The Broad Reality of the Altered Indian Mindset

Firstly, thank you everyone for reading this blog over the past year and for your constant support! This week I started receiving emails about any help/advice I could offer with respect to each of your individual situations, and I hope my comments helped you out. It feels good knowing that I may have helped some people the way others have helped me.

Moving on, today's blog post addresses an important issue - the Indian mindset. No, this is not GMAT-related, so if that's what you're here for, then this is not the post for you. My dad has a habit of sending me around four to five articles a day from the Times of India, just to learn and keep in touch with whats happening back at home. And a couple of days ago, he sent me this article, titled "Shining India, swaggering India".

The title of the article as well as the opening sentence - Rage is the dominant emotion in India today - can be perhaps a little misleading. The article doesn't discuss rage and how to overcome it. Rather, the article addresses the Indian mentality of power, and how power is more abused than put to good use - and this is addressed right from the second line.

How many times do we speak of corrupt politicians and other people of authority? The following paragraph is spot on:

Time was when politicians showed humility, even if fake and contrived, to the public, fully conscious of the optics of the folded hands. Today, a chief minister walks off in a huff when her constituents ask questions that she finds inconvenient. And then sends cops to check out the antecedents of the questioners, who are college students. Her message is unambiguous: I am powerful and, therefore, can do whatever I want to you serfs. 

It is to be noted that abusing power is not restricted to the celebs. Ordinary people abuse waiters, maids, security guards, small shop owners and others with similar professions. There is no civility in everyday conversations. I don't mean this to come off as arrogance, but to give an example, I use 'please' and 'thank you' pretty often. Shop owners and waiters are literally startled when that happens - and it even goes to the extreme where sometimes I am asked to pay more in shops as they think I'm a foreigner. All because I was polite. As the article says:

Such messages, coming from those who are in public life and should be role models of civility, filter down rapidly. The signal is unambiguous: power allows you to strut and squash anyone who is beneath you. More money, better job, bigger car are all markers of influence and muscle, which must be deployed to show the lower orders their place. To these superior beings, the ordinary laws do not apply. VIPs of all hues, for example, do not believe in queues of any kind. How often do we see this sense of entitlement being played out at airports, where the great and the good breeze past security? Body checks and boring lines at immigration are not for them.

The rising rage is directly related to our increasing lack of civility. Sorry seems to be a word that has disappeared from our lexicon. When common courtesies, such as holding the door open for someone behind you, vanish, a society is well on the road to boorishness and eventually rage. Good manners are the bedrock of civilised social transactions; are we a good-mannered people? 

The really sad thing is that people accept this - people accept the fact that we Indians have different rules of treating people depending on who that is, something even the writer of the article noted:

The bizarre part is that we, as citizens of a democratic country, freely accept and even justify such feudal inequality. After Shah Rukh Khan, who finds it difficult to keep his temper in check in India, was held up for questioning at an American airport, many Indians were outraged because a celebrity was treated in this manner. It did not occur to them that for an American customs official, there are no exceptions, only the rules that must be followed. We quietly and happily submit to the Indian way of doing things, which is to have a different set of rules for VIPs; there our sense of rage deserts us. 

How on earth can people even think that they are better than others because of what they do? What about those who happen to be born into a rich family and start acting like they own the world? What about those who use their fame to act like they are God's gift to the rest of our country?

No one knows when this will end. The biggest shame is that our rage seems to be directed towards those at the bottom of the social ladder, those unable to defend themselves, those who are expected to merely surrender as the 'superiors' use their authority on them. As the writer of the article asks:

What will happen if one day they start showing their rage? 

8 Life Updates

My New Year's Resolution (or my NYR as I like to call it) was set just a couple of days ago - and that is to be more active on the social networking front.

Silly, you may think. But networking is something I have overlooked as often being meaningless and only for people with way too much time on their hands. At least, that's what I think when I keep refreshing my Facebook page in the hope that something interesting turns up. But over the past couple of months, I have become more involved in LinkedIn and Twitter, and I must say I'm enjoying the 'buzz'. 

