), he is able to easily & very quickly procure items on demand.

The tailor had begun with repairing torn clothes and soon moved to stitching clothes, selling IIM-Indore merchandise, selling T-shirts, swimming costumes, shoes and white-boards.

The Fruit-&-Vegetable shop has recently acquired a 'Sugarcane-Juice Machine' , an electronic one at that too! All through summer, this saw a steady buzz of thirsty students.

All this activity has been restricted to the ground floor of the Community Centre. There has been talk of a Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) or a Ladies Beauty Parlour that is soon to open on the first floor.

Mangosteen is an actual thing, a fruit to be precise. This was a very recent discovery for me. One that happened by chance!
There's a restaurant by the same name, in Indore. On learning of its existence, I was quick to question the strange name. It was then that I was informed of the existence of this apparently delicious fruit. I also happened to spot it in the market today! I shall dare to try it too, some time soon!