First contest win as Blogger

Even though I don't blog often was surprised to find myself win  a runner-up in the "Love Marriage ya Arranged Marriage" contest!

"Love Marriage OR Arranged Marriage" was the theme for this pan-India blogging contest conducted by Sony & Powered by Indiblogger.

You can read my blog for the post @ Here 

Happy to get the below runner-up badge !!! 

Love Marriage ya Arranged Marriage!

Its very difficult to say which one is better "Love Marriage Ya Arranged Marriage". Which path to choose? One may say Left is better, One may say right but I prefer Center (hybrid).

I have many married friends, some are happily married, some are burdened by marriage & some are tamed by marriage. (Won't categorize them based on path chosen)

Lets proceed it in same way as Life-cycle of a person.

Pre- Teen:-

Before becoming teenager, many of us have fallen in love with our school teacher or a fellow class mate or one's neighbor? (I am not bringing in age factor of the other person to keep it simple.)

Suppose you are that child.You believe  you are in love and you have watched many Bollywood movies, which shows love is followed by marriage. Now you demand/plan to get married, should one agree? I don't think so. For child's understanding he might be in love (may be actually he is), but none can say with certainty if it's love or "bacch panna"/childishness ? Most of us prefer to see those kids enjoy their childhood (study/play/smile....) instead of facing the hardship of marriage for which they are not yet ready.

At the same time, if the elders also plan to get a child married to another person (Child / Adult / Old person), should one agree?  I expect the same answer here - No. One good example is a popular soap in "Ballika Vadhu". Which sometimes is even a reality.

In short, this is not the right age. If you look at bigger picture, it can cause other problems like exploitation, harassment, domestic violence and other socio-economic factors.

Teen to Adulthood (till one earns and is ready to take care of responsibilities):-
Many of the folks in this age group will claim to love a superstar say "Shah Rukh" or a cricketer say "Virat Kohli" or someone like "Sunny Leone" or "Katrina Kaif".

Some may even leave their home to find "this true love" of theirs, some may even express their feelings before the photographs of "their love" and perceive it to be heard. Some may love a boxer or footballer or swimmer or a dancer from their school or neighborhood. Many will have "Love at first sight". Many people will claim to be in love even though they have never talked directly face-to-face, probably a letter friend or just a chat friend. Most of the times its not love - its attraction or infatuation or lust or perception of one's desire rather than a reality. Many of the folks in the same phase gets $exually involved sometimes resulting in other issues like Teenage pregnancy. Don't think love marriage is desirable (even if both are actually in love) when none of them can take responsibility of even one's own.

Even Arranged marriage won't work well here. For me, this period is not to think about marriage.

Adulthood (ready to take responsibilities):-
Love Marriage:-
If you have reached a stage where you are not dependent on your parents and you are deeply in love "either real or perceived as real", you are free to go ahead legally - Its your life , Its your choice.
No doubt it will have its advantages like both the person will know each other very well in advance,  in this respect it scores above arranged marriage. But at the same time, there are possible issues post-marriage when its not approved by parents.
Firstly, the couple is on their own, as most of the times they are disowned or choose to stay separately from their parents.
Second, if there are any problems between life-partners in future or any other crisis, many of the times parents from either side won't support morally or financially. Also one of the partners might not even have a place to go.
Third, generally I have observed that tendency to compromise is much less but expectation from one's partner is much more.
Fourth, most of the people do point at high divorce rates for love marriage compared to arranged marriage, indicating reduced chances of success in comparison to arranged marriage.

Here the couple knows the path & the partner but they have to proceed at their own risk, with least outside support.

Arranged Marriage:-
In this form of marriage, couples doesn't know much about them and are brainwashed in a sense to find ways to love their partner, which may or may not happen. As they don't know much about each other, there is not much level of comfort between them. But in case of any crisis or issues, one would have many people to rely on or for help to resolve it. Probably, this is the reason its considered safer (but may not be comfortable at the beginning).
If you never fall in love, before or its not feasible for you to marry your love, then this is option you have (unless you plan to be bachelor for life). Family arranged marriage is better than searching for your own life-partner in JeevanSathi.com or some other matrimonial site (though not necessary).

If your partner has died before you, at some point of time you may need a partner, (think old man/woman) , you may not want to wait long for love to happen again. Arrange marriage works better here (options are less).

Here the couple doesn't know partner, but knows path to go forward with lots of help available in need.

Evolution
But I think, nowadays both arranged marriage & love marriage have evolved and have become a bit of hybrid. E.g.

• Love marriage converted to Arrange Marriage - (Best option) - When the couple is able to convince the parent from both the sides.
• Arrange Marriage with consent (from both bride & groom) & courtship period - a chance to know each other before hand. (Better - helps in transition)
• Live-in Relationship - People in love staying together without marriage. ( At-least personally I don't endorse it. I just know that I won't like my kids or my sisters to take this path, so I would do the same. Even though many will say whats wrong in it. I just know that I don't want to be a hypocrite by desiring to be in a live-in-relationship, at the same time, I don't want any of my female family members to take this route. For me exception here is senior citizens). Not to miss the legal & social ramifications of Live-in relationships in India.

