Ghajini

Never before did I see a movie named after its villain. Yes, Ghajini is the name of the villain. Whatever the word means, I don't think there can be an acceptable excuse for naming a movie after its villain. So it's not Amir Khan in and as Ghajini, nor is it Asin. Ever since I heard about Ghajini, I had been thinking it must be the heroine's name. But when I saw the movie today, I found it weird that it wasn't so, in spite of the word sounding so feminine.

Well, there was a lot more that was weird in the movie. I'd call it funny, rather than weird, coz weird is a very respectful word and the movie does not deserve so much respect.

The movie starts with a wonderful video showing the insides of the brain - the neurons in beautiful patterns, connected to each other through their dendrites (if my long-term memory is working fine, that's what they are called. But it fails me most of the time, so am not sure). I know from reading a few books on brain that those junctions at which the neurons are connected with each other are seats of our memory (besides something called hippocampus). Thus our memory consists of lots of information in bits and pieces scattered all over our brains. It is believed that the brain classifies all that information through associations and relationships. How we save and retrieve data is not known with any certainty, but ya, as per the movie, if you are hit by an iron rod twice on your head, one of the things that can happen is that you might lose your long-term memory and an ability to convert your short-term memories into long-term ones. That's what happened with Amir Khan, named Sanjay Singhania in the movie.

Though it was too big a leap for the Indian Cinema to talk about brains, memories and stuff, the makers of Ghajini did screw up in neat, clean and simple manner in a lot of places; such that any person with reasonable common sense and short-term memory could notice and appreciate that bollywood lived up to its tradition. Plus, Amir did a great job of playing Rajni Kant and Sunny Paa Ji at various points in the movie. I would have liked to see the Shahrukh inside him too, but I guess the 8-packs had killed his softer side. He was more fond of howling like Tarzan than talking anything romantic with the girl, who, by the way, was very cute. I have fallen in love with her; somebody go and tell her please.

So Mr. Sanjay Singhania's problem was that he had lost his long-term memory, and at the same time, his brain could not convert its short-term memory to a long-term one. His short-term memory had a time span of 15 minutes. But there was a funny catch here. The short-term memory problem did not mean that at any point of time Amir remembered whatever happened over the past 15 minutes from that very moment. His memory, in fact, flushed itself every 15 minutes, and once it did that, fresh memory got stored for the next 15 minutes and so on. It's amazing the brain could work in periods of 15 minutes each. (Can this be called quantization of memory?). I am wondering when the first period started. It could be the moment the head was hit. Or it could be some time after that. Or it could be the moment Amir got up every morning from sleep. But then, here's the funnier part. Amir kept a clock with him all the time, that rang an alarm every 15 minutes to indicate to Amir that his memory had been flushed. (How can it be so perfectly timed, I don't understand). This brings back to me memories from the days when I used to be a Software Engineer by designation and claim to be a Java Programmer. I remember from timepass at Geometric Software Solutions Co. Ltd. that Java has something called a Garbage Collector - a program built into the Java Virtual Machine (it's a bigger program that executes the Java bite-code created after compiling any Java program). The Garbage Collector is a process that runs periodically. It does the job of cleaning up, deleting unwanted objects (data) and clearing the memory for reuse. It seems the Garbage Collector for Amir ran after every 15 minutes and somehow, by mistake, it classified every piece of information as unwanted and deleted it.

The movie starts with Jiah Khan, a medical student, wanting to take up Amir Khan's case for a course project. She seems like one of those good students, whose asses itch all the time to do challenging stuff, original work, not copy, not globe, learn and come first. Such people don't share their notes, don't tell what they study and where they study that from, and are teachers' pets. I used to be like that in school, but then I deteriorated (or improved?) continuously thereafter. Coming back, Jiah's prof says no to her request to study Amir, coz Amir has police case running on him, which makes him a risky thing to study. Jiah insists (the itch again), but finally gives in.

How does Amir do his basic stuff in spite of all the problems with his head? How does he survive? Thrive? Jiah asks the prof. The prof says, a lot of stuff Amir does by instinct and by stuff in his subconscious mind. And for his day-to-day activities, Amir manages by writing notes, lots of them.