Chatting about sports with complete strangers is something I used to previously wrinkle my nose at, but there's nothing more enjoyable than sharing your views with people and having them share theirs. And its not just restricted to football, its tennis, music, movies, engineering, business school, applications, job hunting, just everything.

This NYR also means that my poor neglected blog will get some well-deserved attention from me pretty soon. In fact, there is a whole list of things I'll get to do again once I finish my undergraduate studies in LESS THAN A MONTH. Terrifying times. 

I’m currently in the midst of my final exams for my engineering course – there’s a certain ring to it, I must admit. They say time flies when you’re having fun, but I say time flies whether you’re having fun or not. Where have the last three years gone?

This is not to say I hate my course, but my final year of studies have been a little too difficult to handle, and there’s a large part of me that’s thrilled that the ride is finally ending. Academic-wise, of course. In social terms…well I barely had much of a social life in this final year. But I will miss some people, my close friends, most of whom have plans to leave Malaysia soon after graduation.

I’m taking a break from the highly strenuous exam preparation to update my readers on…my life really. Good fortunes, tasks done, mistakes learnt from – et al. So here you go, in no particular order:

1. MBA applications were completed and submitted by the end of January. I’m not ashamed to admit it – yes I shot for the moon with some of the schools I aimed for. It’s a tall order to get into Harvard Business School when your Engineering undergraduate course is already killing your brain cells one at a time. I applied to six schools, and at the end, interviewed with and got accepted into IESE Business School, Barcelona! It’s a Young Talent Program, where accepted students are allowed to join the MBA course provided they complete a minimum of two years of work experience. I’m SO thrilled about this – I was resigning myself at one point to just forget about B-School apps and concentrate on job-hunting. Now I get to do both!

Image URL: http://blog.paradizo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/cathelicopters.jpg

2. Job-hunting has been a little less successful. I applied to a MILLION positions, no joke here, since the application procedure literally just involves a cover letter, a resume, and an online application form. I have been fortunate enough to receive interview invites from Accenture, Bain & Company, Frost & Sullivan, and Theta Service Partners – I think it’s obvious that I’m heading into consultancy eh? Accenture and Frost have both put me on hold; Bain is a ding, while I got into Theta. Still waiting to make a final decision though.

3. Goodbye five-year-old Dell laptop, and hello Apple!! Yes, my birthday present from my parents arrived three months late but it was worth it, as I write this post from my spanking-new Macbook Pro. Still haven’t got the whole hang of it yet, but I’m lovin’ it so far. If anyone has any software recommendations, bring it!

4. I will officially own a Bachelors Honours Degree in Electronic & Computer Engineering in July 2012, and I’ll officially be done with undergraduate academic as of May 31^st, 2012. Our graduation is set for 7^th July, and saying I’m looking forward to it would be a major understatement.

5. Summer 2012 is the first couple of months where I have no studies and no internship; the first summer in a long time when I’ll literally have nothing to do. That said, my summer has somehow turned out to be jam-packed. I head to Bangalore to visit my grandmother for around three weeks in June; I head back to Kuala Lumpur to attend my graduation, and straight up fly to Barcelona on the same night to attend a week-long seminar where I get introduced to the School, the program, other accepted students, and Spain in general. An added bonus in that I’m flying Emirates – luxury awaits! Hallelujah!

6. Spent the year as the Public Relations Officer for the Indian Cultural Society in my University. Good stuff, I think. Enjoyed it to bits. Ended up strongly disliking a couple of people in the process, who I’m slightly sorry to say have gone from “close friends” to “people I used to know.” The strangest bit is that a large part of me doesn’t care much about this change. If I don’t miss them, then they never should have been part of my close friends, right?

7. “Shop ‘til you drop” has been the motto I’ve been living on. I had a ridiculously large shopping spree before my first semester results came out, and it turned out I was worried for nothing, as my results were surprisingly great. I don’t expect that to happen this semester, so I’ve started saving money for my India trip – its time to splurge again. Zara/Mango/Padini/Vincci/SubZero/FOS, here I come.

