The charisma of ZERO

Being Pushed-Forced-shoved-trapped into an educational system which tries in all possible ways to tickle and bolster the mathematical genius within, at same time raising eyebrows and selective pruning of anything that remotely resembles non scientific, I have never ever looked to ZERO with suspicion. I had fully accepted that lots of things that we know now ,are due to fact that ZERO is in place and that, its discovery was Revolutionary. I had also learnt that ZERO and its twin- WHEEL were the greatest gift by India to the scientific world. To add to this ZERO was discovered some 17000 years ago and finds ample references in the Upanishads and Sutras.

But this was alsothe very curse in disguise- the power of being omnipresent was over shadowed by the utilisation of ZERO being taken for granted.Over the years naturally I had completely turned oblivion to the existence of this marvelous whole number (but not a natural number). And as if this usurping of right of ZERO was being watched by the supreme body from some corner in the universe, it decided to program events around me to wake me up to acknowledge the importance of ZERO.

2 long(very long) months of the new avatar as student and that too pursuing a MBA program has taught me that world is also filled with people who are not engineers or who are working in fields like Stocks, Mutual funds and Banks. These guys/ gals belonged to a different galaxy all together( the world of majors from Finance and Banking) and nothing revealed the scholastic dissimilarity among us than when we were in Finance classes. These financial sessions typically saw lots of actions from IT people ( actions included various patterns of nodding and swaying heads.. more to drive the sleep fast catching us than in agreement or disagreement with course contents). The very first financial introspection I derived from these sessions was this: If there is a short break between two consecutive sessions of Finance, then there was a “consumer surplus” for commodities like Tea and Coffee.

The tragedy was torture didn’t die down with classes or group assignments, but proliferated into Quizzes and Re-Tests and Term Exams. The Quizzes is the Rudest out of the lot, coz
a) One is reduced to a position in which his retinas have the liberty to focus only in the area mapped by his laptop screen (sometimes an A4 sheet).
b) All options seem to be equally correct or equally wrong unlike BS or OB where I could spot at least one option which don’t seem right (I just forgot to mention that most of the times this was the right option.)
c) The class average was hijacked by Finance Guys so I could share my score only with very few people in class who had parallel abilities.

But it was this very score in FM which made me special. It was like any other day over these 2 months, woke up to find a rush for wash room, a short trip to it, followed by gathering ourselves for the classes, then boarding the bus, the torture of forcing ourselves to information being pumped from the radio in the Bus and the feeling of being greeted by hot drowsy breeze as soon as I boarded the bus and pounded my way to LC3.

But it was not meant to be an ordinary day, it was supposed to create History right? So we had this second Quiz of FM and I jumped into the mega battle in Black Board. I thought I had honed the abilities of Telepathy and devised the strategy of identifying pattern of answers for given set of questions being bombarded serially. The strategy was simple: The next option I would mark(out of 4) would be – (Number of classmates still writing the exam to my Left / Total number of class mates earlier in the class) * ( Time in minutes now / 60) * 4

This theorem had started paying me huge Dividends, and I had started firmly adhering and preaching this. I finished the Quiz before time and was a very happy man, but then decided to check back my score. I knew judging myself from history that my score would either be a 3 or 2 out of 8,10,20,30… The web page reloaded and I clicked the View Grades section. The sight was special in my life time and though I might have set numerous records; this was something which I never had opportunity to focus upon till now. I had been introduced (rather re-introduced) to concept of ZERO. There lay in my grades section, my score, a big ZERO, so much different from the rest, a limitation in itself, an extreme, a feat less covered by other mortals, a number so fascinating that it can turn even millions to itself when multiplied by it. For some time I was lifeless and the idea of coffee to wake up seemed to vaporize (and with it my other postulate) but then as I was staring blankly at the score, I gained the nirvana – Clairvoyants are god sent to rescue the oppressed. In a world which values the 10z more than 9z, but still neglects and undermines the value of ZERO hanging right to 1 of 10, I would by action and example, salvage this Greatest Discovery made by human kind – the number ZERO.

Moonwalking the thought process

Something happened this week – which were remotely linked to the world, I thought and constructed regarding a B- school, and that too in a one year program. It was holiday for the whole week!

And while I was shuttling myself with detachment and attachment to world around me, a thought occurred to me – I was bothered about the objective which had stirred me to join the business school. And though the clarity had lost its shine over some time, I knew that the primary focus was to learn, teach and learn (in that order) with the people at the school. But what was this learning all about? Are we supposed to mimic thought process of people who changed the world like Strategies devised by Steve Jobs to make an attempt of the unthinkable then – Breaking the monopoly Microsoft, or immortalize Peter Ducker and give him the control to our decisions?

Clearly the idea at B school was not education, but a process which involved reverse learning and looking back at things which have already occurred ( by way of case studies), examining them and dissecting the issues into sub issues and then finding the overall solution for it.

I believe that the B school should be more known for its environment than considering students, faculty, ranking, alumni and dynamicity of curriculum in general. Censoring of ideas or quantifying them would actually mould the way we approach issues. Example whenever we look for marketing – rather than chanting the nice to hear words like CCDS (Create Communicate Deliver Sustain) can we not begin by Communicating then Creating Value or even begin by Analyzing hidden demand for products and then estimate how the product could be sustained, and then Create. Lots of permutation and combination of these parameters, if we even begin start thinking! Or rather moon walking the thought process.

A brush with Guest Lecture session- The ordeal/experience at B-School Continues

Forced on you or stemmed from your own bubbling will or a mix of both---Desperate for it or shunning away from it or just surf through it…. Whatever you do, you just can’t deny the existence of it – The existence of Guest Lecture session.