Hmmmm, so after a scene where Amir beats up a guy, kills him, takes his pic with a Polaroid camera, gets Ghajini's number from his cellphone and some more info about Mr. Ghajini Dharmatma, we move to Amir's house.

It's a flat in Hiranandani, at a walking distance from IIT Bombay (Powai, Mumbai - 400076). I used to go there with a few other frustu guys on weekends to see girls and have aalu ka paratha in Galleria. 2 Parathas for 25 bucks. And very tasty too.

Don't know what Amir had for food, he was never shown eating. His flat was in a very posh locality. (He stayed there coz it reminded him of Asin, at a subconscious level I suppose). Inside, his house was a scary place. Every nook and corner was labelled. Amir enters, keeps his pistol, wallet, camera, pics, etc. in their designated places and goes to sleep.

As he gets up, he gives the wondering idiot look - mai kahaan hoon - and then goes to the bathroom, which has stuff written all over. Somewhere on its mirrors, it is written take off your shirt, and that's where Amir gets a chance to flaunt his 8-Packs. But then, you see things written all over his body which served as reminders. He had written things like Revenge, Ghajini, Kill Him, people's mobile numbers, etc. etc. all over his body. So when Amir sees all this in the mirror, he goes nuts, does a Tarzan + Sunny Deol for some time, runs around like crazy, does push ups, gymnastics, runs on a treadmill and then calms down and quietly takes care of his morning ablutions.

Some of his reminders were written very intelligently and strategically. Like when he wears his socks, he finds a note etched on his feet that asks him to take care of something. I am sure he had stuff to look at when he peed. That must be the most important stuff, the heroine's name or something, stuff that he shouldn't miss by any chance. But alas, the movie skipped that detail. But one thing is for sure - a mental case like Amir can't do all this alone, without anyone's help. But then, if we think so much, just like dogs, even we can't enjoy motion picture.

To help him recall stuff, Amir keeps a polaroid camera, probably with perpetually running batteries. He takes pics of anything important and writes a note below it, so as to make sense of it later. Amir's doc is the same guy as Jiah's prof. So when Amir goes to meet his doc, he stumbles upon Jiah, who had seen Amir's pic on her prof's computer. As soon as she sees Amir, her itch comes back with all its intensity. She makes him sit with her and asks him questions about how he manages and stuff. Amir tells her about his camera, his alarm clock etc. She asks him to take her pic twice, one copy for Amir, one for her. Amir obeys, writes "My Friend" below both copies, gives one to Jiah and keeps one in his pocket.

Meanwhile, a police officer tracks down Amir through a bus ticket he left at the house of the guy he killed a little while ago for Ghajini's info. The cop goes to Amir's house, fights with him, hits him on his head and then ties him down. And then he starts searching Amir's house frantically, and gets hold of Amir's diary. And then... the flashback...

Asin does modelling for an ad-making company. She is this nice, cute, playful, talkative and simple girl (à la Basanti), who loves street kids and helps blind people cross the road. And to the latter, she offers additional services like a running commentary of what's happening around the place. And Amir is a Harvard graduate, who has come back in India to run the company his dad had established and dreamt of making big. It's a mobile service provider and has biiiiig targets in terms of cell-phone subscription levels and global expansion.

I think I am getting into a lot of detail. I suggest you do go and watch the movie yourself coz, anyway, you need to see the movie first and not like it much so as to appreciate my post. I'm going to be brief from here on.

Amir's men come to meet Asin (Kalpana Shetty) at her workplace because they need her permission to put a hoarding, showing their company's ad, on top of her house. And from bits of their conversation with Asin that her boss overhears, he misunderstands that Amir has sent his men to ask Asin out. Asin refuses to allow for the hoarding. Her boss thinks she refused to go out with Amir (typical bollywood-kollywood-tollywood funda - didn't hear the most important words and got the wrong message and that made all the difference). Her entire office now feels she has an affair with Amir - the great business tycoon - and Asin enjoys this little moment of fame and never tells them it's not true.

