भारतीय युवा पीढ़ी !

आज का युवा

कालेज में आने के बाद, दिल में उठी ये आवाज़,
बेटा यहाँ से पढ़ के जाना है सारी दुनिया को कुछ कर दिखाना है,

इसी उधेड़बुन में पहुंचे हम क्लास में,
क्लास मई पढ़ाई कि बात जो कि शुरू, मिल गया हमें हमारा गुरू,
उसने हमें बुलाया, अपने पास बिठाया,
बोला: अभी नया नया आया लगता है,
तभी पढ़ाई कि बात करता है, क्या ज़िन्दगी से इतना डरता है,

मेरी शरण में आ जा तो कुछ बन जाएगा,
और एक क्लास में अगर दो-चार साल भी ना रहा,
तो कोर्स क्या ख़ाक समझ पायेगा,

सामने से आ रही थी एक सुन्दर कन्या,
उसने उसे बुलाया, मेरे पास बिठाया, और बोला:
इन्हें देख रहे हो ? ये हामारी मिस कालेज हैं,
और वो दूर जो दीवानों के हाथ में हो दीख रह है न
वो इनका ही लगेज है,

पूछो इनसे, की उनमें से किसके साथ इनकी लाइफ फीट हैं,
वो बोली, तू तो बड़ा स्तुपिद है,

अरे ! ये सब तो कालेज आने का एक बहाना है,
बन के दुल्हन एक दिन हमें, इनके घर थोड़े ही जाना है

सुन कर मैं हुआ हैरान,
कितना बदसूरत था सौंदर्य का यह ऐलान,

आज का युवा यह क्या सीख रहा हैं, उसे रूह का सौंदर्य क्यों नही दीख रहा है,

क्यों बिछा रहे हैं ये जज्बातों कि लाश, क्या हर रिश्ता ही हैं इनके लिए टाई म - पास,

तभी एक रोशनी ने आकर मुझे जगाया, मई ख्वाब से हक़ीकत में आया,

तब पता चला की ये सब एक सपना था, पर ना जाने क्यों आज भी ये लगता है,

की वो समाज जो मैंने सपने में देखा था, वो समाज मेरा अपना था,

मेरा अपना था,

मेरा अपना था

धर्म की राजनीति

आदमी

कभी राम के नाम पे जीता था आदमी, आज राम के नाम पे मरता है आदमी,

ये ख़ून कि नदियाँ जो बह रही हैं हर तरफ, उसमे राम नाम की नैया को खेता है आदमी।

एय इंसा तेरी इंसानियत को ये क्या है हो गया,

मासूमों को मार के तू करेगा मंदिर खड़ा,

नदानों के लाश पे डालेगा इसकी नीव,

अब्लाओं के ख़ून से जलायेगा इसके दीप,

मासूमों की चीत्कार से बजेंगी इसकी घंटियाँ,

हवान्कुंद में गिरेंगी सुहागनो कि बिंदियाँ,

उन बंदियों कि राख से करेगा जब तू तिलक,

इन्सान तो क्या उस राम की भी जायेंगी आंखें छलक,

तो क्यों उस राम कि आँखें छाल्काता है आदमी,

क्यों आदमी पे कहर बर्पता है आदमी,

और जब रहता है राम हर इन्सान में, हर दिल में,

तो ना जाने क्यों मंदिर बनवाता है आदमी,

ना जाने क्यों मंदिर बनवाता है आदमी,

ना जाने क्यों मंदिर बनवाता है आदमी !!!

- आशुतोष

PGSEM 2007 interview !

I had never planned to go for a mangement course during my initial student life. After working in the IT industry for around 6 years, I felt a need of doing management course and the obvious choice was IIM-Bangalore's part time PGSEM course, as I work in Bangalore. With a not-so-good CAT percentil of 90.42, I got a call for interview. I think this was mostly because of my experience, the company I am working for and a good acedemic record. My interview was scheduled on 14 April 2007, at 2:00 pm. I was one hour before my interview time to IIM-B. Two guys went for the interview before me and they were not happy with the interivew. The second one lasted only for 5 mins. I guessed that I am going to have a good (??) time. I was called next.....

There were two professors. One of them kept quite for a long time during the interview, while observing me and the other kept asking questions...

Prof 1: Sit down.
Me : Thankyou sir !

Prof 1: Tell us something about yourself.
Me : I started with my primary education, secondary education, graduation, masters and then about my campus interview etc. I did not only told them about the education I had, but also mentioned about the achievements I had during these phases (thanks to the pagalguy article about how to handle this questions smartly).

Prof 1: Tell me about HFCL (this is the first company I worked for).
Me : I started telling about the company, its various divisions etc.

Prof 1: No, I was asking about your branch.
Me : I worked for Research and Development division, which was a start-up. I described about the product I was working on. and that the start-up was no more there.

Prof 1: So, your product must be in the market by now ?
Me : No sir, we did the field testing of the product in Jalandhar local exchange. The product worked quite well with the defined requirements at that time. But, it was not on-time in the market. Hence it was not successful. The market requirements changed by the time we completed it.

Prof 1: What did you do and how the requirements changed ?
Me : We developed optical access network (OPTAN), which interfaced with the local exchange as the last mile solution and will be used by telecom service providers. We worked on voice only. By the time we went into the market, the requirements changed to voice, video and data. Added to that were many top-up services that were missing in our product. Also, by the time we were ready for the market, there were already many big players in this field.

Prof 1: How do you see the difference between HFCL and Cisco systems ?
Me : HFCL was a start-up company, so we had a lot of product ownership. The requirements used to be defined by the marketing team (that was formed late in the process), else we use to define the requirements. In Cisco systems, we are working on a product that is launched successfully in the market with around 80,000 nodes already deployed in the market. We get requirements from the customers and evaluate our competitors, which is quite exciting and is quite different from the start-up work. Also, Cisco has a lot of process involved and we need to work globally with other counterparts.

