YOU know you are in XLRI and in BM-A:

· When you keep on introducing yourself to the class and the professors for two continuous days at the start of the term.

· When majority of your class positions and targets the ‘condoms’ at the ‘married’ market.

· When the first name of every girl in your class ends with either an ‘A’ or an ‘I’.

· When an IR-wallah does not understand that a particular dish in the mess should NEVER be called ‘Yellow balls with gravy’ after a Gango quiz when asked: ‘Abe! Khane mein kya hai? ’

· When you learn PMI the ‘harder’ way after a professor walks out of the class.

· When you start loving the phrase: ‘You got my point?’

· When Gango does not like a QT doubt being explained to a class-mate sitting by the side when the doubt does not exist.

· When, to understand "Positioning", you have to understand the difference in the burning sensations caused by Savlon and Dettol.

· When you realise that ‘Denominators’ were actually very important in life.

· When you know that the only connection between ‘Corporate Strategy’ and ‘Social responsibility’ ever possible in your lifetime is about 30 hrs of wall-hangings (presentations).

· When you learn how to ‘test’ jeans before buying it, actually try it in your room and feel like a pervert. Consider “as smooth as a baby’s bottom” for reminders.

· When, after having crawled through ‘bat-shit’ for the last hour through caves, you still care for a photo.

· When ‘Fakira Chanachoor’ figures in the list of marketing project topics.

· When you have a ‘Sleeping Coach’ with a flawless record in the class.

· When about five people ‘deter entries’ and ‘impose exits’ and the rest of the class ‘accommodates’ a plethora of ‘sleeping’ styles, postures, alignments, planes and angles.

· When the director of a village trip movie does not know that ‘mothers’ are not to be used as protagonists in a horror movie for they can’t stand it when children feel the ‘darr’.

· When you actually have to google, read and understand a philosophy paper at 4 in the morning for you did the only genuine ‘Class Participation’ of your OB career in the previous class.

· When almost every presentation that ever came up on your lecture hall’s wall contains a VIDEO.

· When the ‘Hunter’ becomes the ‘Hunted’.

· When the only explanation to the acronym IB is ‘Investigation Bureau’ and you have a personalised representative in the class.

· When eight people cross a lake two times on a collection of Bamboo sticks and discarded truck tubes and pretend that they are competing in a race.

· When you know that whatever you do for these six terms, you ARE going to end up in a ‘SERVICE’ industry and you cannot escape that.

· When GP’s ‘Bhains’ dies after smelling effluents from JP’s factory during a CSE presentation.

· When you actually have a ‘pink’ presentation because it was on work life imbalance for women. For that matter, a reddish-pink tent was spotted at the adventure trip also.

· When you spend ten class sessions making dosas and baking cookies.

· When you feel like sending an official request to Oxford University Press to change the official spellings from

Ø ‘Position’ to ‘Poseeetion’

Ø ‘Poverty’ to ‘Paahvati’

Ø ‘If’ to ‘Eeeeiiff’

Ø ‘Marketing’ to ‘Maauhkatinng’

· When you know that a Marketing project deadline can be met in 15 minutes flat (Including Formatting).

· When, while preparing a ppt with your group-wallah, you say: ‘Yaar! Yeh important nahi hai’ and get the reply ‘Haan ...But main keh rahi hun...yeh important nahi... relevant hai ‘. And you are still looking for the difference.

· When BM B people actually laugh at a prof who tells them “Your class’s performance is better than BM A”.

· When you actually have a discussion for one whole session to decide whether marketing is intuition, experience, arbit or crap.

· When the prof who appears to be the ‘cool’ at the start of the term knocks you out ‘cold’ by the end of it using t-shirts, flowers, torches, pens and stairs.

· When you solve a CA final Cash flow problem in the 18^th BFA session.

· When a person who has been doing ‘it’ for the last 22 years explains you the difference between ‘zindadil’ and ‘murdadil’ at the start of your adventure trip.

