Chronicles of Gautam

Section E on "Black Day" Tomorrow is the last day of classes in my first year here at WIMWI. I never thought I would say this, but here it is: I am going to miss it. Very much. The beauty sections and the groups at WIMWI is they enable us to come so close so quickly. As my good friend put it, we have  " pulled each other's legs, argued with each other, put night-outs and studied together, lived through moments of joy and distress". I don't think I have been through as much or learnt so much anytime else as I have in these 10 months here at the WIMIWI.  The emphasis here is the speed at which things unfold here. It was just yesterday that I entered this place, and now the already tucchas are leaving, leaving us to be the new tucchas. Time for the goodbyes. Time for the 'last __ ' . I bid all the seniors farewell and the very best in life. And yes, Section E rocks. The hell out of this place.

My boarding passes from September 2010 to March 2011 I was just going through my photos folder and found the above photo tucked away in the 'photos from mobile phone' folder. I remembered why I had taken the photo earlier - it was because I was surprised how many times I had to travel by air within that span of a few months, and for reasons mostly not related to my work. Air travel in India has increased in leaps and bounds barring a few hiccups, which were triggered mainly by the recession. Being a consumer for this product, I can now easily see the value that it provides to people like me. It is fast, reliable and largely efficient service(ease of booking tickets) which is affordable. The major change in the last decade has been on the reliability and the affordability front. Entry to private players and the resulting competition ensured that services were more varied, networks more widespread and prices driven down. At the same time the income levels of the burgeon

IIM Express: Rickshaw sporting a jazzy sign It has been a hectic two and half months to say the least. As I again glanced over some survival pointers  that my brother and his friend gave me before I came here,  I realized how much sense they make.  176 Lectures of 75 minutes each, 15 exams, 20 company presentations, 30 quizzes and innumerable cases and assignments.  I never thought I could attend so many lectures on a trot. This place made me get up and do it.   Its a mad mad world out here.

I am going here! Ok, so as you might have heard, my efforts of the past 3 years have born fruit; and I have been offered admission to the prestigious WIMWI, better known as IIM Ahmedabad. Now that I am on the other side of the fence, I can start writing cheeky posts with  subjects like this about how I made it :P The below lines are taken as is from an email that I wrote to a junior some days back. 1. Check out this site http://www.handakafunda.com/ . It’s a good starting point for CAT preparation. It has good (and free) videos on topics in quant and DI, and the download sections has old CAT questions arranged topic wise. 2. Join TIME/CL/IMS and give their mock tests religiously. It is very important to track your performance throughout the year and analyze each performance. Identify your weakness and strengths. I personally felt that CL’s papers were the best in terms of closeness to the actual CAT, and I would recommend it to you. But at the same time, I would also strong

India wins the Cricket world cup after an excruciating wait of 28 years. Non-Indians will perhaps not understand how much this means to an average Indian. Only the sport of cricket has the power to transcend the boundaries of religion, caste, language, politics and class in India. Winning the world cup has brought back this sense of nationalistic pride which is perhaps the greatest takeaway from the last 6 weeks for the country. One could find ample evidence of this on the streets of villages, towns and cities throughout the length and breadth of India at midnight yesterday; where jubilant crowds shouted slogans and waved Indian flags, hi-fiving and hugging strangers and soaking in the occasion. Of course speculations will be there about match fixing and theories of how it was all just a farce. Ya right. Like they can put up such a good show pre-decided. They would have had to be better than the best actors humankind has ever produced to put on such a show match after match.

The last fortnight went really quick and really slow at the same time. I had to give six interviews in the span of some ten days for admissions to b-schools across the country. Interestingly, I found out that the worst part about giving interviews is not the interview itself, but the wait outside the interview room! Hoping to get through some colleges :fingers crossed. Meanwhile, iPad 2 has been launched. Mototrola Xoom and RIM Playbook are to be here soon, I am crazily addicted to my berry, and to some extent my Thinkpad too. Current favorite song: Dil Ibadat from the movie Tum Mile. What a beautiful song!