Chronicles of Gautam

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 st...

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!

One thing that hit me yesterday is that I am a Bangalorean now. At least in part. And the worst thing about it is the name itself - 'Bangalorean'. I am not impressed. Compare it with 'Mumbaikar', 'Hyderabadi', 'Madrasi' and 'Amritsari'. Don't they sound so much more desi and appealing? Here are some reasons why I consider myself a Bangalorean in part: 1. People ask me directions. And I am able to give them! 2. I can carry out a full conversation in Kannada. Ok, so what if its just an answer like 'gotilla' (don't know) :P 3. I know numbers from 1-10 in Kannada, so I don't need to ask the bus conductor to repeat in Hindi/English when he asks for change. 4. I am no longer appalled at the exorbitant rates charged by the auto wallahs. Yes, I call them autos, not rickshaws.

I was asked precisely this question during one of my mock interviews. Take a minute, there is no hurry, i was told. And the target was to sell 50 ipods of Rs 2500 each, with a marketing budget of 1 lakh. Hmm. So how do I do it? I thought on it and answered on the following lines: 1.  Ipods = rich young chaps, probably some rich farmers kids with some amount of disposable money at least.  They probably own a cell phone already maybe using it for their music needs. So this was the target market. 2. Price & place? Not much innovation here, since the selling price and Maharashtrian rural market is already mentioned. Maybe give them some discount and advertise this. 3. Promotion. This is where I was stuck. I had no clue how to go about spreading the message in far flung rural areas, with just a few people in each village willing to even think about this product. I said something on the lines of telephonic ads, local newspaper/magazine pamphlets etc. Maybe hiring salesmen afte...

The lazybum that I am, I am just re pasting my comment here on my brother's blogpost here. " You are absolutely correct about the average longevity of humans being the prime reason why humans evolved this way. If a person expected to die at the age of 30, it made sense to procreate at the age of 15 so that by the time he dies, his child would procreate and the cycle continues. Mental, societal and economical considerations of having children were non-existent. And not to forget, there was no contraception. It is only in the last 400 years or so that man has turned nature on its head and extended human life by leaps and bound - but that ratio of the age of death and age of procreation remains roughly the same - 60: 30 Of course people now easily cross 60, so we have lots of grandparents :-) Coming to think of it, humans have screwed around with nature, controlled and used it to such an extent that we might just end up destroying ourselves. (environment, nuc...

Film Poster - Dhobi Ghat Another quick post on another movie I saw recently. Dhobi Ghat is a movie about four people who have come to Mumbai for different reasons, from different socio-economic backgrounds and are somehow linked to each other through their actions. Aamir Khan plays a brooding painter, who mostly keeps to himself and is inspired by seemingly mundane things. Then there is an NRI female, who is in Mumbai to spend her vacations, and ends up in a one night stand with Aamir. Consequently they part ways the next morning, with no hard feelings on either side. Prateik Babbar is a dhobi and a wannabe actor who serves both these individuals, and is another link between the two. Aamir moves into an apartment which was previously occupied by a newly wedded muslim lady. It turns out that she has videotaped parts of her life in Mumbai so that her brother can see it as a diary. These tapes are found by Aamir. The backdrop of the film is a very vivid and in-your-face Mumbai, wh...