Cooperation v/s Competition

Sadly, I am nomore a MENtor! [:(] (Deva can empathize best!) Yesterday, I happened to attend the Annual Felicitation Program of ISMP (Institute Student Mentor Program). The program started with Lunch followed by a panel discussion on the Future of DAMPs (Department Academic Mentorship Program). I was amongst the 6 panelists and thoroughly enjoyed the discussion. But, what I was inspired most from was Prof. Vikram Gadre's (easily one of my favourite professors, during my 5 year stay in IIT-B) talk towards the conclusion of the program.

I can categorize his message into 2 points:
1) Competition can help bring the best out of every individual but cooperation (team spirit) if added to it can bring the collective best out of the entire group, which will be greater than the total quanta achieved in the absence of cooperation. He stressed the importance of having cooperation at the right places. He pointed out that normally students tend to cooperate where they should not, like during the exams, while solving assignments (by copying) or in short, when it appears to be a convenient tool or a shortcut. In instances otherwise, we just have a sheer competitive spirit which even leads us to undercut our peers at times. Competition is something which is quite abundant present all around but let's add some cooperation to it and it might give sweeter fruits.

2) It is your age to build character and not a personality type. Don't build a personality just because that's the way you would love to see it on your paper (resume) in a desired form; rather work towards building a strong character which if written on a paper illustrates your true personality. In short, according to me, his message was to make us realize that do not do things just for the heck of it. Do it only if you are thoroughly convinced and you feel you will enjoy it!

By the way, I have founded a new club recently, alongwith Devasheesh, called Lazeez Lazies and the reason for I being out of blogging scene for a while now, can be partially attributed to the same! We are planning to float honorary memberships of the club to a few distinguished lazies, very soon! :) However, if you feel you deserve one, please write to us.

Sharma

Words from the "Baazee"gar!!

I went to listen to the guy who has quite a lot of brands: IIT > Wisconsin > Harvard > Apple > McKinsey > Goldman Sachs > Ebay > Baazee, associated to his fame. YES, I am talking about Avnish Bajaj who came into the limelight in 2004 when he sold Baazee to Ebay.
I must have attended atleast over 100 such talks in last 4 years, but this one was one of the special ones!

Here are some useful excerpts from his Talk:

1) Do take your studies seriously! This doesn't mean, just scoring good grades. Even if your grades are pathetic, but you focus really hard on ensuring a good learning - you may still be better off than most of your studious peers. So what matters more in the long run, is the learning and not just a number.

2) It's a fashion statement: "You don't need to be educated to be a successful Entrepreneur". And, we jump on to the examples of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page, for a quick defence. At the same time, we ignore so many thousands (a huge majority) of such drop-outs who fail to make it big in life, in short "unsuccessful"!

3) He also pointed out that "you all" (audience mostly comprising of IIT students) have a platform set in life and each of you are going to be successful in life. It's just that you need to keep faith in yourself and keep working hard.

4) He believes that it's mainly the team which decides the success of any business, ofcourse, with the leader/CEO keeping the vision and showing the path.

Q&A Session

One gentleman in the audience asks: "It is often said that the great people are the ones who create something original and not just copying! In a sense, Baazee was started inspired by e-bay because at that point of time, there was opportunity in India. Do you regret, when you look back, that you should not have copied it?" In the meantime, Avnish listens to the question quite patiently and gives an answer, with a big smile on his face: "I look at it as an arbitrage and not copying" he continues,"I think that 95% of the entrepreneurs fall in this category where they observe the results of other existing businesses and then finetune their models, as the risk is lower in this case, while, there are only a few great people in minority like Steve Jobs who push their agenda and dream singlehandedly. (example: before the launch of i-Pod, many players also tried to come up with a similar product in the market, Sony being one of them, but they all failed badly. Inspite of that, Steve Jobs stuck to his dream of coming up with a portable music player and ensured that the product reaches all parts of the world and sells). And, I am not that great!"

- Sharma

Bye Bye Dost!

It was not just another Monday. It was Akhil Lodha's last day on campus - the day he earned his B.Tech, M.Tech degrees in Computer Science with flying colors. He invited me for a dinner just before leaving. We went to PopTates, Saki-Naka. It's a cliche to mention about our common petoo type attitude when we are out to a restaurant. So, the delicacies kept appearing and vanishing!
Then, we engaged into a flashback discussion of our IIT lives - A long discussion where each shared his key learnings, shockers, setbacks, bad patches in last 4/5 years. In the hindsight, I must say that approachwise, we two are a little different but when it comes to the ambitions we carry, we appear very much concurrent.

The topics which we mulled over were like: Role of IIT "Bombay" in our development, Role of Mumbai City, which areas we desire to have explored better (our answers turned out to be exactly complimentary), the role of Networking in life - its positives and flip side, the true passion of solving research problems v/s solving them with a motive of publishing papers etc etc.