8. My Final Year Project has finally been submitted. My project involves building a job application portal, which should manage students and staff for the entire Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering. Students undergo an optional industrial training placement during the summer, and the portal is supposed to help them apply for a job and satisfy all other assessment criteria. My portal is going to be developed and hosted by IT Support, and is officially going to go live from the next academic year! I'm so excited - my piece of work being used by all. It's thrilling really. 

Okay so I guess that’s about it. Told you I didn’t have much of a social life.

In case you’re interested, my upcoming blog posts will most probably address the following topics:

1. Post-examination bliss

2. A GMAT Review – I have had a couple of people asking me to sum up my preparation, the resources I used, as well as any tips or tricks I may have.

Stay tuned!

GMAT Update: I don't even know what week this is anymore

I haven’t been here in a while.

It’s ridiculous just how hectic my life is, just when I need as much free time as I can get for the GMAT. I’ve spent the last few weeks visiting Cologne, Siegen, and Switzerland, each time meeting up with high school friends whom I haven’t seen for at least three years. It was amazing to know that the distance didn’t change a thing – no awkward silences, no feelings of let-down, it was all just wonderful and ended far too quickly in my opinion.   

I was going to post last weekend, but then Liverpool lost to Tottenham in a 4-0 humiliation, and to make matters worse, Novak Djokovic suffered from a partial muscle rupture on his back, and had to retire from his match after writhing on the court in agony. Not a pretty sight. I then managed to break a wineglass in the kitchen, made a chicken curry without a key ingredient as I’d forgotten to buy it, and checked my email to find an unnecessarily  rude message from a Professor at University giving me stick about my late arrival. All this gave me a major headache and I just couldn’t do anything else really.

This is officially my last week in Berlin. Next week I’m off to Paris, and will spend the weekend there before heading home. Sadly, my European adventures have come to an end. But I’ve had a brilliant 13 months, almost irreplaceable really, and I know I’ve met some people and seen some places that I’ll never forget in the years to come.

How can I concentrate on the GMAT when my time in Europe is coming to an end? It’s awful to have such expectations really. But I do try. I have finished all my strategy books, and it’s all OG from now on – practice, practice, and more practice. My scores are alright in the practice problems (as expected, RC being my least scoring section of the test, and SC the highest), but when it comes to taking a full length test, I tend to rush through, subconsciously panicking about the thought that I wont finish the test in time. I therefore end up with some very foolish errors, errors I would have never made had I more time. And I do have more time – when I took a test last weekend, I finished the quant section with 20 minutes to spare, and the verbal section with 16 minutes to spare. That’s crazy; ideally I shouldn’t have more than five minutes left at the end of each section.

Dad’s coming to visit me this weekend (to take some of my luggage back more than anything else really, I really don’t know how I’ve managed to accumulate so many things over the past year), but I still hope to take another test. This time, I shall treat it as a sequence of practice problems so that I don’t panic. Fingers crossed my scores improve!

Saying Goodbye..

Saying goodbye is never easy. It’s a definitive; it’s like acknowledging the sad truth that you may never see these people again. It’s different with members of your family though, you know you will meet them somewhere down the line, so you know that the goodbye is purely short term. But your friends, well there is no guarantee, especially when you all meet abroad in a foreign country, and then have to leave to go back to your own.

Being in the UK on an exchange program no doubt has its benefits; I for one, am extremely glad I took the opportunity to study outside Asia for a year, and I truly believe that this has affected me for the better. I have absolutely no regrets, and I’ve settled in so well here that except for one time in April when my grandfather passed away, I have never felt homesick, lonely or miserable, like so many international students do. And the credit goes to all the lovely people I’ve met here in Nottingham.

Out of all the people I’ve met, out of all the students whose company I’ve enjoyed this past one year, two people stand out the most. An intelligent, studious and modest girl from Sri Lanka, who also happens to be the best cook I know out of anyone our age, and a highly enthusiastic, entertaining and cheeky young man from Egypt, with a laugh so contagious that it’s impossible not to like him.

I can’t pinpoint a reason as to why we became so close. Perhaps because they were a direct entry this year, and hence we were all ‘new’ to the University.  Perhaps because they had also never been to the UK before, and were therefore ideal travelling companions. Or perhaps because, cheesiness aside, it was meant to be.

