aM.Be.A.

Master of Business Administration – The most overvalued, over hyped and glorified thing I have ever pursued in my life. A mere master’s degree has become so important part of my life that I eat, drink, sleep the same – no it’s not about academics – it’s about life itself. At one moment I feel “Oh! Why I landed up here?” and the very next moment is an Aha! moment.

Its now almost a year since I have been here in Mumbai doing my MBA. Sometimes these 11-12 months seem like few seconds because one never realizes how time flies here. You just keep fighting against deadlines. Deadlines for everything… Projects, Presentations, Assignments, Surprise tests, Mid terms, End terms, Placements, Alumni meets, Corporate projects, B-school competitions, Seminars, Extra curricular activities, Festivals…. Huh! I am out of breath but this list doesn’t end here… And even after all this you see lots of parties happening… birthdays, achievements or without any reason… Let’s go for booze!!!! Then there are late night movies, strolls on beaches, an ice cream around the corner, and coffee with few close friends…. Clash of egos, clash of personalities, clash of titans and all kinds of clashes... hence helluva sound…. Remaining awake whole night to complete the assignments or remaining awake whole night just to talk to your best friend coz you don’t find time in the daylight… Doing all this and much more but still one thing remains the same… You just keep running against time and never realize when your next birthday is around the corner…

And sometimes you tend to feel as if time is moving at the snail’s pace. It may be due to the concept of relative velocity. You run as fast as time, so time seems static. Am I talking metaphysics? The monotony of doing the same things again and again and again… similar presentations, sometimes even similar topics albeit with few modifications… just stops exciting you. Surprise tests stop surprising you anymore. Hypocrisy comes to fore. It’s only on your birthdays and achievements that you realize that you have many more friends than you counted on your finger tips the previous night. Few close friends become still fewer. Late night parties become sickening and boozing sessions see the same discussions getting repeated. The Steel Man from our class will always tell that how he worked like a coolie at his sister’s marriage. The fanatic from placecom will give you his old wisecracks. The CFA in making will tell me that why I am a CEO material and I will reply back by saying that I don’t have those big ambitions. The chikna Metro sexual always seems to be assessing what the hot girls in our class think about him and still tells that he doesn’t care about girls. I will be generally stuck up with same issues too. The Cool Maratha will keep advising me on my repetitive mistakes and thus this cycle of repetition goes on and on and on… It seems as if time has come to stand still.

Then at the end of the year you see the light at the end of the tunnel. You get a well-deserved break in the form of summers. So here I am working for 2 months in an organization. If I sum up the entire year, I would say I have earned 3-4 decent friends, and some knowledge. I made so many mistakes, which I will never repeat in life. So that’s a takeaway. I can understand hypocrites and losers better. You know this seems pretty interesting. I read the story of the fox and sour grapes when I was a child. It actually applies pretty well for an MBA. It’s as good as any organizational politics. People never appreciate the winners here. They just try to justify their failures and attribute your success to the most hilarious of factors. I have lost a little bit of purity of mind and of course a hell lot of sanity and inner peace. I have understood the ephemeral nature of success. What else? There’s a lot more to tell but words are difficult to come by.

So at the end of the year I am partial MBA and can proudly say “Main Bhi A” – I m also there. By the next year-end I will be “Main Bhi MBA”. I was trying to find various other connotations of MBA that suits the philosophy of me being an MBA. So here it is to conclude my ideas.

aM – it is present of the word BE. It signifies my existence. MBA indeed has become an important element of my existence today. It defines me in a different hue altogether.

Be – No! No! Not Behzad Patrawalla. It just signifies, Be there, Be present, Be real, Be ALIVE.

A – First letter of the Alphabet. What can this signify? This signifies highest category, the power of ONE.

Well this is getting too much for you and me. So let me close here…

MURDER AT NINE TWENTY

Jilted in love?
Nagged by your girl friend?
Frustrated by her behavior?
Relationship turned sour?

Don’t worry! Come to this dark and silent by lane of Mumbai for the easy way out! One stop solution for all your relationship worries! Get a big stone and hit her hard as many times as possible before her cries could reach anyone. Hit her hard on head till she bleeds to death.

