B-School Blues

The Ten Commandments:

1. Thou shalt not slumber – you’re creatures of the night, the undead (surely you don’t call this living, do you?!), zombies with a biological clock that says it’s thirty-three o’clock, when it is, in fact, the crack of dawn.
2. Thou shalt abstain from bunking – and besides meaning you can’t hit the good ol’ sack without this worrying thought as to whether you’ll wake up in time to make a run for it, this makes you sigh and look back at under-grad and 75% with a sort of desperate longing.
3. Honour thy deadlines – or you’re dead meat.
4. Thou shalt participate in class – as often as you can, whenever you can think of anything that’s vaguely related to those valiant words that managed to penetrate through all that fog; or you risk that worst of all nightmares, being asked a question by the kind professor who decides to give everyone a fair chance exactly when you’re thinking wistfully of Maggi and all its merits.
5. Thou shalt not participate in class – on pain of being labelled a DCP(Desperate Class Participator to the uninitiated) and subject to the constant threat of a surprise bumps session. As this is in direct violation of Commandment # 4, those who cannot strike the delicate balance get the worst of both in alternating phases.[1]
6. Rajma is thy sal(i)vation – red, brown, greenish-purple, small, large, humanoid – the menu in the mess is a study of sorts in the manifold manifestations of that humble legume.
7. Thou shalt speak Hindi – or you will have to try desperately to look intelligent through the twenty-seventh rendering of “Gupt Daan”, flap your arms and gesture wildly to the maid to get her to come sweep your room, and stare blankly when a joke that left everyone else in splits sounded vaguely like it involved a wild flower, a porpoise and the Headman of an Afrikaner Tribe.
8. Thou shalt pay for thy sins – right through the nose, every time you’re as much as one second late for a Closed, er, an Open House, every time you so much as bat an eyelid in defiance, and every time your ill-starred cell phone rings merrily in class (COFFEEEE!!!!).
9. Thou shalt be boiled alive – they said you’d do well, not be well-done yourself!
10. Thou shalt wish thou wert never born – ‘cause the Birthday Song goes like this:
    “Happy birthday to you,
    Happy birthday to you,
    We’ll beat you black and blue,
    And make you broke too!”
    
    
    All considered, you’d be much better off doing something relatively harmless, like, say, befriending a homicidal maniac, or tracking down the Man-Eaters of the Tsavo; it would be infinitely more relaxing, and free of the mental and physical stress you’d be subjected to at B-School.

[1] Formally called the acute-obtuse cycle.

The mole

I could tell he was a bitter man. He sat across me as the train roared on, looking out of the window at the lush green fields and the swaying palms with his mouth turned down in distaste, as if he resented the sight of so much beauty. His eyes wore a hunted look, and a queer anger burned in them.

We were the only ones in the compartment, and he turned to look insolently at me, appraising me, my expensive attire, with his eyes. I did not cast my eyes down demurely, but stared back at him. Caught by surprise upon meeting my eyes, he stammered a greeting.

Nodding in reply, I made some inconsequential remark about the weather. He did not answer me. We sat in silence for a while, and I decided I would finish reading the report I was supposed to. I pulled out my file, and there was an exclamation of surprise. I looked up, and saw that he was white and shaking. He pointed to my file, with my company’s name emblazoned boldly across the top.

“Do you…do you work…there?” he asked. “Yes”, I replied shortly. I bent my head down to resume reading, but a bitter laugh escaped him. His eyes were burning with hatred again.

“What a small world! It is strange that I should meet someone who works there, on the very day that I have finally been…” and he stopped short. I looked inquiringly at him. “The day that you…?” I prompted gently. It was as if a dam holding back all the hatred, all the resentment was broken. The words poured out as if he had been dying to say them.

“The day that I have finally been released. I have been in jail for the past five years. For a crime I never committed. And to see that the company that was the cause of it all still prospering, to know that the true culprit still roams free! While I, I who have never lied, who have never stolen a pin, who have always been faithful to my country, to my employers, am left impoverished, without money, without a hope of ever getting another job again!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Six years ago... I worked in a small firm that was working on a new, top-secret project. Only the most trusted employees were in the core team, the technology we were developing was valuable, extremely so, and potentially dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. At this time, a merger was signed with this company, the one you are working for, as our funds were running desperately low.

The new company imposed a lot of rules, and set higher security levels to protect the project. I was one of the three who alone know the code to open the system’s most secure areas.

Suddenly one day, everything turned upside down. We had developed just one sample of the end product, and it was to be tested. It disappeared.