I will just conclude, if you get a real love and it works out for you go ahead and try your love (with less/no help around).
If you are not lucky enough to find a real love or its not working out for you, go ahead and try your  luck (with some help around).

Remember all marriages are made in heaven and none of them are perfect. So just chill and be yourself.

This post has been published in response to "Love Marriage or Arranged Marriage " by Indiblogger and Sony Entertainment Television. www.facebook.com/LoveYaArrange

Pehel 2012 - An Initiative !!!

Pehel 2012 - An Initiative !!!

Pehel - An ongoing tradition in IIMB PGSEM - An event organised by fresh incoming batch of PGSEM students every year for seniors, and not vice-versa. We first came to know about this tradition from our seniors - Anupama, Gokul, Vijay & Prabir during PGSEM 2012 Orientation. 

Since all of us were nascent in IIMB and upcoming task was to organize an event for seniors, our seniors guided us really well with all logistics and planning. Their guidance helped us streamline the preparation for the event. Love you all seniors, without you we couldn't have done it so entertaining and GRAND SUCCESS (I believe so and most of viewers I believe will agree). ;-)

The event date was decided to be held on 14th July 2012.

The preparation started with formation of various committees for specific tasks. There were committees for fund collection, logistics, design, songs, dance, skit, comparing and other activities. We went ahead with T-shirt route for fund collection, as done in past. Main requirement for finalizing the event date was that it should happen only after the DML (Director's Merit List) was ready. Once DML list was ready and availability of Director & Auditorium was confirmed, we set 14th July 2012 to be the D-day for Pehel 2012. Before the D-day, many events related the organizing had taken place like T-shirt distribution, practice for various acts, teasers and invitations, etc. Don't want to bore you all with those details...Lets move to the D-Day directly.

Finally the D-day was there, most of us did final preparations for performing, of course, after the classes. Once Auditorium was available A/V and other logistics were checked, so as to make sure everything was in place. Guests started trickling in & the event started.

Event kick started @ 6 pm, with a welcome to guests. Formal event started with speech by our director Prof. Chandra's,  our chairperson Prof. Ramesh Kumar followed by Prof. Agarwal. After that, DML awardees were accoladed by the director. We had a Hi-Tea break between formal and informal events, thanks to the PGSEM office for that.

The informal event kick started by an amazing performance by Anu's kids (Aditi & Pranav) - Simply Priceless during the duet song by Chandni & Abhesh - "Laddki Kyu Najane Kyu, Ladko se nahin hoti".

Pranav & Aditi - Rockstars in Action

Dance - I never thought we could have pulled it off so well. Audience were spell bound with it. It had many tracks "Terre Bina Bhi Kya Jina", "Humara Bajaj", "Chalo Ishq Ladayee", "Kolaveri Di" & "Rum Rum Whishky". It spell-bound the audience both with comedy & simply splendid performance. Waiting for someone to share video. Video is worth more than any words.

Melodious solo singing by Chandni touched everyone's heart.

Skit - every time we rehearsed our dialogues were different. Specially just a day before, on 13th July night, we started seeing changes in dialogue for Dr. Silent Singh, Aamir Khan, Baba Ramdev, Media representative. So the Skit's troupe were on the stage with just one practice of the final dialogues. It went well, hope it succeeded in entertaining as well as in provoking some thoughts w.r.t. the issue of corruption. 

Skit Intro - "Gaddhe Mein Bharat"

Skit Climax - "Gaddhe Mein Bharat"

Iqbal as Dr. Silent Singh

Audience were engaged through out the show thanks to splendid MCing by Pehel 2012 Masters-of-Ceremony - Anshuman & Swati. 

Group song was a perfect ending for one of the finest evening @ IIM-B, with our friends & family in IIM-B. Followed by delicious dinner in MDC, thanks to PGSEM office.

Last Act of the Evening - Group Song

Thanks to All for Making this event a GRAND SUCCESS !!!

Khul-ja-Sim-Sim !!!

IIM-B Here We Come !!!

Orientation Day 1 :-
I woke up @ 5 am and was ready to reach the IIM-B as a student. Feeling was quite different as never before with 100 of questions jumping inside my top floor- What to expect? Who all will be my batch mates? How will be the Profs., seniors ? Will I be able to balance my personal & study life? How I need to plan my travel to-and-fro between home & IIMB campus ... My thoughts were quite turbulent until I reached the gates of THE IIM-B. Once we (Me & Mayank) were inside the gates, it was an altogether different world. Suddenly we stopped hearing all sorts of traffic noise and one could hear the nature and feel the calm environment surrounding us. We stepped out of car, confused were to go, suddenly saw a smiling face of one of our seniors, who was coming towards us. (Later came to know his name - Vijay). Vijay guided us to MDC for breakfast, which was followed up by checking in the hostel. As soon as I entered the room , I felt as if I have entered the hostel life again.