They have another year here, but I don’t. We had a lovely time on our last night together, with some delicious dinner, lots of chit-chatting, lots of Cluedo (they loved this game!), and a lot of laughs mingled here and there with a tinge of sadness.

My friend and I (okay so it was my friend’s idea, but I was involved too!) prepared the following video, as a sort of parting gift. Our only mistake was perhaps playing it a little early into the night, as it started off a little nostalgia that couldn’t be stopped. Here is it:

Plans were made of us meeting up next year. I don’t expect them to actually take place; as students, we don’t have unlimited budgets, especially with all the Zara shopping we do! But if not next year, I’m confident we’ll definitely see each other again – did I mention she will be married in the next couple of years?! A grand event to celebrate, not just her wedding, but our reunion as well.

Love you both so much! 

Sigh

I haven’t been here in a while. In fact, I have been completely off blogspot. Then why is my profile view count so much more than I can remember? It’s not like a lot of people read this :/

Anyway, I can’t afford to sink into a phase of self pity – especially since I’m already feeling so down. I applied to Microsoft UK for an 11-month placement at the end of my second year of university. It sounds like I’m reaching too far, but I actually got through to the final stage, and I was down in London for my interviews.

Man, were they horrible.

It started out quite alright – I had this group exercise which wasn’t too nerve-wrecking. But then it was on to an interview. I’d already had a telephone interview and passed that one – what more could they have to ask me? Unfortunately my assessor was just too mean. He hardly wrote down anything I said, and then made up his own questions at the end of the interview – awfully hard technical questions to which my response were just “Whaaa…?!”

Let me give you an insight to my competition. There was a guy who was doing a double degree – one from University of Oxford and one from University of Manchester. I mean to say, what!? Luckily the rest were human like me, and were just enrolled with one degree at one university.

Then I had to give a presentation, which was surprisingly not as bad as I expected. We were given a mere 30 minutes to prepare a 10-minute presentation, and there I was, sitting nervously, trying to rack my brains and think of something to say, but to my astonishment, those 10 minutes passed so quickly that I was done with the whole thing before I had time to breathe.

My final interview was horrible as well, by the end my assessor seemed to get bored and started staring at the clock, waiting for the 35 minutes to pass. What am I supposed to make of that? Beats me. Maybe they shouldn’t have three interviews per person. Yea, I blame them.

So, my chances of getting through? I would say less than 20%. Was I bad? Not at all. But I wasn’t good either.  Definitely not as good as Mr. Oxchester anyway.

Sigh.

PART II: It's The Weekend!

We’ve seen what’s good about the first four days of the week. What about the weekend?

I decided to include Friday in Part II because although most of the world thinks of Saturday and Sunday as the Weekend, some parts of the world, like the Middle East, recognize Friday and Saturday as the Weekend.

Fridays:

Good day to…Give up smoking. The first few days are when your willpower is at its strongest. There is no work stress on weekends, and you aren’t always yearning for that cigarette. And once you can conquer the first few days, you don’t need cigs, ever.

Bad day to…Make an important decision. According to body clock experts, we are extremely sleep deprived by the end of the week and are therefore less able to think clearly. Your decisions are most likely to be inefficient and ineffective, and could, for this reason have drastic consequences.

Saturdays:

Good day to…Have a baby. Now I know that people don’t have babies every Saturday, nor can you plan to have one on this particular day. While Tuesday is one of the more popular days to have a baby, Saturdays are the best if you want your kid to grow up successful. And which parent wouldn’t want that?

Bad day to…Drink too much. The occasional (regular for some!) alcohol binge almost always occurs on Saturday nights. Consequently, unsurprisingly, this is the day you are most likely to suffer from alcohol poisoning. There is an increase of more than 67% of admissions to hospitals on Saturdays due to alcohol abuse, as compared to the daily average.

Sundays:

Good day to…Send emails. Analyses has shown that ‘open’ and ‘click’ rates for emails sent on Sundays were highest, with over 30% of recipients opening and viewing their emails on this day. It’s also a great day to go shopping – a recent survey showed that the availability of a wide range of goods was at its highest of 98% on Sundays.