A lot of bla happens around this, like Asin unknowingly gives an interview to Mayapuri magazine about her affair with Amir. Amir gets all heated up when he sees that article, goes to check her out and set things straight, but when he sees her he is all impressed with her qualities that I mentioned above. He can't talk to her properly, gets shy and nervous, like me. He does not tell her he is the Sanjay Singhania she's been saying she's having an affair with. He pretends to be someone else, looking for work. Asin promises to help, very soon gets him a chaddi ad to shoot for. They go out often, get close, Amir proposes, she accepts, Amir still hides he is Sanjay Singhania to make sure Asin does not love him coz of his money.

Some more bla - Asin has to get Sanjay Singhania as the chief guest to a party her boss organizes. And since no one has seen the new-in-India Sanjay, she tries to train Shahrukh's look-alike she knows to act as Sanjay in the party. But then Amir makes fun of his style during the rehearsals, then impresses Asin with some celebrity tricks and gets to play himself as chief guest for the party. Huh! And then, he turns up for the party in style, everyone thinks he is Sanjay, Asin thinks she knows he is not Sanjay, Amir - who is actually Sanjay as we know - even writes a cheque of 5 lacs for charity, etc. etc. My friend Hitesh says all this was meant to make fun of Shahrukh Khan, but I think it did not come out so clearly and so well.

A little more bla - when Amir proposes to Asin, she accepts after a night's thinking, but then she has taken a vow... that she won't marry until she buys 3 Ambassador cars, coz her dad owned 3 of those in the 1990's and had to part with them coz her uncle cheated her dad, who died soon thereafter... So Asin buys one Ambassador car the very next day so that she can marry Amir sooner, takes some street kids and Amir for a drive, Amir drives... Phew!!!... And then, a little later, Amir has to go to London for a 10-day business trip, but he tells Asin that he's going to his village coz his mom is sick, and that he is planning to sell his ancestral land to arrange money for her treatment. And hearing this, Asin sells her newly bought Ambassador car and gives the money to Amir, says don't sell the land, it's ancestral and stuff, take this 1.35 lacs, go to your mom and come back soon! Wow, it can't get any better than this! It's driving me crazy!!!

As you can see, it's getting more and more uninteresting. But interestingly, this was the part I enjoyed the most. That's what love does to you! (i.e., mine with Asin). I'd recommend the movie only due to the parts in which Asin was there. Amir is not worth anything. I don't like his acting, his style, or anything he is admired for. Asin rocks in the movie. When she was there, everything illogical seemed logical, everything stupid seemed cute...

I am not going to tell the remaining story. In short, the flash-back is shown in 3 pieces - the first 2 are in 2 different diaries of Amir read by the Police Inspector and Jiah respectively, and the last was narrated by a lady to Jiah. Jiah, I felt, was the most irritating character in the movie. God cure her itches. Amen. In the end of all flashbacks, Asin is killed by Ghajini, in front of Amir. Amir is hit by a rod a couple of times and phurrrrr goes his memory, short-term, long-term whatever. And for no reason at all, Amir keeps his head shaven thereafter, with a little bit of hair. I say this because in the end, when every score is settled, Amir is shown with fully grown hair. So I don't understand why a newly short-term memory guy would want to shave his head once in 10 days (I can estimate the duration from my experience). Also in the bald look, there is a line of stitch on his head towards its right, which makes the thhobda look sexy (from a girl's point of view). Reminds me of Mridul, my school friend, who used to stick a band-aid tape on one side of his forehead without any injury coz it looked sexy (from a girl's point of view).

In a scene inserted in a very vague fashion (Amir was in the hospital, then suddenly shown at home, and then again in the hospital), Ghajini tries to erase all his traces from Amir's memory-recall mechanism by striking off all that Amir had written over his body and cleaning up all the stuff that Amir had written all over his house. He doesn't pull down Amir's shorts though. I am sure he missed erasing quite a few vital clues which later helped Amir get aroused (and kill Ghajini). He also destroys all of Amir's pics and his camera. I think this was one of the most stupid things shown in the movie - erasing and destroying stuff that helped Amir recall Ghajini - coz there were many people who knew Amir and could tell him about Ghajini (that's how Jiah came to know the facts). Otherwise how did Amir know who killed whom and whom to kill and for what? Some of it was through a faint recall of Asin saying Ghajini's name when she was dying. But beyond that, it's globe. The movie shows Jiah helping Amir recall everything that Ghajini did and bringing out the Tarzan in him.