So I was now in the process of getting nirvana 3rd time on row from 3rd Guest Lecturer (gl) and I was looking forward to this session with lots of vigor. But blame this classes and study group which extends their territory without fail and proliferates to the greatest possibble extent,I was sapped of the energy I needed to break even in this session. So I was cat walked towards,the Leadership Hall minus my thrill and excitement level and no wonder was transported to the literary world as soon as I took a place there. Thus began this process of penning this article . A word of caution before we embark upon the exhausted thought process. This had been conceived out of sapped wits, so please fasten your seat belts, as we dive into a world full of care and time to stand and stare(borrowed from the poen Leisure by William Henry Devis.

Suddenly my eyes are becoming heavy and seems my senses are ditching me, the din around this GL session seems to bother me no more, infact this helps me camoflauge and chance to unwind my random thoughts,..

Suddenly the relation between thought process, idea, feeling and people around me forces me to think that parallel world might need a research to be proven, a research much more advanced than we could comprehend in these times, but surely we might be living in two different worlds connected by same emotional domains. Confused!! It was meant to be, for its never so easy to preach. But lemme try.
What I mean is that me at Dubai in 6.00 PM, some one in NUS, Singapore at same time, some other fellow in INSEAD , France at that point of time might be having a GL session and would be living in the same quotient and mix of feelings as me – a feeling of detachment from the surrounding and contemplating on what is happening with themselves – what they are gaining and what are they sacrificing.
I wish I could devlop means to transmit emotions in that thread and connect to like minded (sorry similar emotional turbulence) people as we connect to each other having a number in the telecom world.

What we do in telecom world specifically CDMA world is that we send signals in a particualr frequency, add some code to it and transmit it...the reciever just needs to decode it and listen to it in same frequency...

similar process in emotional level could make life so better for most of us who have hard time finding the right kind of people to gel to .

But the stage at which this gets feasible seems to be not right this time. So , lets Move to thought process 2.

Thought Process 2:
There is a unique similarity which appears through out the GL sessions- and that is the Subject. The gl needs to be either a consultant professor .. and mix of these. While am not denying that they do carry loads of insight but what about choosing different set of people for making these sessions lively and refreshing.
Why not ask the Captain of South Africa Cricket team to teach us a lesson on two of team spirit? – the mantra which spurred them to chase the mammoth team against the invincible “the Australian cricket team” , and win it on the last ball. Why not ask Daya Nayak to teach us how to keep working what you think right amidst pressures from all directions? and how not to lose focus and hold on to resilience from Lance Armstrong? We might have committed the crime of keeping the learning enclosed in the world we are preparing to be in or are in – the world of stock markets and process re-engineering, when we know for sure, that there are lot many attributes and factors, on which this world is hinged on. But am not in the PR committee…. so why not delve into thought process 3 !!

Thought Process 3:
What will these GL sessions and how much will this impact us over the course of time. I formulated this logic.Ohh the gl seems to be wrapping up the session, so would be dropping the pencil now and scan for the zone in the hall from where i could dart my way to the bus, waiting to carry us to the hostel.

The First Milestone

2 weeks into the Business School and nervous system already feeling the rush of adrenalin over and over again.

12 Quizzes, 5 Assignments, roughly the same number of workshops and classes extending for 8 hours a day..Sometimes pouring into Monday‘s and late nights …..I am really amazed by what one could perform when placed in a situation where there is one and only one option left. It was just the transition was so huge over such a small period ( I quit TCS just 2 days before I took a flight to S.p.jain Dubai). It was like waking me up from a pleasant slumber, putting me in a flight without the time for buckling up my seat belt and left to feel the intensity of change in momentum.

But I admire myself and so would most of my friends out here, since we took care of the situation and did things as demanded. Now we are getting used to the hectic (this would be an understatement)life here. We prepare for 30 page- chapter quiz – almost daily on the bus to school and something in us, makes us do as good or as bad as the rest of lot. Is it the idea of teaching us to excel – when thrown against unreasonable deadlines?

We already completed Organizational Behavior (OB), Financial Accounting and Communication classes and they were enlightening and fun. Life had been hectic and loaded with studies, but that hasn’t yet deterred us from indulging in fun. The cruises and shopping spree have become the luxury and so we are hell bent on making the most of it. The cultural event was a show case to identify the budding singers and star performers, also a nice platform to interact and network with the alumni. But not to forget – is the typical Mumbaiya attitude towards life at hostel – Live Life coz you live once. But most of the times, when we are immersed in the lighter moments, we have been suddenly jostled out of the merry making by Kathy’s mail in the middle of night –Promising us more classes, assignments and quizzes – the next day.

As an instance the FA assignment was hoarded with us for long, when we suddenly reality deflated the spirits. Soon we would get the acts together, regain the compose, collect and brainstorm with friends, discuss assignments over the hoarsest of home made coffee realizing that all the while the rest of world has slept, went to deep slumber and woke up to new day and we were still fighting to give our best for the best presentation . And when I look back at this with eyes drooping to need of sleep and body – mind aching for the urge to take rest, deep down there is an unusual pleasant feeling rising within. Wasn’t this – the life I had ordered? I find myself like Robert Frost did, walking on the road of Life when I suddenly came across a junction, where I had 2 options .

A) Road usually travelled by others, comfortable zone and less of risks. Getting promoted for nothingness and just because I consumed the time seating at that location .Waiting for things to happen around.

And b) the other was a road less travelled, brimming with lots of challenges and unknown risks.

But I had the urge to not to get lost in crowd and be exemplary and I chose the road less travelled. And now I am on that trail, the mission to be what I thought I want to be , I know I want to be and I believe I must be.