Bad day to…Cook a meal. I bet most of us thought that Sundays are ideal for cooking, as there’s not much else to do. Well, think again. Approximately 20% of the population believes that cooking an elaborate meal on a Sunday is more stressful than visiting the dentist. Now who would’ve thought of that!

So what do you think? Is there something special you’d like to do on a certain day? 

PART I: "It's Monday, Let's Go On A Diet!" What A Bad Idea.

When we think about the days of the week, it’s purely for counting purposes. We never stop to consider their significance – is there something more to them than just an idea of how much time has passed? Did you know there are some days better than others to do certain things?

Statistics play a vital role in whatever we decide to do. We decide to go on a certain type of diet because it is 95% effective, or we decide to take a job that gives us 20% more satisfaction. The numbers are significant. People who have studied these statistics have put two and two together, and found a relationship between the decisions we take and the days of the week.  It sounds bizarre, because we never really give a thought to these things. But it’s definitely interesting to note – after all, aren’t statistics the way to go about it?

Part I has the first four days of the week, and Part 2 will round off the week with the remaining days.

Mondays:

Good day to…Buy shares. It’s known as the Monday Effect at the stock markets. Share prices on Monday continue to move in the same direction that they do on Friday, making it easier to predict price changes.

Bad day to…Start a diet. 33% of those who have started with a dieting regime on a Monday have given up by Tuesday afternoon, according to a Yahoo poll. Also, the tension of returning to the workplace and the devouring of alcohol during the weekends means that you are 20% more likely to die of a heart attack on a Monday.

Tuesdays:

Good day to…Get important errands done. Our rationally thinking ‘left’ brain dominated early on in the week, making it better for routine and mundane jobs. It’s also a good day to update your Facebook page or your blog – the most number of hits are recorded on a Tuesday. Guess I’m a day late.

Bad day to…Have sex. Apparently, people hardly ever have sex on a Tuesday. Why, I guess we’ll never know.

Wednesdays:

Good day to…Go on a date. More than 40% of singles on a dating website reckon that Wednesday is the ideal day for a first date. The reason for this? Thursday. If the date goes well, you have some breathing time, but don’t have to wait too long for your second date on a Friday.

Bad day to…Be cheerful. Forget Monday blues, we are apparently most gloomy on a Wednesday. Analyses of internet blogs and writings have shown that people are their unhappiest right in the middle of the week.

Thursdays:

Good day to…Have sex. Steroids which stimulate sexual hormones peak on a Thursday, which is considered the middle of the seven-day cycle. It is also best first thing in the morning, when levels of testosterone in men and estrogen in women are five times higher than any other time of the day.

Bad day to…Go to hospital. According to a study, you are likely to stay in the hospital up to 24 hours longer than you would if you were admitted on a Sunday.  Patients admitted on a Thursday stay at the hospital for an average of 6.3 days, compared with 5.3 on a Sunday.

So there you go, that’s Part I. What do you think?

If you haven't eaten this, you haven't lived.

One of the most important aspects of life is food. To be more specific - good food. Although I live abroad, I’ve spent my entire childhood in India. While I have been exposed to many different cuisines, I’ve always enjoyed Indian food the best. And while India has a variety of cuisines (north Indian, south Indian, Andhra, Chettinad, Rajastani, Maharashtrian, Punjabi…well practically every state has their own cuisine), there is nothing more wonderful, nothing more creative, and nothing more delicious, than a local Indian delicacy known all over the country as pani puri.  

Here’s a picture of this amazing dish:

For all those going ‘Eh?’ this is how it’s done - you take one of those puris and poke a hole at the top, just one. Then you stuff the puri with whatever you want; potatoes, chickpeas, onions, lentils. I usually love it with a mixture of mashed potatoes and lots of different powdered spices. Once it’s full, you dunk the puri into a bowl filled with pani (which, roughly translated, is nothing but water, but in this case it is tangy water again mixed with lots of powdered spices and chutneys). You then put the whole thing into your mouth in one go, and when you bite, the pani splashes, and you know you’ve reached Heaven. 