Interestingly Jiah was the one who earlier went and warned Ghajini that he must beware Amir, who wanted to kill him at any cost. She even got Amir caught by the police by trapping him in the lift of her girls' hostel. (Thank God, girls' hostels at IIML don't have lifts). The police injected Amir with whatever they use to make mad people unconscious, and then stripped him of all clothes except pants, and called up every guy whose number was etched on his body. Only Ghajini's number worked. Ghajini turned up, identified Amir as Sanjay Singhania and said Amir was his friend. Soon Amir's doc and managers turned up from nowhere and bailed him telling the police that he's a psycho case. At this point I got irritated by the tam-gult-ness of the movie.

Finally, Amir's love story and the truth of Ghajini, which Jiah figured out by asking a random woman (not really random coz she was a witness to Asin's murder in a way... wonder how in movies people always find the right person to ask the right question and get the answers too, all that in a flash), made Jiah take Amir's side and so she helped Amir kill Ghajini in the end.

The movie ended with Amir happily settled, spending his time with kids at an orphanage, hair fully grown now. Jiah visits often. Itch never dies.

One question - Can a person with short-term memory (of say 15 minutes) and no way of transferring stuff to long-term storage, be aware, rather 'know' in any way that he has this memory problem? I guess he can, if he writes on his body - "I have a short-term memory, can't remember beyond 15 minutes into past."... similar to what Amir did haan?

some eco-talk

Another set of exams finished a couple of days back. Then we had the gruelling Summer Placements where I made it to TBSL. I have got into this habit of posting once after every mid-term and end-term exam, which I desperately want to change. I wish I could post once every day. Won't make a resolution this time, but ya, am going to be more frequent now on in updating my blog. Promise!

The current financial crisis has left many thinking about how good we are at managing the resources of this world. Economics, which such an endeavor is called, has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. But is still imperfect and confusing. God, which may be another name for chance (depending on what you choose to assume), created this world within a framework governed by a set of rules. Man created two things to make his life easy - (i) money, and (ii) machine. Machine is our way of emulating God - the Creator. We have been o.k. at it, making inventions fitting into our ever increasing range of discoveries, to make our lives easier and convenient, to give a majority of us more time for higher intellectual pursuits and to some, who have the extra brains, to go for more research on complex phenomena and make more discoveries and inventions, so that the show never stops. We've probably only scratched the surface of what is there and can be done.

Money, for one, is the most interesting invention of man till date. It is the key driver of Economics. It is perhaps the only invention of man which he himself doesn't understand properly in spite of having worked with it for centuries in one form or another, upgrading it to forms thought to be simpler to comprehend and manage, but never too sure whether it works the way it has to. Of course not everyone needs to understand how it works to be able to use it. For example, we use the television without the slightest idea about how it works. But at the same time, there is someone in this world (in fact there is a good number), who understands everything about how the television does whatever it does to give me what I need. Ditto with other machines, and in fact, every other creation of man, besides money.

I wanted to write more on this topic, but am ending it here... am tired of seeing this incomplete article lying on my desktop for more than a week now... and of my inability to put more head into it at this stage... am also tired of seeing my blog craving for a post... so, there you go...

Sochvichaar Post Term-1...

We are witnessing the worst financial crisis of our times. Big giants like Lehman Brothers are getting bankrupt. One look at the events that led to it, and we see that it's all so funny. Now everybody asks - how the hell could they do such stupid things? No answers, everyone is quite silent about it. I guess it's obvious, at least to those who know the answers, that stupidity comes naturally to men, particularly when they work in groups.

I was in my home-town last week for a vacation. It was a hard-earned 5-day freedom from studies. I got some taste of UP as I travelled both sides by train and spent a few hours in Allahabad both times while waiting for the next train. I enjoyed it a lot too, coz in spite of staying in Lucknow, I was hardly able to get a feel of the local culture because of living on the outskirts of the city and in the confines of a campus that keeps me busy all the time. Being a lover of Hindi language since my childhood, I had always wished that I had been in UP - the heart of the Hindi Heartland - and now, I am in UP, and I am not making the best of my interest in the place. I try my best though, in my own little ways, whenever I get a chance. Sometimes I feel I am interested in too many things. Each one gets only a small share of my time. However, I guess, life's best this way!