Prof 1: Cisco was in loss few years back, when you joined.
Me : This is not right sir. Cisco was not in loss for last few years (I gave some data for last 2-3 years). This year Cisco had revenue of $28.4 bn. Though, optical business unit was in loss for couple of years, but it doing better now.

Prof 1: What about Huawei?
Me : They are good and very cheap. They are taking up big part of the market. But, their market segment is mostly small customers. They are ready for whatever price the customer is quoting. Cisco does not deal with small customers, but it has solution for them. Big enterprises are mostly the target of Cisco. Still, Cisco is keeping an eye on what Huawei is doing. Also, Huawei was in news for the *theft* of Cisco’s IOS operation system. The matter was settled later, but had a effect on Huawei's goodwill in the market.

Prof 1: What do you mean by "settled"?
Me : Cisco believes in working globally and sharing its technologies. This should be in consent with Cisco. The same happened with Apple, when they used the name iPhone, which was later settled.

Prof 1: What do you think about the companies like Wipro/Infosys?
Me : They are good, yesterday only Infosys got its Q4 result and they have $3 bn revenue now.

Prof 1: What is the employee strength of Infosys?
Me : They are around 72,000.

Prof 1: What is the employee strength of Cisco systems?
Me : As of 2006, it is 38,000.

Prof 1: As you said, revenue of Cisco is about $30 bn and that of Infosys is $3 bn, though the employee strength of Infosys is almost double of that of Cisco. Why is it like this?

Me : This is all about the business model. Infosys is a services company, while Cisco is a product company. you don’t get much margin in services company, while in a product company, you get much better margin. Also, services company need to hire more employees due to their services to the client. I feel proud of these Indian companies, they are representing India in the world market and have become global companies.

Prof 1: Which business magazine do you read ?
Me : I mostly read business page of the news paper I also read business world.

Prof 1: You read business world.....
Me : I am subscribed to that, but I don’t read it regularly. Whenever I have time, I read few selected articles.

Till this time "Prof 2" was a silent observer to all this discussions. I too was looking to Prof 1 only as only he was talking. Prof-1 asked to prof2 : Do you want to ask something ?

Prof 2: So, you play Tabla ?
Me : Yes sir, I had a formal training in this while I was studying in class-6. I have not done any professional education. Generally people do I.A., B.A, etc. I am good at playing it, but don’t have these degrees with me.

Prof 2: Where do you play it?
Me : I generally play it on various cultural functions. I have played in my school, college, last company and now I am part of Cisco's music team called "Omnifuse".

Prof 2: When did you perform in Cisco ?
Me : I performed last in Cisco's annual function, we performed for a crowd of around 5000. Generally Cisco calls some of India's best singers for the performance e.g. Udit Narayan, Alka yagnik. Last time we had called Hariharan. Generally, we get one hour time before their performance.

Prof 2: Have you ever played with these singers?
Me : No sir, but I would definitely love to play for them. They have their own music team and they are very specific about it. There is no way they can have a new person doing it for them. You can understand the importance just by the fact that the musician setup their instruments and tune it two hours before the actual performance starts.

Prof 2: Yes, I understand.
Prof 2: Have you heard of a new instrument (he told some name, I don’t remember), that produces many sounds and has replaces "Tanpura" almost completely. (Now looked at prof 1) It is a nice instrument, I think it can replace Tabla too. (Now looked at me).

Me : (I got it all wrong, I thought he is talking about replacing the Tabla and Tabla player..) It is difficult to do that. If you talk about the light music, it is easy. But, classic raga's need intelligence of the Tabla player. I gave examples of some of the "Taal" etc.

Prof 2: I am not talking about he Tabla player, replacing Tabla?
Me : Oh, sorry, I got it wrong. Well, as I have not seen the device I cannot comment more on this.

Prof 2: You need to leave playing Tabla for doing this course. You need to study at least 300 pages per week, i.e. at least 20 hours per week of study.
Me : Not necessarily sir. I play Tabla for around 30 mins every alternate day, or after every couple of days. Generally I do it when I am exhausted. Playing Tabla refreshes me. I believe it will be helpful during my studies and I can use it again if I am tired of too much homework..

(Professors smile)

Prof 2: You play cricket too. When was your last match?
Me : Yes sir, I am a regular member of Cisco cricket team. Currently we are playing in a tournament and our team is in quarter finals.

Prof 2: Which is the team you have to take on in quarters?
Me : It is IFLEX. (I was not too sure..)

Prof 2: Which is the best team?
Me : Oracle plays well, they are definitely the best team.

Prof 2: Who is the next team?
Me : Of course, Cisco systems.

Prof 1: Do you want to ask anything to us?
Me : Yes sir. Actually I already talk many things to the seniors during seminars and my personal meetings and...

Prof 1: (Interrupts)... Which students you talked to?
Me : I talked to many of the seniors during the interaction sessions in IIM-B. Talked to professor DVR. Apart from that, I talked to Nitin (from CCPU), Abninav Modi and Raj Iyer (both from Cisco systems).

Prof 1: What do they have to say about the course?
Me : They say the course is very nice and suitable for us. Please don’t do it for the sake of doing it, be very much clear about why do you want to do it. You need to study for at least 10-12 hours per week.

Prof 1: Thank you.
Me : Thank you sir.


That was it. The interview was over in around 25 mins. I believe that it was a good interview and I should get a call, as I got out of the interview room. And now when I am writing this blog, I already have the offer letter from IIM-B with me. It was a nice experience with the interview team of IIM-B.