This is my third visit to Chennai. First time around I was a little kid. Only thing I remember from that trip was the nights being so scorching hot that I tried implementing an Elsi ma’am piece of advice about hot climes which involved throwing water on the floor and sleeping on it. I don’t remember it helping much because Chennai can really burn during summers. The second visit here was to LIBA, the place I came to this time also, only the reasons were entirely different. The previous time, I came here for an admission into LIBA, now I was participating in their fest.
Chennai Express: Satyam, Shambhu, Souvik, Ashish, Prakash, Aparna and myself made the trip from Mumbai to Chennai on the Chennai Express from the night of Thursday the 8th to the evening of Friday the 9th. 6 of us barring Satyam made up the official team from NMIMS to LIBA. I pushed these guys into making it in good time to the railway station and we had more than half an hour to chill once inside the train before it chugged away from the station. I didn’t mind it much with my record of missing flights and would much rather be ahead of time than on it. Aparna of course cribbed about the excess half an hour she had to spend in the ‘filthy’ train. This was only the beginning of the pessimistic hurricane that went by various names like ‘Apu’, ‘Venu’ and ‘Gopu’ during the course of the trip.
The train journey was a lot of fun. When we started off, I narrated my NFM (near flight misses) experiences. I have had 2 flight misses and several close shaves with flights till date and it made for some very funny stories in the train. Most of the jokes for the rest of the trip were basically centered around Shambhu who possesses a lot of Hari-like qualities whereby he pretty much puts himself on a pedestal asking people to mock him! I think it’s a quality of all these guys who have been into a lot of sports since a young age and have imbibed this extreme competitive nature wherein they just won’t give up, no matter how disadvantaged they would be. Satyam clearly had the verbal edge over Shambhu and used to take his case so badly, but Shambhu would never call it quits and try to repartee with Satyam and repeatedly entered a badinage where he always got screwed by Satyam.
It was so funny to hear their banters. Satyam would keep calling Shambhu names like ‘chaman’, ‘shikari’, ‘laal’ and what not. I would crack up every time he starts off on Shambhu. Even Souvik would occasionally join in calling Shambhu an ‘irrelevant piece of shit’ or something like that. I remember one occasion when Shambhu managed to get one back. Satyam had asked Shambhu to look out the window saying ‘woh dekh, Sone ki chidiya’ and Shambhu retaliated by pointing at Satyam saying ‘who dekh, chutiya’.
Satyam of course had many other jokes to share along the way. One was a classic Hindi\Northi culture kind of a joke. ‘ek baar train mein ek aadmi TT ki kapde pahen ke ticket puchne laga. Aur jab ek family ke paas ticket nahi thi, woh unka fine leke, train se kuud gaya’. The way he said it itself was so funny that most us broke into a guffaw. Then he goes on to say ‘ek aur baat pata hai? Woh family meri hi thi’. More laughs. Even Ashish chipped in saying ‘ek aur baat pata hai? Woh TT hamara Shambhu hi tha’ lol…
There were very few dull moments in the train, we were either having a good laugh about something (which was Shambhu in most cases) or playing some games or simply catching 40 winks. I remember the games we played. Aparna took 40 minutes to introduce us to two games, ‘Battlefield’ and ‘Mafia’. Both games that Shambhu and I never heard before because Shambhu never understood the point of “indoor” games. According to him, by definition itself, games are outdoors. And I’ve been more fond of simpler indoor games like ‘7up’ and ‘scissor-paper-stone’. But anyway, we were among MBA’s now and a strategy game like ‘Battlefield’ sounded interesting especially with the constraint of having just four players willing to play. Shambhu, Prakash, Aparna and I played two back to back games. And Shambhu took such a long time to figure the game out, but finally got it in the nick to time to beat me to first place in the second game. Aparna who taught us the game sweetly came last in both rounds. Prakash with a lot of ‘Battlefield’ experience and strategic thinking carefully decimated people in the game. He and I drew the first game and Shambhu made such a fuss about the way we played that he introduced a million rules before the next game, every one of which he broke, before the won the second game. That guy is a riot! But ‘Battlefield’ was a good fun time pass game. Definitely gonna play more of it in the future.