One of the things I did during my stay in Bilaspur (my home-town), was to visit my school - the place where I studied for the 12 best years of my life. The last I went there was 6 years back. Thereafter, I stopped going for 2 reasons - (1) It was getting increasingly clear that I was getting bald and I couldn't stand my teachers and the kids constantly staring at my head in surprise. (2) I felt it was not so much fun being in school when you are not a student there.

I had an achievement to boast of this time - something that fooled people into believing that my career has a direction. And now I am more comfortable with my baldness too. Mainly after I got rid of the long strands of hair on the sides which desperately tried to cover the bald patches on top, giving me enough scope to believe everything's alright (though whenever I came to know, that everyone knew pretty well that it was empty underneath, I used to burst into tears that never came out). And I had an emotional attachment with the place, and wanted to see it once again and walk the memory lane for a while. So I was encouraged to visit the school.

The school has undergone lots of changes since I left. It is the same old building, but the where-happens-what has changed. There are 2 TT Tables now (kept in the room that earlier contained jars of preserved snakes and weird animals). There are many new teachers, only a few of those who were there in my time are left. The early morning prayer is quite different now. Earlier we had only the National Anthem and a prayer to God which started as "O My God, Teach me to love you....". There have been 3 additions to this sequence - a sanskrit shlok (Tamasoma Jyotirgamaya), a Hindi song (sung very badly) and another that I don't remember. After that someone reads a Thought of the Day on the mike, then another reads out the news headlines and yet another reads the Fact of the Day. Each child now belongs to one of the 4 Houses denoted by colors. The houses also have names after great leaders. The 'color' system was how it used to be. And I was told that 'someone' wanted the houses to have leaders' names. So now each house has 2 names - one after a color and one after a leader. The children wear badges of the colors of their respective houses, which looks nice as compared to the only-blue badges we had in our time. The houses are allocated in the beginning of the year, based on roll numbers.

There were many other changes that I noticed. I am sure many missed my eye, coz it was a brief and casual glance over the place. Many things had improved, a few looked the same.

The teachers took some time to recognize me and then digest how different I looked. Their stares made me nervous. As I flaunted my newly acquired IIM tag, the teachers got struck with the idea which I was always afraid they would. They asked me to speak to all the school children about career goals, hard-work, motivation and stuff. I showed reluctance, trying my best to show expressions of scare and not of air. It is easy to be misunderstood in this kind of situations. But I am sure I must have screwed up, coz the expressions that usually show up on my face are never what I intend.

I was asked to speak to all the students after the Prayer next morning. I ran back home and slept. I find sleep the best remedy for tension. Then later in the evening, I chatted with Preeta, my educationist friend, who made the entire speech for me in 5 minutes. And Sindhu pumped in some confidence into me. And I was ready to go and deliver!

The next day, after the Prayer, the Principal went to the mike to introduce me. She discovered after she talked some globe about me, that she didn't know my name. With one hand on the mike, she asked me my name, and I had to tell her thrice before she understood half of it. She made some sound to take care of the other half. The children didn't care. It didn't matter to them. And soon thereafter, she asked the children to go back to their classes. She turned and walked back to her office. I was taken aback. What about the speech I had in my pocket? Surprisingly, the kids were still standing, as if they knew what was coming. I quickly grabbed the mike and started with my speech by saying that I'd like to share my experiences and learnings.

The speech went on nicely for about 10 minutes. I talked about the importance of short-term and long-term goals, knowledge, information, internet, extra-curriculars, art, decision making etc. Not sure how many understood what I was talking. The kids, who were standing in the sun, in straight lines with their respective classmates, were looking here and there (The guys were looking at the girls, the girls were looking at me). After about 10 mins of my speech, one girl fell on the ground, dropped unconscious. One Sir, who was standing on the stage next to me, asked me to wrap up my speech soon, otherwise more kids would start falling, according to him. Not because of the speech, but because they come to school without having proper breakfasts, he added. I immediately jumped to the end of my 'prepared' speech leaving whatever I was talking right at that point. The end was 4 lines from a hindi poem (courtesy - our Sanskrit Sir) written by Jaishankar Prasad -

Is path ka uddeshya nahi hai,
Shraant bhavan mein tik rehna,
Kintu pahunchna us seema tak,
Jiske aage raah nahi...

