Zero IQ talks..

We all paraded to an place in the heart of chennai to eat rajasthani food. It is amazing to see how we all crave for food that even remotely tastes like home food. So after a clash with auto rickshaw, a plesant train journey and a ride in a crowded share auto, we finally reached our destination. After a yumee rajasthani food which we all smacked up in few minutes, one of my friends Ms S suddenly exclaims out of nowhere.. "You know wht, my grandfather was working for the King of Rajasthan". Then Mr R, trying to show off his so called great GK, says "You know, hmm, that king had 120 wives". By then Ms S was in a mood to show off her ancestral power and without wasting any time adds "The king has a huge palace with more than 100 rooms".

There..this was enought to trigger a very interactive and informative conversation. So Mr H exclaims, "So what does a big palace with more than 100 rooms have to do with 120 wives. Or is there a connection.? He probably had as many wives as many as bedrooms in the palace". Mr V innocent (read : dumbest) of the lot asks, "Is it really so? But what if he has a crush on one more woman. Then where will she stay?" Everyone is rolling with laughter by now. Mr A starts applying management principles. He says "The fixed cost of maintaining the palace is the same. So as per the costing principle, more the number of wives, fixed cost per wives will reduce and cost per product..errr...cost per wife will reduce drastically".

"Ok", Mr H says, "I was actually planning to buy a 3 bhk in Pune. Now I know how I could utilise this house better. Maximising profits and minimising cost. So Ms S, when you marry make sure your husband buys only a 1 bhk house, else umm..". Ms S, showcasing women power replies almost immediately, "Yeah so good for me, I will keep 2 husbands...haha".

Everyone was dumb struck by this analysis.

As if this was not enuf, Ms S screams again "I wonder how the king must be keeping track of which wife to meet each day (read: night). Again Mr R "See here we have to be little more analytical.. I come from operations background and this is extremely simple supply chain problem. "The wife must be hanging a oil lamp in front of her room. This way, the King can take a look at the palace corridors from a distance and know where to head to". Quite a thoughtless solution everyone agreed.

All of us were rolling with laughter and the overeaten food was beginning to digest. So sometimes such zero IQ talks are good for health :)

The GmaTTer

Past few weeks or rather months, I have assumed the role of a MBA counselor. I take great pride in motivating people to do pursue an MBA or rather take up higher studies in general. Talking about myself, I took up MBA rather thoughtlessly because that i believed that was the only career path available to me at that point. Answers to questions like why MBA, short term and long term goals were crafted very meticulously without even meaning a word of it. But 3 months later, I have realized the power of an MBA. It can transform you as a person. And I feel that is the reason why people should go through the MBA experience.

So, after numerous unsuccessful attempts to get through a b-school through CAT, SNAP, NMAT, IIFT, CET, and dozen such other such exams, GMAT was the last ray of hope for me. So almost year back on 14th August, 2007 I decided to test my luck for one last time. Murphy may have well written his law so long ago but its application could not have been better than it was at my GMAT test.

As the law states it, I chose to take a test date only to find a empty slot in the week of my code delivery. To make it worse, I had a big mouth to go and inform my PM that I was going to take a leave in that week. No sooner did I apply my leave, I got a ping sound on my communicator and I knew I was in for a big trouble. I could have easily got a "jaundice" or a "viral fever". Everyone at Infosys knows how the jaundice suddenly crops up during November and heals magically after the CAT. But I thought that I was not the one who would do this and 2 months was a notice enough for any manager to plan the schedule. But to my dismay, it was all in vain. After hearing a straight 'NO' from her, all I could do was to prepare myself to face the music after my leave.

But little did I realise this was just the beginning of a huge war. Planning has been my strongest asset. I take keen interest in planning my day, my work, my leave, my studies..and I chalk out plans that only few great planners can....the problem arises only at its execution. So as always I was armed with a fabulous plan to crack the GMAT. But i wonder why do I always forget our own Murphy. I was packed with work so much that 24 hours a day seemed to less. Leave had thus become inevitable.

A day before my leave, one of my team mates had some "medical problem" and alas....i knew..now it was the end. I was requested..warned..threathened...that u better watch out ur leave plan. But I was left with no way out and i absconded for the preparation.

I couldnt sleep a day before the GMAT....there was too much at stake I felt. After managing to get a bare minimum sleep, I reached the GMAT centre. Checked my passport, wallet and pens. all set...The door opened and names were called out one after the other. The security was enormous as if we were about to witness a nuclear tests inside. Everyone went in one by one except me. Yeah u guessed t right..my name wasnt there on the register of test takers...!!


