Times have Changed - 2

It hasn’t been long since I blogged about how times have changed. Now, the time has come for me to throw in yet another real life incident. This is a letter written to me by my friend Swathi, today morning regarding her son, Kashyap’s admission to Dilhi Private Paathasala (DPP). I am reproducing the letter here as it is.

Hi Ravi,

How are you? I am fine and Pavan and Kashyap are also doing great. I know it’s been long since we spoke to each other. How are things going at your end and how are your preparations going for GD and PI? Why don’t you come for lunch this Saturday? I am sure we can catch up on lot many things.

By the way, this weekend has been one of the most eventful days of my life since Kashyap was born. You know, how I have always dreamt of sending Kashyap to a World Class - International School like DPP. This Saturday, Kashyap and I went to DPP to write the entrance test for 1^st Class admissions. Though Kashyap is well prepared and of course very intelligent, I couldn’t hold my nerves and am feeling very nervous. When we reached DPP, I saw more than 150 mothers gathered there with their children. The scene itself is daunting. Most of them I spoke to are housewives and are taking best care and attention for their children. Since the exam is yet to start, all of them referring to notes they bought with them and revising the course syllabus. But, I didn’t bring any notes with me and couldn’t let Kashyap revise any of the lessons I taught him. The bell rang and I sent Kashyap in wishing him all the best. While Kashyap is writing the exam, everyone is talking about how well prepared their children are. When I heard all that, tears streamed rolling down my cheeks as I felt I have done injustice to Kashyap by not taking enough attention for his entrance test in DPP. As both Pavan and I are working, I though we spent less time with Kashyap than the mothers that have come here. I felt like I am a bad mother for Kashyap as I couldn’t prepare him at par with his fellow test takers. That 2.5 hrs of test duration were one of the most tensed moments of life. I thought about so many things raging from how bad a mother I am, from how difficult the test is, from how Pavan would react when I tell him what all transpired here at DPP to how well Kashyap is feeling inside the test room. Finally, after the exam is over, Kashyap came running to me feeling little exhausted and enthusiastic. From his face, I could make out that he wrote the test well. But, Ravi, you know that these are the days when good is not good enough. We have to be best to be good. After half an hour, a well dressed lady came to us and addressed the parents briefing the admission process post written test. She said that they would announce the results on Sunday evening on their website www.dpp.edu/admissions.

While driving back to our home from DPP, I asked Kashyap about the questions that are asked in the entrance exam. He said the exam is tough, but he could write well. You know, the questions that are asked in the examination are not what I have expected. Some of the questions are what is 13*12, Explain your father’s profession. My God, Ravi, I don’t know what DPP expects from their students. Pavan was sitting at our apartment balcony waiting for us and I narrated him the entire drama.

Next day, we logged in to their website and waiting for the results anxiously. Pavan is pacing in and out of living room, not able to contain his anxiety and I am refreshing the page every 2 minutes. Kashyap went to swimming class and Tennis coaching. At around 8 25PM, the results were out and I started searching for Kashyap’s name frantically all through. I scrolled the entire page and couldn’t find it. By this time, I am almost sobbing while hugging Pavan. Pavan took the laptop from me and scrolled carefully searching for Kashyap’s name. I could see his fingers shivering slightly while scrolling down. And then, all of a sudden he screamed loudly and started to dance. He highlighted Kashyap’s name using his mouse and started dancing again. We screamed with joy and happiness and distributed sweets in our neighborhood. I was so happy that I started dancing too. Kashyap made me proud. Real proud. I never felt as happy as I did on that day. May be, that’s an overstatement. But yeah, it feels so true. Couple of hours later, we received an email from the Head Mistress of DPP congratulating Kashyap and us for his achievement and asking us to be present for an interview, today evening. Now, Pavan is of course elated but slightly more tensed that we might put Kashyap’s future in jeopardy. Both of us have taken day off today and trying to stay as calm as possible and putting our best foot forward for today’s interview. To relieve my pressure, I thought of telling you everything!

I am sure you wish us all the best for what seems to be one of the most important interviews of our life. I am hoping they wouldn’t ask us questions like State Euler’s theory, Define Anachronism, what is the meaning of Asphyxiation. I will write to you tomorrow on what happened today. Got to go now. I am yet to iron Pavan’s suit for today’s interview. Catch you later. Have a good day!

Cheers,

Swathi.

Times have changed

When I got the snail mail saying that I have been admitted to BITS Pilani, I told my friends that I have 'secured' an admission to one of the most prestigious colleges in India. I definitely felt elated by the prospect of joining a very good university with lot of intelligent students coming in and competing among themselves.


After a couple of years, when I passed out of BITS, my friends have emailed me saying that they have 'secured' an admission to Stanford/MIT/TAMU/LSE. They must have felt on cloud 9 too, because they are about to join some of the world's best colleges. But now, I have come across an email from a friend who said '...One of my colleagues has 'secured' an admission into XXX school for his daughter...'. I started to wonder how times have changed drastically and what the phrase 'securing' an admission has transformed in meaning!