The speech ended. The students seemed very happy. They clapped with full energy. I got down the stage. Came accross Mams. Asked them how it was. They said I spoke well. One mam was laughing a lot. Not sure what the matter was. I said bye byes and ran away before anyone else could catch me.

As I was driving back on my Kinetic Zoom, I felt good about my speech. I made one more addition to my looooong list of career options - Motivational Speaker. Made another mental note - to add this point in my CV for the summer placements - that I gave a motivational speech to school kids.

I am back in Lucknow now, after my short vacation. It's 2nd term of PGP now. New courses, new profs, Summer Placements... Life Rocks!

Limits

I once did a mistake of declaring in a B-School interview that I had a great sense of humor. I was asked to crack a joke, and I froze. It happened again today. I didn't freeze, and managed to blabber something. And one of the interviewers burst out laughing, unusually loud, while the others had no clue what was going on. Don't know what the funny guy found funny in my joke, but there must have been something. I find it really hard to crack a joke when somebody asks me to. I find it hard to demonstrate any of my talents when asked to. I can do it when I like, but not on request.

I have conducted various kinds of experiments with people's sense of humor, and each one has been a great experience. It's really amazing how people behave at the very upper limit of their sense of humor, the point at which everything breaks down and they behave in strange and unexpected ways. It's like the Zero Kelvin - you never know how things would behave until you reach there. Teasing people is fun, even at the extreme limits. I feel proud to say that I was beaten once and was on the verge of being beaten on multiple occasions. Some started crying. Some embarrassed me in public. Once a strong guy got so pissed off that he lifted me and held me upside down for about 5 minutes, until I promised I'd never tease him again. People have tested my limits too. But we'll talk about my limits some other time ;-)

I think, not only humor, but for every personality trait, the best way to judge a person is to take him/her to the extreme limit. That's where you get the real picture of the personality. This reminds me of Stress Interviews, which are based on the same concept. So it seems I am not talking "globe", as they say in the IIMs :-)

Law

The weirdest thing about Law is that it is never taught to us, though we are all expected to be law-abiding citizens. How much can we learn from movies, family, society and media? It is easy to miss a lot. Most of our sense of law is out of common sense and the inherent human moral and ethical values. Besides that, we don't know what's there in the books. The only people who know law are those who are there to punish us or defend us. That's funny.

Sochvichaar Post Mid-Term...

Mid-term exams ended yesterday. I had a good time writing the exams. In fact it was my best time at IIML so far - I had enough time to sleep (almost 10 hours everyday), there was no running around doing assignments, no "uninteresting-but-attendance-mandatory" stuff organized by the seniors and no lectures to attend. And as far as studying for the exams was concerned, it didn't require much effort. That is because we are forced to study soon after the lecture whatever is taught in it. Otherwise we will not be able to do the assignments or take the quizzes, which are in plenty and evenly spread all over the terms.

Not that I did all exams well, in fact I screwed a few so badly that I feel ashamed when I think of what I wrote in those, but that is what exams are all about. And when they end, it's celebration time. It doesn't matter whether you were mugging day and night or sleeping 10 hours. When the exams end, you must chill out.

So to chill out, I went in the evening with a few of my friends to the most popular hang-out for IIML guys - the Saharaganj mall. It's a good mall by all standards and has a multiplex too (PVR Cinemas). The quality of the crowd is not even as good as it is in Chennai, but sometimes you get to spot cute faces with their moms and dads.

I also watched a movie - the latest one in the Mummy series. It was gross. I had tried hard to convince everyone for "Ugly aur Pagli" but nobody agreed. It seemed that everyone was incredibly prejudiced when it came to selecting a movie. I was not able to decide whether it's past experiences that determine people's future decisions, or whether it's prejudice, or whether it's the fear of accepting a liking for something that is not socially popular or has a low acceptance. Probably it's the sum of all three, and a few other factors. But I am forced to conclude based on this, that not many people form opinions by looking at things in isolation with an open mind. And moreover, there is always some gap, which may be huge for some people, between the opinions that they express and the opinions that they truly hold. The latter may even be buried inside oneself, with people lying to themselves about what they truly believe in.