Please don’t get me wrong readers. This is not what I am suggesting. This is in regards to a recent murder near my institute. Well you people must be thinking, “So what?” Murders are such a common place thing these days. Nobody raises an eyebrow when a person is killed in a brutal act of violence. Bloodshed doesn’t move us anymore. “So why I am writing about a murder?” May be because it happened when I was just on the other side of the wall or may be because the victim and the culprit both were related to our institute in the past or may be just because its all about love going wrong. May be the whole episode tugged my heart strings a little bit…. May be!!!

Sometimes I wonder how love can be so violent. A friend suggested it was not love. It was plain lust…. Still killing her just because she seemed to nag him after years of being in a relationship is too barbarian a thing to do! Was this manifestation of unmanageable stress levels youth go through? The guy must have killed her in a mental fit because after killing her at nine twenty in the night he went to the nearest police station to surrender. He was a shattered soul. That’s what I felt! Naah! I am not trying to justify his actions, not at all. Neither I want to analyze the reasons for his doing so.

I just wonder about the ephemeral nature of relations these days. Somewhere over the years that innocence in love and friendships has evaporated. Perfection is sought in each and every relation. Nobody accepts you as you are with all your flaws. In pursuit of doing away with all these flaws one may go through repeated cycles of stress. Add to it the fast pace of life, highly demanding jobs, academics, ever growing wants… What we get is a youth who can kill someone at 9:20.

Another thought to close this article - which disturbs me a lot - is that when this murder took place, people at my institute were more worried about the reputation of the institute and even media was linking the murder to the institute as if it is accountable for it. Come on give me a break!!! Somebody has died…..

MUMBHAI-2

26th July, 2005 – Lord Indra (The Rain God) unleashed his fury on the city which is still reeling under the after effects of that hellish night. That’s another matter of fact that the very next day newspapers carried articles proclaiming that Mumbai has bounced back and is again on its feet. That’s great, but I personally feel that this bouncing back phenomenon was restricted to the few areas of Mumbai and to the few sections of the society. Don’t worry friends I am not going to mull over this phenomenon in this article. My area of concern is entirely different. The question I am going to address here is “Why Lord Indra was so angry and cruel that day?”

I chewed over this question for a long time and then all of a sudden I realized and identified the culprit. No, it’s not the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation. Neither the criminal is any disaster management cell nor is Mumbai police. It’s not the government. It’s not the administration. So who is at fault? It’s none other than Mr. R.R. Patil. His one mistake has made the entire city to suffer. Everyone knows that Lord Indra loves the dance performances of Manekas! How can be someone so stupid to estrange the Lord himself by banning all the Manekas of the city? How can he just enforce a blanket ban on the dance bars? I don’t think the man is in his senses. A lots of pujas and yaganas need to be performed to pacify the Rain God, but it doesn’t ensure 100% success. Why not revoke the ban? Why not let these girls earn their livelihood with self respect? Why this stupid self styled champion of the masses is encouraging prostitution?

These dance bars were highlight of the Mumbai night life. It was the mere source of entertainment of the middle class men and earning source for lakhs of people. I know people might argue that these dance bars are haven for crime and criminals. Prostitution, drug peddling and various notorious activities of the omnipresent BHAIS of Mumbhai are linked to these dance bars. But I believe not every dance bar is a Deepa Bar, not every bar girl a Tarannum, not every customer Aditya Panscholi or Muralitharan or a cricket bookie. There are bars where bouncers and owners ensure that girls stick to dancing and there are no nefarious activities. There are bar girls who have been dancing for years now to feed their big families and who have their self respect intact. There are customers and many of them who just go to dance bars for a drink or two and have their share of entertainment because they can’t afford to go to costlier discos (which incidentally were not on the radar of Mr. Patil) where girls are semi clad or semi nude, where everyone is not high on drinks but is flushed with cocaine or whatever they call it, where there is no concept like prostitution but one night stands and sex with mutual consent (of course under the effect of drugs) is a norm. I fail to understand the double standards of Mr. Patil. Or may be he reflects the mindset of our society where dance bars have some infamy attached to it while these discos have a snobbish aspiration value.

Things have changed fast since this ban. There is news of exodus of these out of work bar girls to sexually starved and inhibited cities of Gujarat. In fact prostitution is on rise both in Mumbai and outside. But there are certain other ramifications. One of them is that the sound of “Sheeeeeee Sheeeeeee” which I talked about in my last article will get fiercer and will keep disturbing me. I think after dance bars the massage parlors are next big thing in town. Let Patil think! For us as usual, WAIT AND WATCH! Pity the Lord Indra!!!!!!!