How can this be possible..I thought. When I enquired the guard about my name, he searched up and down back and forth, but it wasnt there at all. He looked up at me and asked, "What was your date of exam ?". My heart skipped a beat, I mean, what kind of question was that. It is well knows of how miserable I am in remembering birthdays but cmon, I cant be wrong in my GMAT date. I was now unsure myself but gathered enough courage to raise my voice and say "It is today at 9.00 am. Go check properly". He looked at me rather disgustingly and said "Show me your payment receipt". Oops...I had not taken a printout of that..but so what..it was never required. Cursing myself for being so lazy, I again said sternly "It was not required !! They have only told us to bring passport. Go check properly".

By now, I had irritated him to the limit. He told me to move away from the door and slammed to door on my face. I stood outside trembling thinking what to do next. I iterated over and over again, yeah it was 14th off course. It can’t be wrong!! There was silence around the floor. I could here every water drop that fell on the roof outside. Distantly there was a car reversing. I started sweating. Remembered all possible Gods and Godesses. Every second that passed seemed like eternity. Thought of all possible excuses that I could tell people for nt giving GMAT….I mean I couldn’t go and tell that I forgot my date…

Finally the door opened and there he emerged as a saviour of all times. He said, “Well, actually we missed your name, you may go in”. My temper almost rose like a rocket, but there were more things to be accomplished. Picked up my bag and walked victoriously inside….

When things go wrong..

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,

When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high,

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

When care is pressing you down a bit-Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Inspiration flows when you read this. But trust me this blog has absolutely no intentions of motivating anyone. Just that past 24 hours I have frantically spent trying to get things in place.

To start off, we studied through the night for our exams. This is required to compensate the sleep that one has had when things were being taught in the class. But even if a cost benefit analysis is done comparing benefits of one sleepless night before exams at the cost of total attentiveness in the class, one night out wins hands on. So after two lectures, one guest lecture and a test, I came home terribly tired almost about to crash. The plan was to take a power nap and get back to preparing presentations to be given on Saturday.

My roommate ( lets call her RM1) was already at home and when I reached home didnt open the door. Assuming that she wouldnt have heard it while snoring away to glory, I rang the bell a dozen times without breaks only to realise that the bell wasnt working. I resorted to banging the door voilently beacuse of which I got suspicious looks from the otherwise not-so-bothered neighbours. I assume my commotion woke her up and only when I walked in, I realised that there was darkness everywhere. I frantically searched for Hindustan Times cause they claim that they can spread light. I stumbled over twice and seeing my desparate search RM1 finally decided to ask me what I was upto. Hearing my enlighting solution she exclaimed with an extremely disgusted look that we had not paid the electricity bill for past 2 months and I even heard her murmur with extreme annoyance "the only way Hindustan Times would provide light is by burning it".

Feeling embarrased I tried my best to divert the topic and thinked about all ways to get back the electricity but all in vain. The other roommate RM2 was enjoying a nice coffee at Besant Nagar beach and she almost flew out of her chair with this news. I tried to sleep in that hot humid weather with no fans but the moment I closed my eyes, the only thing that I could imagine was a creepy lizard walking over my bed. That day I slept over at my friends place on floor within confined space, no mattress and felt like I had become homeless. An MBA can make you do all things that you would have never thought of..!!!

By next day, the house was nothing short of an oven. The fridge was leaking and the milk was smelling. Just then we were about to get into cleaning act, the house owner called us for not paying the rent. Oh god..we were into another mess. I immediately pictured a big tall giant like figure with a whip in his hand walk down our house throwing our stuff out of the balcony. I was pleading him to give us a day and just then he was about to whip me RM1 screamed..."We forgot..we forgot..we better pay".

She rushed to get her share of rent. When she didnt return even after 15 whole minutes i tiptoed into her room thinking she would be probably sobbing over these incidents. And lo..there i got news no 3..she had misplaced her fat wallet ( fat due to hundreds of useless receipts in it)..'Oh no..not now'.. We decided to sit down and call up all people who were there with us yest night while doing presentations. I jumped into action, and dialled Mr. V. But neither me nor she could call anyone...because we had also not paid the phone bill. Now this was the limit. I just could handle it any more.