Chennai Central: Our eventful train journey came to an end by 7:30 p.m. on Friday the 9th and we got off at Chennai Central where we now had to face the notorious Chennai Rickshaw-wala’s in getting us to LIBA. We decided to split ourselves in 3 autos, one taking Aparna to her relatives house where she planned on spending the night and two taking the rest of us to LIBA. Aparna was quite clear until that point of time that her relatives place was quite close to the station, so she would carry on by herself. I asked her to call me though once she reaches the place. However, just before we found the auto’s, I suggested that some of us should go with Aparna and ensure she reaches her place and then come to LIBA. At that Aparna, like a typical girl, says ‘oh, so you couldn’t think of this earlier?’ man, she is too cute. These feminist women are really funny. They will say and do things to show they can manage things and do whatever a guy can, but deep down they would actually like a guy to look out for them. I can already feel all the feminists out there hotting up as I say this. But I really think its true on some levels. Known a lot of feminists to behave that way. The only difference between a feminist and a non-feminist is that a non-feminist explicitly shows the need for male dominance, but both of them always implicitly feel the need for it, on at least certain essential levels. And for a fact, the non-feminist generation died with our parents. I seriously doubt if any of the girls my age would fit into that category. Almost every girl is a feminist these days. However, in my definition they are ‘wannabe-feminists’. The trick is to let them believe they are true feminists, because if I ever try to argue my case, I’ll get mauled by terms like ‘MCP’ and ‘Jerk’ !!
Anyway, Ashish and I went along with Aparna to drop her home and on the way we stopped at a sweets shop as Aparna wanted to pick something for her relatives. We went into this one place where Aparna gave the shop owners a ‘Baskin-Robbins’ sort of a treatment by asking to taste every sweet available before making her purchase. This was kinda a sequel to our ‘sweety’ experience at Mahabaleshwar, where we went about trying all the jams and juices on display. I was only thankful that Krishna Sweets did not have as much variety as Mapro fruits!
The rest of the auto journey, we sat and debated about MBA at NMIMS, a topic that comes up every time students from NMIMS visit other b-schools and the comparison begins. Aparna was doing the rounds of bitching about college and Ashish and I were on the other side trying to reason with our current situation. I did share some of my feelings, more of which can be read on my other blog: sandeeplife.blogspot.com
By the time we reached Aparna’s relatives place, she was feeling pretty depressed about things. I felt quite bad for her and later even sent a consoling message, but I wonder if it helped.
Anyway, Ashish and I got back to LIBA where the rest of the gang were already settled in. we had our rooms in the third floor of the guys hostel. And there were some neat arrangements made in this hostel. The ground floor was for all the girls from out-station colleges and rooms on the remaining floors were given for the guys. It was a pretty ‘forward’ living situation, and one that is actually quite necessary in a b-school environment. But the arrangement was only for the purpose of the fest, on regular days the girls stay at a hostel outside the campus. Pretty weird, the guys are given a hostel accommodation within the college premises, but the girls are asked to stay outside!
Well, we settled in, freshened up, had dinner at the college canteen, which was very typical southi food that a northi person would normally not appreciate very much. So as expected, all these guys cribbed about the food. Then after dinner, we went for a walk outside campus, in search for a phone booth to make some calls. I called bala for a couple of things and at the end of our conversation he says “dude, things are under control here, you just have fun” I hung up really wishing I could believe that!
