Is beauty the beast?

I was watching Ally McBeal today. Neurotic, confused, apparently successful yet steeped in self doubt. Mirror anyone.

After you have appreciated my clever play with words in the title of the post we shall move forward.In today's episode Ally fights for a lady whose dismissed from her anchoring job because she is too old to attract the attention of a TV surfing generation. In between we are shown Ally's own fears of old age and the first wrinkle.

Beauty is skin deep. At least that's what we learn in good all girls catholic school. And then we go to college and meet..ahem..the guys.

Throughout my school girl idealism I never thought you should judge a book by its cover and yet over the years I have found how luck, opportunities favor the better looking. It was hard to accept the concept and yet shamefacedly I have to admit I have only succumbed and suscribed to it.

In our country where being fair is lovely(and now handsome as well), do we really judge people by the looks. And we are not even talking about the dating game .I know of instances where prettier people have easier time in interviews. Yes we have all tried to present ourselves as well groomed presentable best when facing a panel, yet if you have two candidates who are on par on every other scale would you choose the one that would enhance the aesthetics of your office more?

If I were to be interviewed with a bunch of PYT for a post, would I be scared? When someone walks out of an interview room and says lady HR instead of male HR does my heart go a tad disappointed?

Most of my friends would fall in the category of above average looking, have I subconciously made those choices? But isnt it true that after a point you stop looking at the people close to you. You stop noticing how good or not good they look?

I would like to believe my bf loves for my charming personality, dashing sense of humor, my glib talking (oh God, I should stop warna all that fan mail, who will handle?) but on the occassions when I do change from my mansize-fits all tee and comfort fit jeans and wriggle into suffocate-to-death tee and lycra jeans and dab on some eyeliner and gloss, why are the compliments and chivalory more free flowing. Why? On days he gets out the hair gel, goes overdrive with the cologne and comes looking all dapper, my heart swells with the "effort" he taken. Does it mean I judge him by the way he presents himself to me and not by the virtues I liked in the first place.

Its scary to admit, I would stop at a channel because they are because John Abraham would be hawking a new product over a detailed an analysis of the subprime crisis. Carla Bruni interests me only because she looks the way she does.Thats the reason Camilla Parker Bowles can never get the attention of Diana Spencer.

They say some studies have found that babies are also attracted to prettier peole and the instincts behind all this is the fact that better looks means better genes. Not sp skin deep, but ribonucleaic acid deep?

The purpose of this post: Do you judge?

Trigger: Dad's looking for suitable groom with heart of gold, I said I wont mind "looks like Arjun Rampal, body like Abraham and talks like SRK"

Verdict: Am searching in the wrong species.

Till next. From seedy cyber cafe in Delhi.

PS: New season of B-School rankings and placement reports are out. Advice to newbies of MBAgiri- take it with a pinch of salt. Packages like beauty is skin deep.

Its hard to say good bye!

It begins when you hear your maami ki chachi ki beti ki best freind ki bua got into IIM-A and is now earning close to a crore a month in plum investment banking job in New York. So when you are done getting into the herd pick up bus of TCS/Infy/Wipro and are studying at any engineering college worth its Computer Science division you quickly enroll your self at the nearest CAT preparatory course. It will have a fancy name, mine was CATapult. You wont study till a month a before CAT. Then you would suddenly wake up to rank 1246847865 in one of the mock CATS, dust the covers of the preparatory material and start to ghot. You will dig up old contacts who are in IIMs or other self respecting 100 % placement on day 0 institute , join pagalguy/mbaforum and start filling endless forms. The D-Day will arrive, you would either score 99.99 with 99 in all sections, go to IIM A/B/C and live happily ever after or write a book of how it wasn't happily ever after and become rich either ways.
But then that isn't my story and this is my blog. So I scored 98.67 with a suicidal 86 in one of the sections. No IIM thought i deserved to be in it. Not even the new ones in MP and Kerala.
But 3 me-too's did. And I got into 2 of them. One of them a private college with great brand value, another a government college whose name I heard for the first time when I filled the form. Its website had this really oil&mining PSU type of feel and it was number three on my list.

I ended up joining the PSU type college. It was called NITIE. Most of my friends went "huh? what? where? you left MDI??? ohhk..doctor?"
A year and half ago I landed in Mumbai, and reached NITIE using two metaphors "L&T ke paas " or "IIT ke paas". We had been promised single occupancy but were soon saddled with a roomate each. Mine was this thin, short girl who had one travel bag. One. I could have whooped with joy. The cupboards were mine. (Later she would reveal she had 3 more coming to NITIE soon)

I had these visions of sleepless nights working through the midnight oil. Of grand strategy classes. I also had a desktop. One of the 5 people in my batch to have it.