I think my favorite pass-time in the whole world would be to have a pani puri-eating competition, just like Shah Rukh Khan in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. Here’s a shot of the scene:

 Wouldn't this be absolutely amazing?!

You know you're in Bangalore when...

So I compiled this little list of differences that you notice only because you live in another country and haven’t visited your own for almost a year. I make it a habit to visit India every summer, for at least a month and half. I’ve done it for eight years now, and these are things that hit me on even the very first day – both positive and negative.

You know you’re in Bangalore when:

all announcements in the aircraft are repeated in Hindi.

as soon as the plane has landed on the runway, mobile phones are whipped out and switched on, even though the plane hasn’t come to a complete stop.

there is no trolley available for your cabin baggage. If it’s heavy, too bad. I learnt that the hard way as I walked the 232,343 miles till immigration carrying three bags.

Indian passport holders are let through with barely a murmur while foreigners are ordered to provide their boarding passes at immigration as proof of their legal travel.

nobody waits in line.

you just have to point to your luggage at the baggage claim and three porters will run and get it for you.

the minute you step out of the airport, a blast of cool breeze hits you, blowing your hair back and automatically making you smile and breathe it all in.

the breeze doesn’t stop, ever.

passers-by stare at you, look at you up and down, look at your luggage, and form an opinion about you as you’re greeting your family.

you pay extra for small things like parking just because you smile and say thank you, which leads them to consider you as a non-Indian.

you hear car horns, auto horns, and bicycle bells ringing non-stop out on the road before you even get into your car.

people spend less time concentrating on their driving and more time yelling at other drivers.

nobody sticks to their lanes while driving. Hell, most of the time there are no lanes.

But all these things make you realize that finally, you are HOME. And after all, home is where the love is.

You know, I am a wrestler. Let me take you down

So I wanted my first blog piece to be something general – about me, my friends, about blogging and recent blogs I’ve read, something simple like that, to get my (non-existent, or so I think) creative juices flowing. Because that’s what I’m here for, right? In fact, I had even started a blog before, around a couple of years ago, but I was so busy that I just didn’t have time for it. So here’s a fresh start. Like I said, I first wanted to write about something very common. But I had the misfortune to have had the above line used on me this morning, which leads to this.

Several other examples come to mind. I was out shopping with a friend the other day at 1Utama, the mega-huge shopping mall just a bike ride away from my home. We just happened to halt in front of this oh-so-beautiful Channel gown (with a studded neckline that looked like real diamonds. Diamonds!), when this sweaty, slightly out-of-breath middle-aged Vietnamese man stepped right in front of us, between us and the dress. He was one of those men who could be good-looking if they took just a little trouble. He, however, had an air of someone who thinks of themselves as completely irresistible. It’s ridiculous that most people who think so are really the complete opposite.

He looked from me to her and back to me again, and then decided to address her directly, which either meant that she looks ‘easier’ than me, or that he just preferred her. I didn’t really care which one it was - while being overlooked is usually a slap in the face, in his case I was satisfied enough to just watch what was about to happen.

My friend looked at him with polite interest; like how you look at someone who tries to sell you items while you’re walking along the road, minding your own business. It turned out to be a mistake though – the man mistakes her politeness for complete lust, and says “If you think that dress would look good on you, you should try me”. I nearly burst out laughing.

There are a zillion tacky ones out there. Another friend of mine, KS, came up to me one day and started talking about some pick-up lines he had come across on the internet related to Math and Science. He’s an exceptionally brilliant student, so the fact that the pick-up lines were associated with academics was just very fitting, somehow. So he just comes up to me and says “I wish you were my Math homework, ‘coz I’d be hard and you’d do me on your desk.” 

Is there anyone in this world who actually thinks that pick-up lines are effective? Do guys actually get girls this way? Mind you, there are some lines which are romantic, and could make a girl go weak in the knees. But these will only work on an existing girlfriend (or boyfriend) - I just cannot for the life of me think of a woman who would fall for a man she has never met, just because he says something so ridiculously cheesy.

Or, well, maybe that’s just me.