LIBA Chrysalis, Day 1: We slept pretty late the previous night, but I managed to wake up and get ready in time for the inaugural ceremony at 9 a.m. Prakash and I walked from the hostel to the fest area and the rest followed later. We registered for some of the events and I was in a dilemma whether to take part in the HR event called Odyssey with Shambhu and Souvik or the Trading event called Preatorian Guard with Prakash and Ashish. Both events required a team of 3 and I was the ‘joker’ who had to choose one of these 2 teams to give it a full strength. I couldn’t make a quick decision and Aparna helped me decide by choosing one of two fingers, best of three. I was to pick the Trading game with that. But on further deliberation, I realized that this game required to be played on both days and I would be busy on Day 2 with the ‘Battle of Thermopylae’ event for which I got qualified and even came here in the first place. Moreover, trading is not exactly my cup of tea, and a second round of Ad deduction in the HR event seemed something that I could manage. So I decided to go with Odyssey and participate with Shambhu and Souvik. Felt pretty bad about ditching Ashish and Prakash, but later on I felt it was probably a good decision as Ashish and Prakash felt Preatorian Guard was not a very well conducted event. Besides, Shambhu, Souvik and I managed to come 2nd in Odyssey. So guess I did take a good decision on going with Odyssey. Only thing I felt bad about was missing out on coming first in Odyssey. There were 3 rounds and our team was leading in first 2. The first round was a crossword, which was pretty much a quiz that Souvik and Shambhu aced. The second round was an ad deduction and our team got the easiest ad of the lot, a Joga Bonito ad and we managed to give a very good HR interpretation to it. The last round was an HR case study. Now this is where the HR strong team of NITIE got the upper hand and we gave a couple of incorrect answers to the judges questions. So in spite of delivering a good analysis on the case and coming first in the previous 2 rounds, we lost out to NITIE and had to settle with 2nd place.
Immediately after this event, I rushed in for the next one, a financial strategy event that Aparna and I were to participate in with Prakash and Ashish. Aparna was busy with Trojan horse, a product launch event that she was participating in with Satyam. But at least I managed to make it in time to help Ashish and Prakash out. But by the time I got there, I felt there was not much help I could really give. Every team was asked to complete 2 tasks, a sudoku and a quiz. I wasn’t familiar with Sudoku, so I sat with Ashish on the quiz. We came up with a few answers, but it just wasn’t good enough.
After this event, I caught up with Satyam and Aparna in Trojan Horse just as they were wrapping up their presentation. Theirs was the last and I sat with them waiting for the results. They were pretty sure that they would come at least 2nd as they felt they had done a pretty good job. The coolest part was, the event organizer comes and tells us that they won the first prize. The two of them were just super elated. Then we all went downstairs, regrouped with the rest of the team and had lunch discussing the days events. A second prize, a first prize, a non qualification, and it was just half of the first days events.
After lunch, we went for the in house quiz event called Hot Gates. Satyam and I made one team and Souvik and Shambhu made the other from NMIMS. We didn’t make it past the elims, but as expected Souvik and Shambhu got through. Then, all of us sat and cheered our team along and even won a lot of chocolates with all the question that got passed on to the audience as, surprisingly, I knew quite a lot of answers. Anyway, at the end of it, once again without any surprise, our team came first and Souvik and Shambhu made a cool 10k together.
With that, Day 1 came to an end and we all decided to go and explore Chennai a bit. However, we were given a task for the next day for the ‘Battle of thermoplyae’ event which was a battle of b-schools event and we were to make a presentation on the analysis of a sick company, Dunlop. We knew that its going to take quite a bit of effort, but decided to go out anyway for just a short while and then get back and work during the night. So Shambhu, Satyam, Aparna and I made our way to Marina beach. Now the entrance to this place has become so much more commercialized and so much more polluted than the last time I was here. We somehow made our way to the beach and Aparna wet her feet for a bit. Shambhu and I attempted to throw Satyam into the water, but we just couldn’t get hold of him right. Then Shambhu and I were playing ‘chicken’ to see how long can we stay at the shoreline of the beach, without the water touching our shoes. After fooling around, while walking back, we saw something pretty unique.
There were life size cut outs of celebrities kept and tourists like us could stand beside them and take photos. Aparna and Satyam stood alongside Rajni Kanth and took a ph
oto. I forced Shambhu to pose alongside Trisha for a snap, but he was just too hesitant. So Satyam and I posed with Trisha. This was a slightly provocative picture and almost everyone was staring at us while we held Trisha in our arms. It was really embarrassing, but a pretty good experience. Who knows when I’ll come to Chennai again to take pictures like this!
We then went for dinner at this mall in Chennai called Citi Central. It was a very flashy mall. Not too impressive on the design, but China would have definitely ‘found the youth’ that he so missed the last time he came with me to Chennai.
