Natasha's story

Girls....what you they make you do..and what you'l do for them..just like that

Natasha was sick, i mean really sick, cold like she came skinny dipping from

alaska, and all the snow was comming in through her nose..sneezing and

snorting....
well being a nice guy and all, i offered to take her out to dinner, probably have her

take some hot chiken soup, so i'l sooth her soul and her battered lungs.. at least i

hoped it would.
well.. this is what happened, i took her out on my stupendously superb pulsar...and

as usual i was not carrying any cash in paper.. its all plastic money, imagine what i

could do with the Plastic card when i'm stuck in the sahara dessert, maby i can

scratch my back if i really needed to..anyway, i went to the freaking ATM, god

only knows why OBC has one ATM for all of chennai, and eventhough i thought i

was their only customer. i was surprised to see that. when i got there... there was

some uncle looking at the ATM like he was looking at some steven spielberg

move...i had to wait there for at least 10 mins while he was counting the single 100

rupee note that he had drawn from the ATM...anyway, after this she got this

wired idea of going some 1000 kms out of chennai to ECR to have a burger....a

burger...please how desperate can someone get for a burger, i was like the natzi in

a concentration camp who was to dig my own grave, well the idea of taking here

there was mine,

finally i did end up taking her there, only to find that i was not as hungry as my

ansistral neandrathals were when they went your to the malls to eat their dinosaurs

burgers, so i opted to have a green salad, sounded apealing since chennai has been

lashed by rains the last few weeks .... there's plenty of greenary on the trees...

unfortunately that's exactly what i was given in the salad... made sure she had her

chicken soup for the soul... i hoped she would get better with that, at least i came

out a realized soul.. like buddha after he meditated under the bhodi tree, realized

the truth about life.. my take here was not to loose your head for any girls girlish

charms....

Swim initiative by Great Lakes

When you see the eagle soar in the sky, you don’t wonder how it does that, but you do know that it has strong wings to take it to soaring heights.

Here at Great Lakes, under the aegis of uncle Bala the institute has started an initiative called the SWIM (Successful Women in Management) initiative, concurring to my analogy in Management as in Life, men and women have to be given their rightful space to grow and do as they should.

Seminars and talks are conducted by successful women in the industry such as Mallika Srinivasan for the women in this institute, to help them break the barriers and mindset that has come down through the echelons of management over the years. Women have the chance here to be the best that they can, and the SWIM initiative seeks to provide them that opportunity. I remember the quote by Mallika Srinivasan during her speech on our inaugural function, and it is my favorite one and an inspiring one; “Know the way, Go the way, Show the way”. The Institute let’s the women know the way, gives them the opportunity of going the way, and then eventually showing a way to the future generation of women in management.

Management thinking and practice has matured in India over the last 10 years with the advent of the ‘knowledge era” and thanks to the IT industry. Women have moved out of the generic job types that were prevalent to giving women a high post only in the government to today being able to lead companies as CEO’s. Great Lakes has taken the first step towards achieving the goal of helping the future of management soar, taking men to be one wing and the women to be the other. Creating equal opportunity for the eagle called Management to SOAR.

Group: 4th dimension . . .

Philosophy: been there, done that, what next!!!

It was the first time we were assigned groups, after we were assigned groups the first time, well technically at least, the day was 10^th of may, I remember having a watery yet hot pongal at ram’s shimla canteen on the Great Lakes “roof garden”,

I heard someone shout “the new groups lists are out…the new group lists are out”, there was a wired buzz around, like the results of CAT being announced. I quit eating rest of the liquidy stuff in my plate and rushed to the lobby (waiting room- but it sounds like a hospital, so I like lobby better) on the first floor.

As I got down to the lobby, the junta were “ooh and aah” ing about who their group mates were, while I was trying hard not to get crushed trying to read the names of my groupies…. I got a sms… me.. A sms ….. Here…who. Why…how, while trying to figure out these extremely complicated questions, I checked my phone only to see a message from some babe whose number I had taken just yesterday, it said “ wre n th sme grp” .

I was walking away from the fighting mob, trying to figure out who this person I had met, who was my groupie and yet whose face I could not remember… anyway I looked up and saw this tall, lanky brunette standing near the stairs and smiling at me, my boyish instincts got to me, wanting to strike a conversation with her before some other clown with the same instincts got there first, in the process almost knocking down Prof. Rakesh Singh, who was passing by.

i…..sorry sir.