I decided to tackle it one at a time. My friend Mr A helped me pay the electricity bill. Then I sat down and paid my phone bill. Called up people for her wallet. Thankfully, we traced her wallet and her big fat wallet was saved. But by that time her credit card was blocked. So paid her phone bill by her credit card. Things seemed to working out for us now....

We were so tired that a good dinner was a must. So Mr N, RM1 and myself zeroed in on a restaurant and took a bus that stopped 2 kms ahead of that stop. We obviously had no energy to walk back so we took a bus again which again refused to stop near the hotel. Now at this point,more than getting annoyed by the series of events I had started finding it quite amusing. Even more funnier was that me and RM1 hopped out when the bus slowed down but Mr N couldnt. So he again had to come back..thankfully he decided to walk. We both by then had broken into a laughter riot. So after all this drama, we finally reached our destination and as expected there was absolutely nothing left to eat. Almost expressionless, we walked out, took a rickshaw and went straight to the hotel that we had initially rejected. So we spent almost twice the money reaching the place where we could have reached directly by a rickshaw.

We had almost reached to an acceptance level that anything and everything we do would go wrong. Just then things started getting better. We had a superb dinner, RM2 messaged that the power was back. Came home happily as the power was back. What a relief it was to sleep on my own bed. Hopefully such events will occur rarely in coming future...

Good Morning class....

What happens when managers are pulled out of a corporate and suddenly put in a 3 hour class. What happens when a suddenly super rigorous course has a two weeks break and you comeback thinking you are all fresh to learn new things. What happens when you just manage to finish a assignment sitting through whole night at 6.00 am and are made to attend a class at 9.00 am in the morning.

Well they all seem to be very normal scenarios for a b-school until u see people struggling to be awake fifteen minutes after the class starts or hear loud snores all around you. Here are top 5 ways to fight sleep-

5) Most primitive way of keeping awake...the never defying x-and-zero game, pictionary, bollywood. But they do not match the 'b-school' standards. Some try to read the "true facts" section printed on the last page of the register for the 132nd time. The other creative lot get down to fashion designing. Flashback to school in the drawing class and we see budding managers using their creative paintbrush. Pracitice live sketching.( of the professor offcourse). Well but most realise that how pathetic their right brain is and give up on showing their creativity further. Well if you are miserable at drawing, there are other ways too.

4) Try sitting erect. Believ me, posture does matter :). However this doesnt remain for long and as you feel that you are curling in the confined space of the chair as if it were your bed, change the way you sit. Keep changing from left to right, fold your leg, remove your shoes, wear then again, play with your pen....do all this until your neighbour gives you really 'stop-that-or-you-are-dead' look. Time to move on to the next idea.

3) Water can do wonders in terms of momentary wakeup calls. Gulp water down the throat as an when needed. However fellow benchmates soon realise the power of these H2O droplets and the bottle is soon emptied. So what could have kept you awake for 15 whole minutes results into keeping neither of the three awake for even 5 minutes. Neways, there are other ways of stopping your eyelids from closing.

2) Start ferociously copying whatever is written on the power point presentation or whatever the professor burps out. This way with your hand working faster than the mind, the eyes might agree to co-operate. However, this cannot last long and as time passes the fellow classmates hear a sound of pen plummet down on the ground and the elbow thud on the wooden desk. Time to try something else.


1) I suppose the best way to keep awake is to ask questions. However stupid they might be, when the professor answers looking straight in your eyes, you just cant sleep. Well say for example, your neighbour has suddenly woken you up. In that case you casually ask "Sir, I didnt et that..err.can you please repeat it". Well you may get some "what-the-hell-looks" from the really attentive lot or "Good-question-now-i-can-sleep-for-some-time-look" from the other few. In both cases, being under scrutiny will wake you up.

Well if nothing of the above works...Dont worry...Just go to sleep....Zzzzzz.......

Language no bar !!

It all started because of my unfamiliarity with Facebook. I happened to change some settings on my account and it so happened that my relationship status got changed from 'Single' to blank. Little did i know that it would trigger a Note on everyone's feed that 'Gauri Lonkar is no longer single'. None of my friends wasted any time to start of a chain mail on this gossip and made wild guesses of all possible people speaking different languages.