I also had plans to drink, but finally I didn't because of lack of enthu and lack company. Another strange phenomenon - not many seem to drink at IIML, not the majority for sure.

A thought crossed my mind as I was sitting through the economics lecture today. All my understanding about human beings has come out of a domain of people with whom I have interacted to a certain degree. And it's a natural tendency of every human being to interact more with people he/she is more comfortable with, which is usually people who are similar to him/her. Complementarity of personality could be another criterion - like a person who is weak in his leadership skills would try to be in either of 2 kinds of groups, again depending on his motivation. One - a group with a strong leader, if he chooses and likes to be a follower. Two - a group full of people with weaker leadership skills or stronger skills of 'following', where he can assume leadership position, if he really wants to lead inspite of his disability. (Is following a skill? It is normally seen as lack of a skill rather than a skill in itself. There are quite a few qualities like this. But over time, some of these voids have come to be seen as skills. Can you name a few such qualities? Am I writing a textbook :P?)

I concluded from the analysis in the last para that howsoever I try, I will never be able to understand all people. Because finally I'd always project myself over them and look at them as if they are like me. If not me, very similar to me. I realize that it's very difficult to appreciate the fact that all human beings are different. Though we know it, we never accept it or recognize it. Perhaps because that would make us feel different from others. Which is scary; because the way we see things and ourselves, we accentuate all negative differences and even tend to see the positive ones in a negative light. That's our internal defense mechanism. We want to get rid of all negative differences before it hurts. This kind of short-sightedness and bias in judging people pervades all our personalities and so it is never possible really, to even understand people with a free and independent mind. Perhaps that's the reason many books on personality development ask you not to try to understand people because no matter how much you try, you'd never be able to understand people fully. That may be on the very extreme, but the reality lies somewhere not very far from it.

Our classes started today itself, the day after the last mid-term exam. It feels as if nothing happened the last one week. As if it was a beautiful night of sleep with dreams both good and bad, but then we woke up again in the morning, just early enough to manage some corn flakes for the breakfast and then run to reach for the lecture on time, so that we don't miss the attendance.

IIT vs IIM - First Impressions

I wanted to make a long post on my first experiences after joining IIML before I make any other post about life here, but laziness and business have kept me so occupied that I couldn't even get started. So I thought, let's forget it, and write whatever comes to mind and at least be active on the blog.

Being from an IIT, I can't stop comparing IITs and IIMs. Although there are huge differences in terms of scale of operations and the kind of people who fill the respective campuses, which further leads to significant cultural differences, there are lots of similarities between the two categories of premier institutes of India. The infrastructure, facilities, food-standards and the academic format is more or less the same, with the obvious differences here and there based on the need and scale. The number of females is awfully low in both places. However the ones in IIMs seem more approachable, reachable, amiable and amicable to me. The level of interaction is good. A common mess for all at IIML helps a lot. On the whole, I felt that students at IIMs are more down-to-earth, interactive and friendly than IITians. The latter have serious attitude problems (it's totally my opinion).

I agree it is not fully justified to compare IITs and IIMs coz they comprise students of different age groups, qualifications, maturity and experience levels; and most of the cultural and behavioral differences are due to that. The personality of an IIM student is the consequence of all the learnings he has had during his graduation, job and relationships, while an IITian, when he starts, is just out of school and is very immature in his thinking and approach to life.

Probably that explains why IIM guys are bigger muggus than IITians. And to take it further, it seems to have some interesting effects on characteristics of the products these institutes produce. Because of being less dependant on books and technical knowledge, and being more capable of sailing through courses and stuff inspite of not learning anything, IITians tend to be more open and comfortable in getting into stuff they don't have any clue about to start with. In other words, IITians are better risk takers and IIM guys are more focussed and hard-working. It's a sweeping statement though, and I see exceptions on both sides. But broadly, this seems to be the case.

A very special case is - guys in IIM who graduated from IIT; a category I have not thoroughly studied yet, as it includes me too. Hmmm, may be I am stereotyping a lot, which is not always a good thing to do. But in many cases, stereotypes do exist, and represent a majority of their kind.

Again, these are totally my views, based on my observations. I have seen too much of IITians. But I must say, I've just got started with the IIMs. So hold on and keep visiting for more, as I see more of it.