We had a few inspirational talks by the likes of Mr. Anjan Lahiri (president of I.T. services, MindTree), Mr. Rajesh Pandit and Prof. N. M. Agarwal. Also we had one of the quite different views by Mr. Mansoor Khan, Entrepreneur and Film director of Kayamat Se Kayamat Tak, Jo Jeeta Wahin Sikandar, Akele Hum Akele Tum, who shared his views w.r.t. to Oil Peak and 3rd Curve.

And yes, we had interactions with our seniors (Few of the names I remember - Anu, Prabir, Maitreya, Harsha, Gokul, Radha, Vijay, and others...sorry in case I missed you). Seems like I had abundant names to remember and I failed to recall all - Short Term Memory Loss . We were given some good gyaans and later were greeted with 3 books - Accounting, Strategic Management & Microeconomics. Lot of experiences were shared by senior PGSEMers, they also arranged for games like Dump Charades, 1 minute non-sense talk, Skit, etc. And yes, not to miss late night group assignments being given after midnight to be submitted before 8 am next morning. Which all together was a fun. And every tasks was going to be counted for the HOUSE CUP and the group name for us was "KLONAM". At midnight, while we were working on our assignments and having coffee, I got the unique chance which not many of new joinees get - chance to shot your seniors - which I myself jumped in to shot all of them at once. Below is the shot

And yes, even though the assignment was for us and it was late, they were sharing their experiences even late night, which really shows their passion to help us. (Had I been in there place probably I would have ran to sleep). This is the time I realized that if we are working on assignments late at night, they are also not sleeping early either and really have put a lot of effort for us in there busy schedule. Love you all seniors ...

Orientation Day 2 :-
Wow !!! we were awake till 3 am and then finally decided to go for sleep. And yes just to add I got a great group too - Kumar Guhan, Latish, Madhu & Madhur - "METAMINDS". All of them are really sweet, I pulled Guhan's legs that he need to wakeup early and review too, but he was really cool as always. I woke at 6 am and was ready for the Day 2. We got chance to attend "Drishtikon 2012 : CSITM Annual conference". Many papers were presented also we got some good insights from Rajesh and Prof. Sourav Mukherji. I have always noticed Prof. N. M. Agarwal to be very very humble, e.g. he will always ask others to also give momento to distinguished guests as well as ask PGSEMer 2012 to light lamps.

We also were lucky to hear famous people from different facets of life (Mr. Vir Kashyap from http://babajob.com/, Ms. Gunjan Krishna  an IAS officer) - I was literally spell bound by the amount work being done by her as well as  knowledge she had, Mr Singh from DataWind - Aakash Tablets, Mr. Anand Sudarshan from Manipal Educations). We got some enlightened by Mr. Bhavish Sood from Gartner. I really apologise not to remember all the names properly, but can't help as we (I believe most of us) were busy trying to keep remembering names of our batch mates. All new faces and names - and another problem of mapping correct name & face... He He...

Battle for House Cup started again in the evening, till now we were the top group - KLONAM. All the four houses competed in various games like Cricket, Table Tennis, Basket Ball and Badminton followed by Treasure Hunt. Doing a treasure hunt in such a big campus at night when most of us are confused with all the paths with every surroundings which look similar was definitely not a cake walk. But surprise was still awaiting us. Another set of assignment - this time a case study that too close to 20 pages of case. We all (MetaMinds) were mentally prepared to be awake whole night again. We completed the assignment and went for our rooms.

Orientation Day 3 :-
Thanks to Madhur who woke me up on time, otherwise I would have definitely missed the case study class by Prof. B. Mahadevan. To my surprise, we were greeted by our seniors with a surprise quiz followed by Case study Introduction. We had a really interesting and very interactive session with Prof. Mahadevan. Though while being in class it looked normal but when I look back now, I can really feel the difference all the learning I still remember and also the content covered in that small duration was huge. After the session was over, we were given a bonded booklet for strategic management. Seems like next 2.5 years is going to be very exciting and very very busy. And as usual we had our seniors and they as usual had some more info for us along with academic information - we need to treat them by organizing an event called "Pehel". We were ready to leave the college after lunch. We also had elections and we choose a Class Representative too.

When I look back I felt as if I have been there in campus for a month or two. I am in totally Awe after getting just a glimpse of 2.5 days, just wondering what we will be 3 years later once molded by this fine institution. And yes, I don't regret trying to get into PGSEM year after year, from 2008 till now, finally I have reached the place I wanted to be in. The doors of learning have opened for Me !!! Khul - ja - Sim - Sim !!! Its up to us how much wealth of knowledge we can carry back and apply !!!