But thinking of it on a more serious note, a sudden realisation dawned upon me of all the possible choices that I can make for myself. So here goes the story-

Being in Chennai..you can comfortably assume that there is a good probability that I have learnt Tamil. Not very fluent at it but can definitely speak some of it. Well atleast some words like "ennada, tambi, kutti" easily come to me. I know they are far from the words needed to strike a romantic relationship with any tamilian, but trusting the age old saying that 'well begun is half done', I can always give it a try.

Also, you can fairly call me multi lingual as my Spanish is also pretty strong. And considering I was the only Indian girl out there in Infosys Mexico, wasted no time in flirting with the extremely smart and good looking Mexicans guys. Learning spanish was just a reason to have nice long chats. But in the whole flirting process, I actually ended up learning quite some words. So much was the influence that when i came back home, I used "si" more often than "yes".

Great Lakes (btw- this is my college name if you all dont know) has this unique passion of teaching the students Chinese or Mandarin as it called popularly. And having wasted enough time in learning complex symbols and weird pronunciations, I can proudly say that I have topped Mandarin classes so far and have managed to talk beyond Ni Hao Ma.

Offcourse, Marathi and Hindi is like my mother tongue.And thanx to my freind CG and his Gujju lessons during our engg days( he was actually ahrown out of the class for the same), Kem cho..majama ...all this comes quite naturally to me now.

Well, I did try learning Kannada while in Banglore, but for this discussion let us safely assume that I failed badly in my attempt and so u can keep that out for the discussion.

Well the sad part is that my english has gone for a toss. Juggling between tamil, hindi and english is probably far difficult than a rope walk. We often end up saying 'anna, one day before, water order, you no give". Even more embarrassing is when the shopkeeper shuts your mouth by saying "OH you mean yesterday you ordered for water" and the whole bunch of classmates break into a laughter riot.

OK, so coming back to the story, I have actually decided to leverage on this newly developed talent of being able to talk in so many different languages. And hope that this attempt to socialise may probably result in what all my friends called it as ' Gauri Lonkar is no longer listed as "single." '

So, if I am somehow able to assign appropriate weights to all the languages and come out with a fair estimate of my fluency in every language, then I can probably focus better. :)

Tick Tick One...!!

Well it is very evident from the increasing number of blogs per month of how well I am managing my time (read: basically I have too much time at my disposal). But one thing for sure that a b-school teaches you is minute by minute time management.

If an assignment is to be submitted at 7.00 pm on any day, panic begins at 6.55 in the classroom. As the clock ticks, you need to completely realign the entire group and re-distribute the work within next few seconds. Quickly reiterate the tasks remaining - format the word document and justify all the paragraphs, write a mail with the group name and address it to the concerned prof, click send. Looks simple, aint it.!!

Group dynamics is awesome at such times and all group members quickly align as per their strenghts and the work begins. Its almost 15 seconds short of 6.56 now. Eyes keep swinging between the work and the right bottom side of the laptop ( the clock).

Task of group 1 - format the word document. Well this group just cant stop blessing microsoft at this point, a button click and the hours put into writing the assignment seems to suddenly start looking good well formatted. Well, a sigh of relief, three minutes before the deadline and we are already done. Oh, hold on, some genius realises that the font is not uniform. It so happens that different members contirbute to different sections of the assignement and hence the difference while collating it. 'Oh no, more to do' . 'Not to worry' some Mr A screams. Just do a Ctrl-A and select the font that you want. 'Oh yeah, its so simple', the formatter exclaims. Click.Click...lo its done. Few clapping sounds in the background...I think we are just saved. Cmon copy the assignement on the pen drive and give it to the mail guys. 'Take this pen drive', says one who seems extremely self satisfied for showing such proactiveness. Last look at the assignement. 'Damn..where the hell is the index'. Formatter panics. 'How do i do it, we dont even have page numbers written?'. Then comes the hero of the team..Mr IT guy jumps in action. 'Dont worry guys...I have done all this in my three years of experience. Its very simple'...A slight sigh of relief on everyones faces. Confidently takes the place..few seconds later..frantically searching for that command button. 'What the hell r u doing dude..2 mins are left'.

Meanwhile, the mail team is pretty cool. Person B is happily typing the mail ' Dear Sir...Please find attached the assignemnt. Grp No so-n-so..grp memebrs.a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h. Person B to C 'whats the mail id where its to be sent?'. ' Just hold on, I have written it in my notebook'. Removes his book and tries to find it , all in vain. 'Dude what are u doing? Give me fast, their assignment is almost done'. 'Well,err, I am not able to find it'. B looking annoyingly 'Well then move, let me get my book'. He also searches and doesnt get it. Both look at the other team-mates working, they seem to be extremely tensed and caught up with formatting, so dare not ask them. Ok what next. "RUN"...both run to other teams and ask for the mail id. Other too busy, mostly choose to ignore. Finally someone is kind enough to give it. 'Hey we found it' victorious smile. Return and complete the mail and all is done.....err...well except the assignment.