We stopped at the first restaurant in the mall we saw and parked our tired and hungry asses there and ordered immediately. It didn’t even bother us that it was a vegetarian restaurant that we came to, because we just wanted to get some food inside us. Aparna used the right words “lets treat ourselves after everything that’s happened today”
After dinner, we loafed around some more in the mall, had some ice cream, pani puri and coffee (what a mix!!) and finally, by about 9, decided to get back to LIBA. On the walk back from the main gate to the hostel, Satyam kept doing things to scare Aparna and poor thing was getting so freaked out too. There was one particular time when we took an incorrect route on purpose and all of us knew we were going the wrong way expect Aparna and when we reached a place where it was so pitch dark that we couldn’t see anything, Aparna totally freaked out and drove her nails through my fingers until we walked out of there and got back on track to the hostel. On reaching the hostel, we realize that the internet is not working and we just can’t get any work done on the Dunlop case without the internet. I even went with one of the organizers to the fest area to see if the net was working there, but the connection was down everywhere in the campus. So we decided to go out and look for one, but what started off as a hunt for an internet café became a visit to an ice cream café. We didn’t mind it much, as in spite of the dinner we had, we still seemed to have the stomach for some ice cream. So 2 ice creams and a French fries later, we were on our way back to the campus. This time around, the three of us really scared the wits out of Aparna. We once again took an incorrect route and started walking towards the fest area instead of the hostel. This time, Shambhu and I kept absolutely quiet and that managed to create an extremely eerie atmosphere and at a particular point Aparna suddenly jerked, turning around, as if she expected a monster standing right behind her. Man, that was some reaction! Shambhu and I hadn’t even done anything yet. We were planning to walk quietly for a bit and on reaching a dark area, turn around and start walking back. But seeing Aparna’s reaction even before we did anything, we decided to just drop all plans and get back to the hostel. After the semi scary experience, we decided to hit the bed and wake up early for the presentation preparation.
LIBA Chrysalis, Day 2: We were supposed to wake up early and prepare the presentation, but we just couldn’t get up before 7. I got ready and rushed to church as it was a Sunday, and reached the venue just in time for our ‘Battle of Thrmopylae’ event. Aparna joined me shortly. She had woken up quite early and gone to her relatives place. She came now to college with one of her cousins, Vidya. I was really glad to see her wear the NMIMS shirt as I didn’t want to be the only one wearing it and I knew the rest of the guys hadn’t even brought their shirts along. We got down to the event instantly and realized that this was quite a complicated event. There were 3 different rounds and the team had to be split in between all these rounds that were to take place simultaneously. There was an HR case study that we thought Souvik can do. Then there was a detailed case on globalization that we felt Shambhu could handle. The last task was a spoof ad to be made in print, TV and radio form that Aparna and I thought of handling. We got to work immediately as we barely had an hour to finish all of this. Vidya sat with Aparna helping her out. Both of them kept dishing out ideas that I kept adding into photoshop and powerpoint. We finished just in time and during our presentation, we realized the biggest fiasco committed. Aparna and I had completely misinterpreted the meaning of a spoof and we made a funny ad on Air Deccan. But a spoof actually meant Airtel lifting off ideas from Hutch and mocking them to propogate their ad. This was actually an ad made by one of the teams and every team did something on these lines except us. We didn’t think this event to be on the serious lines at all, and make a complete mockery of Air Deccan, and ourselves in the process. Shambhu and Souvik did reasonably well in their individual rounds, but Aparna and I knew we screwed it up in our task.
After this, we had to immediately get to work on the Dunlop presentation. I hadn’t eaten anything the whole day, and it was past noon. But I knew there was no time to take a break and that this just had to be done soon. But this task was the biggest drama of the day. Among the 4 participating teams, 2 of them were localites and managed to go back and prepare their presentations. Our team, along with IMT did not have access to the net the previous day and all we could do was use the one hour given to us at this stage to hurriedly prepare the presentation. Aparna was utterly unimpressed with the task in hand and she played the part of a super bitch from a better b-school to the hilt. She went to the organizer, not once, not twice, but three times to make sure she loaded on him completely. She kept going back. Everytime she felt she missed out on an insult. Poor Abhishek Batra, the organizer of this event, tried doing everything he possibly could. Anybody in his shoes would have done the exact tsame thing. The net going off was not his fault. And the only thing he could do now was inform the judges that we be given consideration as we didn’t have enough time to prepare the analysis. But Aparna would just not understand this. Sometime si wonder what would have happned if this girl actually made it into an IIM, with the amount of head weight she already posseses. But she’s really cute. Simply because of the enthusiasm with which she puts in effort. Like a total ring master, she will sit on peoples heads to makde sure they do their work and when it comes to delivery, she will think of everything, including stepping on the other persons toe to let them know who should take the question asked.