In my childhood, there is nothing that I have heard of 'securing an admission' to join a school, of course unless it is THE best school in the country! But now, I have seen so many parents trying hard and paying hefty donations to get their children admitted to 'International' schools with world class facilities and able teachers. A couple of months ago, I have read an article in MINT (my personal favorite) which mentioned about the difficulties NRIs face to get their children admitted to a very good school. As soon as the school administration staff comes to know that the parents are NRIs, they charge heavy fees and ask for more donations! And these days, I have seen schools conducting written tests for parents! (:O)! How ridiculous can it be? May be, by the time I get married and have kids, I might have to join TIME or something of that sort and prepare for these written tests with the same vigor and dedication as I did for CAT and GMAT! I hope, I can secure admission to IIM - A level school when I give that entrance examination for my kid! :)

The way of the world!

Unjust it were to bid the World be just
And blame her not: She ne'er was made for justice:
Take what she gives thee, leave all grief aside,
For now to fair and then to foul, her lust is!

CAT 2008 Results

Hello all,


I am the first on net to report that IIMs have officially published the key in pdf format. click here to find it! The results are out here from tomorrow morning.


Note: As of now, the link is broken. Will let you all know, once it is alive.


Update1: The Key is now available. But not the results yet!

Update2: The results are also out and I made it to Shillong and Lucknow

Unbridled Emotions!

Last week, when I went for that oh so adventurous night-trek to Scanda Giri, due to my poor nocturnal eye-sight, I went straight through bushes. After a couple of minutes, when I got a breather to check how affected my calf muscles are after the incident, I spotted two dots spaced exactly by some distance to throw an impression of snake-bite. Being a timid and a faint-hearted guy I am, I was scared to death and felt that those would be my last minutes. Even the well experienced guide's could not assuade me to think positively. After half an hour, I started to feel dizzy and though it has got nothing to do with the thorny-snake bite, I felt for sure those are my final few breaths. Instead of panicking(Oh, a very good situation handler I am - though I am scared to death), I thought out what to do in those final few minutes. How much ever I focussed, only ONE thing came to my mind. That stark revelation was just the kind of thing I wanted in my life. It told me how much I really take those things for granted, that I should never have ignored in the first place. It told me how much I take my father's love for granted!

Imagine the struggle a father goes through when he sends his son for higher studies to far off places just so that the son gets what he wanted, even though the father can't leave the son. The father thinks 24X7 about how to enrich his son's life and the son doesn't even care to call him once a week! If in case, the son has a girl friend(fortunately or unfortunately, that's a different story), the amount of time he devotes to his dad would be around 2-5% of the time he devotes to his career and girl friend put together. Everytime, the father sees an article in the newspaper talking about recession in IT industry in a remote country like Sumatra, he starts to get worried about his son's career being threatened. This is the kind of unconditional love that the fathers have for their sons. But still, sons show their irritation when fathers show that extra amount of care that they think their sons deserve.  

I am not arguing that sons do not have love towards their father. What I am saying is, they do not express it and put their father son relationship in jeopardy! What I am saying is, tell your dad how much you love him before it's too late! Tell him everything that you always wanted to tell but could never tell because of one or ther other reason! Let nothing come in between! May be after a couple of decades when you are in your dad's position, don't let a situation come, where you regret for treating your father the way your son is treating you now! 

Note: If you don't agree with what I have written here, either you are the one true son every father wants to have or you don't have the guts to accept what you are.

That little extra effort

It is yet another saturday afternoon and after playing an hour of tennis, we are tired and chitchatting about our normal routine life. One of the topics that came up during the discussion is about the efforts men put up to score a beautiful girl. Conclusion? well... Whatever men do, either intentionally or unintentionally can be related to their efforts in having that wonderful sex with a beautiful girl.

Any little extra effort they put up to get a better life, more money, better life style is all in a bid to ensure that, that beautiful girl picks him ahead of others. Come to think of it, Chiranjeevi mentioned in one of his party meetings that, handloom industry is suffering from lack of interest from the youth and one of the reasons Youth's disinterest towards handloom industry is because, they are not getting married. At the end of the day, every one wants to get married and everyone wants to come home and relax in the lap of their wonderful wife! Nowadays, everyone wants to be a software engineer (that's the main reason I became a software engineer ;)) and earn the respect of girls' parents and in turn girls'. Oh my God, I am just one of them! Even my attempts to get that better life can inturn be applied to having that wonderful sex with a beautiful girl!

courtesy: pnv srikanth, Joker in the Pack novel, Sathipandu. :) 

Chat right inside Orkut

Oh my God, I love Google. Every time, I feel they are not bending their backs in improving their apps, they come up with another new feature. Yesterday, I have blogged about new Themes features in GMail. Now, its the turn for Talk application right inside Orkut. You can see who is online and just click on the bubble next to their name and you can use the same experience as GTalk in GMail. Awesome, isn't it!