Two minutes left and the index is being made. Search Search...'Dude leave it..its ok to submit without index than to submit late' Quick calcualtion of gain and loss in everybody's mind. Suddenly, 'Eureka..See here it is...Click Click ..ok..hmmm.save..Yeah see here it is...Was so simple'. Nobody in a mood to really congratulate. 'Quick copy it in the pen drive'. Copied and transfered. ...

Look at the clock..50 seconds before the clock hits 7.00. BP has risen well above acceptable levels. Now all is in the hand of person B. Others in the team look around the class. See the tension everywhere...except few who are busy capturing these moments in their camera. Suddenly one group starts clapping. They have just mailed the assignment. Everyone turns back then again turn and look with lot of hopes towards B

Now, quickly B opens the drafted mail, attach the assignement. "Almost done guys..dont worry. We wil make it". Few more claps in the room. 30 seconds to go. "Why the hell is it taking so much time to attach." . (Obviously..whol told us to put so many graphs and make it so big). 10 seconds and it showed attach. 'Hurray....quick quick..hand trembles...sweat drops...eyes are blurred....and SEND'. For 2 seconds no one reacts...quickly check the sent items. It is showing 6.59 sent time still...Now everyone jumps with joy...higher than probably what one would on the convocation day. Claps all around the room...

Saved this time..make big big promises and take oaths that next time we will not keep it tilll the end...close laptops, few hugs, lift bags and walk with glory not realising that timeliness would never happen..atleast in the next one year to come.....

Hold not..story is not over yet..Twist in the story, the college server time is 2 mins faster. So basically all the assignments have reached late. But the prof is either too kind or basically is too busy to check this....So we are saved yet again...

The gift of God

Well my blog may look like being extremely philosophical but past few days have forced me to think about how I am living my life, what is it that I really want and what is the real meaning of my dreams and if I can really realise them.

One of my very good friends, Amol, based in US had a sad untimely death when they had gone for jet skiiing. Another boat collided on his boat and he met with this fatal accident. As much as I cant stop thinking about this, I am just not ready to believe this and still feel that this is a dream, somehow he would call me, mail me, scrap me...anything just anything would do. It feels like I could just wake up from sleep and see everything just alright, just the way it was before.

I think that the greatest gift that God has given us is life. We see people struggle, slog through their lives, people cry and laugh, fall and rise, lose and win, but all the while, they can feel it and so can they touch the lives of others. There are challenges that are thrown, life brings in with it lot of surprises, pleasant and not so pleasant. Some people conquer them all and rejoice the success and some fail to make it big. Whatever it is, it is still not the end of this beaultiful thing called life. They fall and get up again and there lies the glory of life.

The point I am trying to make here is let us take a stop and think of how often we crib about the bad roads, the sultry weather, the lack of order, the traffic jams, the bad food in the office, the crowded trains, the bad customer service, the load shedding, the pollution, the honking of the horns, the bad grades, the job that sucks, the uncleanliness...this and many more. From the time we get up till we till we close our eyes. I just want to say that its time we start cherishing this gift called life.

I once read a thought saying " I cried so long because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet". Look up to the challenged, physically and mentally, learn a lesson or two, learn about the stories of their conviction, determination , stories of endurance and pain to reach a pinnacle of success. Talk to a man who has survived an accident or who has just comeout from a coma or a soldier who stands guard on the line of fire. They are the people who help us realise what a wonderful gift life is.

Life is full of surprises where we dont know what is in store for tomorrow. It is said that today is a gift and hence it is called present. Let us learn to live in the moment and live it to the fullest. It is not wrong to have dreams. Let us all have a dream that we can chase, a dream that can bring out all the passion, the best out of us. But today let us not hurt anyone , today let us make an effort to better someones life, today let us call someone just to say 'hi', today make use of the time cause tomorrow may just not come.

Probably, time and again such instances force me to look at life from a different perspective. All said, Amol would always be in my memories and this loss is simply not recoverable, to his family, freinds and everyone. Amol, u will be truly missed....