· When you know that the lyricist for the “Ramaiya Vatsa Vaiya” song would tremble even in his grave upon hearing the unimaginably ‘creative’ remix of the same by DJ Daddy and DJ Dewan.

· When certain first time villagers plant paddy saplings for two hours in a random Orissa village, so much so that India’s food production rises and stock markets have been up since.

· When your QT end term fate depends on your ‘decision’ to attempt a ‘decision tree’ problem.

· When Madhushala becomes the Wet night anthem.

· When you have Drama Queens, DCP kings, Didi, Bhaiya, Small umbrellas, Captains, Kids, Daddy, Ma, Big B, Ram Lakhan, Hunter and all the hunted in the same class.

WHEN YOU KNOW THAT THIS IS THE BEST COLLEGE, BATCH AND CLASS YOU COULD BE IN.

Cheers!!

Jha

(Dis) claimer: All personal jokes, jibes and references are fully intended and in meaning as written. Any deviation from the same will only be because of reader’s imagination for the writer (was diagnosed with)/ (is supposed to suffer from) an attitude problem.

The term that was…..

It all began on a fine Saturday morning, June the 13th, 2009. People started ‘checking-in’, some looked intimidated while others were still in disbelief to have made it to XLRI!!!

Even before preparatory lectures had begun, the TFEMR mess gave some ‘food’ for thought. The mess stuck to its ‘quality’ throughout the term, so much so that most of the lunch and dinner time was spent thinking rather than eating.

The introductory session was on Monday morning. I along with couple of others, acting as detectives had already visited Tata auditorium on Sunday, to find the best suitable place which will allow to doze off without getting caught.
The first day came and went; preparatory lectures showed the trailer of what was in store for next two and a half months.

The GBMs, and subsequent ‘rituals’ were completed amid much furore. But in the end, Nash equilibrium was attained within the society. I, being an asocial person, was indifferent to all that was happening around and couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about.

By now, classes had begun in full flow. Quizzes started hovering around and disrupted the ‘feel good’ factor. Gango quiz was a matter of life and death (or should I say, only death?) for Bummers and was a topic of amusement and laughter for IR people.Speaking of IR people, they never let an opportunity of making fun of Bummers go begging. But ‘Every XLer has his term’ and IR guys will soon realize this. The payback time beacons!!

BM-A was at its usual best. A conglomeration of DCPers, FRAXers and GRAXers, the class participation level attained the heights never reached before. Each ‘participant’ had his unique style and was looking to maximize his payoff. Due to budget-time constraint, it won’t be possible to describe each one in detail here. (A separate report will soon be published for the same). There was also a weird guy in class who occasionally used to come out of hibernation and talk about Ayn Rand and philosophy and used to ask ‘supposedly’ incomprehensible and too long questions. But we will ignore him for time being for society’s sake.

Seniors, keeping with the XL culture, gave valuable tips to new batch, gave lot of gyan on CV preparation and other stuff and helped a lot in general.

Keeping with the tradition, the project reports were usually completed (including start and finish) on last day. The punctuated equilibrium model didn’t hold true in this case and all the burst used to come on the deadline day which was usually accompanied with postponement of deadline time by few hours!!!

The final project presentations were completed by sitting for 8-9 hrs at stretch with everybody doing a backward induction for ‘nap-time’ calculation, depending on the group’s turn.

And then….End term!!!....Which came and went without giving time for shock absorption. But the ‘shock of the term’ came from immensely popular Prof. Sengo.
The shock induced the much needed fire in creative minds at XL and songs like ‘Gango na kare Sengo ne wo kaam kiya hai’ were doing rounds around the hostel.
And finally the day came!!! September the 6th, 2009. The exams were over. In retrospective, it was difficult to visualize how the time flied by. Everybody was a free bird (for 2 weeks atleast). Everyone had plans for the holiday in place since ages.

On a personal note, the author didn’t have a good term ‘academically’, but for a die-hard Manchester United fan, slow start to a season is nothing new, and things can only improve as the ‘season’ progresses.

Wishing everyone a happy holiday!!!