In the search that followed, records of enormous amounts of unaccountable cash that I supposedly withdrew came up. I had no idea as to where it had all come from, and no one believed in my innocence despite the fact that I had an alibi all that day, my secretary. But she was just a fat, dumb-looking girl with nothing remarkable about her except a strange pattern of moles on her hands. Everyone thought she had stepped out a minute and forgotten.

What followed was endless visits to the court, and I was found guilty of betrayal.

Even now, after my release, everyone believes I am corrupt and untrustworthy, I’ll never get a job again.” He ended, bitterly.

“There, there. It’s a jungle out there, but you’ll survive, you can find a job somehow”, I murmured encouragingly. He gave me a grateful look.

The train shuddered to a stop. “I get off here”, I said, and smiled goodbye. I carefully held my bags so I could not wave to him.

Strange that he remembered the moles on my hands all these years. I wonder if he’ll ever realize it was me, that fat, shapeless creature with a perpetually bewildered expression on her face. Even if he does, he’ll never realize that that helpless girl was the one who actually took all the money and sold that sample.

I smile to myself. Small world, indeed.

What's in a name?

When I was a kid, I was mystified by some of the deeper secrets of the English language, and its etymological conundrums. For instance:

• “Cutlet” - A baby lesion? A signed permission to slash someone? A gash rented out?
• “Mongoose” - A primate that changed its mind halfway and decided to be a fowl?
• “Nosegay” - A happy olfactory organ? (I could think up more now, but I was a kid, remember?)
• “Wardrobe” – The Robes’s child? A battle waged in Drobe, wherever that is?
• “Cartilage” – Ploughing a vehicle?
• “Ceiling” – Go out with a Chinese? A kind of wax? Hunting a marine, flippered mammal?
• “Caterpillar” – A feline column?

Turns out I wasn’t too far off the mark…well, for most of them, at least…okay, okay, I come close quite a few times…look, I’ll prove it to you…

My Microsoft® Encarta® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation says:

• Cutlet - From French côtelette , literally “little rib,” from, ultimately, Latin costa “rib” (source of English coast). The modern spelling reflects the idea of a “small cut” (of meat).
• Mongoose - From Marathi maṅgūs.
• Nosegay - Gay from gay in the obsolete sense “ornament”.
• Wardrobe - From Old Northern French warderobe , variant of French garderobe , from French garder “to guard” + robe “robe.”
• Cartilage - Via French from Latin cartilago .
• Ceiling - Formed from French ceil “sky”.
• Caterpillar - Alteration (probably influenced by obsolete piller “plunderer”) of assumed Old Northern French catepelose , from assumed late Latin catta pilosa “hairy cat.”

See? Not bad, huh?

Of rainstorms and reflections

I love the rain. It always makes me go slightly mad. Maybe it’s because of the association with my name, maybe it’s because I’ve always lived in Tamil Nadu where there’s never been enough water to suit anybody, or maybe it’s because it’s such a sensual thing, the rain…the cold droplets on your skin, that enticing smell of wet earth, the pearly, splashy, rumbly music the rain makes…I love the rain.




I’ve heard of April showers, and how unexpected they are, but today, I actually watched one as it sneaked stealthily up behind us on tiptoe and sprang out, screaming, “SURPRISE!!!” at the top of its voice...I was sitting in my room, sipping my coffee, when I heard the coconut tree outside swaying. It had become really windy all of a sudden, and I was thinking how nice it would be to go up to the terrace, and before the thought even finished telling me what it was, there was a flash of lightning, a rumble of thunder, and with no further ado (except a rather dramatic drum roll on the roof), down came the rain!

That reminds me of a rhyme we used to sing at school…

Incey Wincey Spider
Climbed the water spout;
Down came the rain
And washed the spider out.

Out came the sun
And dried up all the rain;
Incey Wincey Spider
Climbed the spout again.

I was always rather impressed by that spider’s irrepressible endurance and its incredible tenacity of purpose. I mean, if you ever scaled a sheer vertical surface about five hundred feet high (that’s how high it must be to the spider, relatively speaking, don’t you think?) and were washed down in a sudden avalanche of water, broken tiling and dried leaves, you’d give up in a huff.

But trying again does have its merits; sure, you have to work your way up all over again, right from the bottom, while all the other spiders’ve scuttled away to greener pastures (or should I say, insect-infested-er corners), the entire arachnid family tells you you’re wasting your time, and even the tiny mites who fall over their own four left feet all the time laugh at you for being such a fool…but in the end, I must say, the view from the top is worth it. College, here I come!