You..have…to…be..more..careful…

i..was…in a hurry …..excuse me…. sir

heyyyyyyy, long time, what’s up, how u doing? –> cheesy dialogue

she gave me a steely smile, yes all I could see were the steely braces.. and said “wre n th sme grp”, must be speaking Chinese I thought.

to continue the small talk I said “that’s neat isi’nt it.. who else is part of the group?”

She said” Sathish- that tall boy who’s super brainy, latha-she was sitting next to me yesterday, adithya-don’t know who he is, but his name sounds cool, Girish- don’t know who, but everybody says he smart, Gopal- that boy brain from NASA and you” poetic I thought yet, I still did not know her name and did not want to embarrass myself asking her what it was, especially after she knew mine. Sheesh…..how do these CEO’s remember names, is there some trick in the book I was missing?

We called our group the 4^th dimension, no one except Satish knows why, he suggested the name, but it sounded cool so we kept it. All the super high aspirations I had with my group were washed away in the first few weeks, as I wipe my tears and say that the other groups did much better than we did…. As it happened all the pep talks Satish and Girish used to give us benefited the other groups more than it benefited us... sob..sniff..sniff

The first assignment as I remember had a deadline of a month….yet we all started work only the night before…. Devon street- a road where a bunch of Indians have set up shop in Chicago, my kid brother can do this I thought…..confidently went to Google and typed Devon Street, there were more hits there than the sand particles in the Sahara dessert, I was starting to blame myself for having such a heavy dinner at sangeethas , I was feeling a little drowsy.... mummy, this is going to be a loooooong night…..

Just as I was googling myself to sleep Gopal waltzed in, from his usual disappearing act, (we all felt he was up to something, later on only did we find out that he was trying to get the ITC’s annual turnover up, at least 10 times a day)

It was 2:00 AM Sathish was head banging on his laptop, trying a new yogasana called sit sleeping, somewhere in the twilight between consciousness and sleep, Girish was lying in a coma in the corner, latha and prarthana were starting to look like aliens from another planet, adi was looking at his computer….his face was lifeless. Suddenly Gopal walks in and asked me

“saale.. kuch kiya?” ,

it woke everyone up from the trance, but I was looking for a something sharp to stab in his stomach.

Finally our PPT man … had just chosen after hours of intense deliberation a very sexy loud background for our slides...this has always been 4^th dimensions strategy, visually bombard the lecturer with highly colorful backgrounds and images so that hopefully the data in the slides is ignored…it’s our core competency…

8:00 in the morning, the only company I had was the cleaner, everyone else had left, for a short nap I thought, I got out of there lest I fall asleep in the chair,

After a long night out, there is nothing more alluring than hitting the pillow, but we all had to be there for the presentation, along with submitting a 5 page report.

By the time I got back to class…..

The girls were still in utter shock and disbelief looking at what we had achieved during the night ……

5 guys X 12 hours = 60 man hours = 5 pages of report…

there seems to be something inherently wrong with the equation….

Latha who also was the group captain, was looking to us …shaking her head in disbelief…like one of those trauma patients whose lost the ability to speak after witnessing a shocking, gruesome occurrence…in this case our shoddy report.

Sathish was hyper …… simultaneously working on the ppt and shouting loudly

“Arre bachao...bachao koi meri madat karoo”...

Aditya I believe was in an irreversible coma somewhere… no sign of him.

After skipping our turn as many times as possible we gave the presentation, during my time of the presentation in front of the rowdy mob of Superior,

I shook like a reed in a desert storm, My legs wobbled like an untrained belly dancer, my voice was pitched like a soprano, my memory stabbed me like a deceitful friend...due to my sheer nervousness I collapsed, I had to be carried out in a stretcher (and that’s the last time, I did ever present), but hey we are the 4^th dimension.

Its strange how the human psyche works when there is numbing demands, true we were not on time, but the fact is we did present considering the overwhelming odds against us…and that’s the saga of our group ……We were like six brave sailors in a terrible storm left to tide the mighty dark ocean... …we nearly capsized, but who cares once the boat kisses the shore…and we stand victorious. All in all the work we had put in was never boo’d at, it was a damn freaking good job if I must say.

Interesting!!!!
a paradox, an irony, a compliment, or a cacaphony of gibberish slang...only time will tell.
smart, intelligent , potential to be the best, and am sure will become one.