3 weeks into the course, we were given access to ipmessenger, dbabble and DC++. Sleepless nights took on a different connotation all together. Certain gentlemen shared upto 1 Tb (yes 1 Tb) of material on DC++ with certain "only for boys" sections too. Of course my curiosity never got the better of me. Just like other girls.

Summer Placements came. After a fantastic GD-PI conversion ratio of 3/15 I landed into the GE Corp, GE Money to be more precise. I also wrote my first module exams after studying for 2 weeks. I had never felt so unprepared or unconfident before nay paper in my life. A year later I would realise that was the maximum I would study in any module. Last module I studied for 2 hours.

Summers meant running after 186 from NITIE gate, running towards the ladies compartment of Churchgate slow and dealing with telecallers all day. Sales wasn't tough I learnt. But you need patience. It was grassroot. There was no AC office, to sip coffee, and design on excel.

I came back to Prerana. Can you feel so much passion for something not living? Can the desire to make an event successful consume 10 individuals, each more than the other. Can you sleep at 4-5 am and be up at 8 next day with the same vigor. Day after day. In NITIE I was part of that madness. A madness called PMG. Once a PMG member always a PMG member! Yes, I was told this in the committee interview. I understand now. Yes I do.

Coming at a time of great personal turmoil, placements the million dollar sign dream with which we all enter a MBA institute were here.Package. Profile. Brand.
CV designing was a new time consuming art form. Attending a corporate lecture became one to one corporate interaction with CEO of leading investment bank for many. To remain on the right side of ethics while making your CV irresistible to the 5 minute glance of the HR was a tight rope.

There are people who say at NITIE you will have to compromise. You will have to take what you get. I have one word to tell them-"B$#@s!" If you have the patience, if you have the dare, if you wont compromise. You will get what you want. be it Sales and marketing in every leading FMCG (Leading hair oil FMCG HR please note:people do come to NITIE for S&M, most of FMCGs bigger than you do hire them from here.) , finance, there were fancy profiles like derivative structuring to which I could only say wow, since I couldn't make head or tail of what it entailed or the traditional strong points-SCM/IT.
After intense disappointments of initial 2 days. I did manage to get placed.
Standard Chartered gave me consumer banking. Johnson & Johnson gave me MD Sales and marketing. But there was one brand which simply put the competition out of the picture. It offered me an amazing flexibility, a handsome package, and a renowned management trainee program.
When deciding on whether to join MDI or NITIE I had asked one question to alumni at both places. "Does HLL come to campus?"

Yes am going to HLL now HUL. The BLT program promises a world of adventure for my wandering spirit.

One and half years into NITIE. I can say Thank you. For the best two years of my life. For friends and more than friends. For the lessons in the class room and outside.

PGDIM. 96 steps. TOPA. Freshers. Denovo. PMG. Ataria. Nescafe. PPO road. Poptates. HN. 303. PGP-5. Mess 3&4. Vodka with sprite. Prerana. 123. 321. PMG wing. GE Money. Charlie's Angels. DC++. Dbab. Ip. Huma Adlabs. Nirmal Lifestyle. 186. 25. Masala maggi. Acad section. Audi. Ethics. PPO. HUL.

I dont know if my maami ki chachi ki beti ki best freind ki bua felt what i feel today. Thank you NITIE.
Goodbye. Godbless.

In love with Maximum City

There is a myth. Mumba Devi, the goddess of Mumbai can showr you with wealth and makes you spend that fortune within the city itself. That is why the wealth of Mumbai can never leave its shore.

A year and half ago i came to Mumbai, a city that had intrigued and fascinated me. I came, I saw and I fell in love. The detractors will say JWMarriot...but in all this time I have been here, in all the late nights, early mornings, odd hours that I have been, for all the girl trips, all the public transport I have used at all hours of the day and nigh, I have felt safe. These two years have been the most fun-filled in my entire lifetime. Expensive, yes..Awesome..YES. This is a city for everyone. You come in and you can get lost or stand out. The city gives you the freedom to do both.

It has been city number 3 on my Indian sojourn. I have seen the middle class grow and exert its strength. As India moves towards fulfilling its destiny, I feel am at the right place and at the right time.

Maximum City. I will be back soon.