By the end of our presentation, one of the judges said he liked the way we presented the case and wished us luck before leaving. It was then that I realized that the presentation we made actually went off decently, given the fact that we had just about an hour, during most of which, Aparna either did her rounds loading off on poor Abhishek or sitting and cribbing about the task instead of working on it. There was one point of time, when I also totally lost it with her attitude and lost my temper on her. Shambhu had to butt in and calm the situation. I dunno how we managed to complete the presentation in time, but somehow the manner in which we presented; noting the main issues and presenting an analysis of it seemed to be a much better way to go about it that the million figures the other teams simply threw in their presentations and pretty much gave no direction to their analysis. That was where I feel we got the edge. The funniest part was, our team conveniently took the topics they were comfortable with, like Bappa taking the introduction, Aparna taking the labour issues and Shambhu taking the branding issues. I was left to speak on the finanicial issues and this was a part none of them wanted to do. I still somehow presented it decently, and this is one thing that I usually can never do properly; speak on a subject that I feel someone in the audience might know better than me and more importantly, know that I am saying incorrect stuff. It is exactly this that makes me deliver bad speeches, but somehow I managed to deliver this confidentally. Looks like I’m turning into a better MBA as the days go by.
Anyway, while we were just chilling at the auditorium later, Abhishek comes up to us and says we’ve come 2nd. I was super thrilled. I really really hoped that we win this event as I put in a lot of effort into it ab initio. The only place where we did screw up was the ad event that Aparna and I took part in. Thankfully Aparna did not flagellate me for it because I think she realized she was as much a part of the mistake as I was. If it was any other way, in true Aparna style, she would have made sure she loaded off on me.
This was our last event. After this we caught up with Praskash and Ashish and they said they were tied in the first place in their event and lost out because of certain issues. But they still came second and now, everyone from NMIMS had won something or the other at LIBA. It was a great feeling. There was a last event of quiz that was conducted. This was the highlight event as LIBA always conducts a good quiz called Exquizite every year. We stayed back for it and thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle by ‘pickbrain’ balasubramanium and the super smart teams on stage. Aparna had left by then as she had a flight to catch. Prakash and Ashish also left to loaf around Chennai as they missed out on that the previous day. The rest of us went out after the quiz to catch a much needed drink, but Chennai, as silly as it sounds, doesn’t serve booze on Sundays!!! So we just had to settle with some dinner, which I rushed through as I also had a flight to catch to Bangalore. It was ma and pa’s anniversary and I had bought them a shell from the Marina beach of Chennai and wrote ‘happy anniversary ma and pa’ on it. I wanted to reach home before mid night to catch them in time and wish them. But as Deccan would always have it, the flight infallibly delayed itself by nearly 3 hours and ensured I reach home only at 2a.m. When I knocked on the door, papa almost sounded worried hearing that it was me. It was only after I wished him that he realized I came down for his anniversary. Then I woke mom up and wished her to. Then I let everybody get back to sleep and sat writing this. With that, my Chennai visit and my first ever fest was done with much aplomb. Definitely looking forward to participate in more now.
October 8, 2007
This was a place I’d been to long time ago. I barely remembered the place, but it was really nice seeing it. Spent some time there. Walked up the small staircase to the top and caught the brilliant view. It was especially spectacular because of all the Muslim people there in lieu of Ramzan.
.m. We got there in time, but had no clue what was in store for us. When the show actually began, we were completely taken aback. It was one of the most brilliant concepts I’ve seen. The show itself may not have been great in content, but the concept behind it was something none of us had ever seen before.
n so that he could show us around. We were so tired from the previous day and feeling so lazy, that by the time we reached Microsoft office, it was nearly 1.