I am listing here some of the mutual conclusions on random random topics:

1) Popularity and Effectiveness - They can't go hand in hand.
2) Be happy in life, treat happiness as a journey and not the destination. Don't treat happiness as conditional.
3) You have got just one life to live. Either live it your way or waste it living someone else's way.
4) Remember your past achievements whenever your morale is down and you feel low. Take strength from them. Showing courage and defeating the situation is a habit which you develop over a period of time.
5) You learn the most when situations are adverse"st"! A fierce impedance comes only to test your inner strength and to give you pieces of learning.
6) Escaping from problems, critics, enemies is never a solution!
7) Don't fear anybody as long as you know you are correct.
8) If you are consciously sure of yourself, stones like back-bitching, J-factor feedback from friends/critics won't have any impact on you.
9) Listen to everyone but in the end, do what you like! No harm in getting influenced as long as your mind also supports it logically.
10) You can not fool all the people all the time - Abraham Lincoln
11) In the long term, truth comes out!!
12) Hard work follows binary logic. If your input is 1, output will also always be 1 if not always in the form you expect it to be then in some other form. The time lag maybe there but you will realize it sometime in your life.
13) When you look back, you can interestingly verify: why certain incidences happened, why certain choices were made. In short, everything seems to converge in the long-term.
14) Role of Mnemonics in memorizing words! :P
15) How many true friends can you name in 10 seconds with no effort?
16) There is huge difference between a Friend and a True Friend.
17) Why do we tend to gel better with people who are not our direct peers ? Is it because peer to peer friendship is mainly governed by just need-help relationship ?

In all, it was really a quality time that we spent. After a long, I got an opportunity to talk at length with this sweet genius friend of mine. He is going to US now for his MS in Computational Finance at CMU. Dude, I know this is not a place to write testimonials but I shall just say that you are one of the sweetest friends I have ever had, I feel lucky to come to IITB to know your more. Though, it feels bad that you won't be around anymore, But, when I just foresee what you are headed for, the pinch is all gone. All the Best dude for future and I hope your dream of having a Dukaan on Wallstreet will come true someday very soon! :)

- Abhishek

Tashany Tuesday

It was another usual day! Like always, Me and TMP were struggling to appear like swimmers and somehow manage not to look like 2 Big Jokers again, with small small mini-size kids playing around in the pool. :)

The weather was awesome, with only light intermittent drizzles hitting us while swimming [as we spend 80% of the time with our head out of the water ;)], we spotted an opportunity to drive the frustration of our inability away. TMP suddenly floats an idea (struggle to keep afloat continues) in the pool: "yaar, Juhu chalte hain Bike par ghoomne!" and without a thought I said "Chal" and we were out of the IIT Campus within an hour.

The Drive from the Campus to Juhu and then back, was absolutely amazing with the Bike zipping and cutting through the wind!

It was really a superb experience especially enjoying the breeze at the Beach with the Chaats being in full abundance. Ragda Pattice, Sev-Poori, Mixed Chaat, Pani Poori, Paav-Bhaaji, Rava Masala Dosa, Bhutta, Paan..! This was the list of items that we consumed in a way almost as if we caught a binge eating disorder or as if we came out of a prolonged malnourishment! :D But whatever we say, we enjoyed every bit of it! I just hope more such experiences are in store. Thanks TMP! :)

- Sharma


PS: TMP rarely known as Triratna Parmeshwar Muneshwar is a not-so-often harmful creature found either in the Jungles of IIT Powai or in Deva's Room (B513/H13) and is a not-so-sincere aspirant of swimming just like me! :P

Oh! But I am an "Engineer"

These are my thoughts on a recent discussion amongst the members of IIT's ISMP (Institute Student Mentorship Program) on the online group. The topic was raised by good friend - Abhinav based on an incidence which he came across last year.

He says: "Last year in August itself my mentees asked me whether they should go for a MBA or not.. some even asked me to tell them how to prepare for CAT. I was quite disappointed with this attitude the Freshmen were carrying as I never thought about it when I was in First year and I am still quite enthusiastic about Engineering but anyways I can't impose my thoughts on someone else.
So what is the best way of replying to this question ? Do you straight away say no and tell them that Indian Government is anyways spending lakhs on us and why do you wasn't to waste this degree by going for a MBA ?"

I feel that it should not be viewed as the Government or Tax-Payers wasting their money on us. In a way, it can be seen as a meaningful investment as well because especially where India has struggled to produce/establish quality Educational Institutions post independence, very few like IITs are atleast nurturing the talented kids to take care of the intellect demand of the Industry across all disciplines.

For instance, I feel that even if an Engineer with good Academic Record having an Inclination for his own Engineering Stream goes ahead to be a top banker or a top lawyer, its more than the purpose served for the Country! Because, on the one hand the student did justice to himself and on the other, he made use of his strengths to serve the country in the way he is best capable of, which in a particular case may be banking or law practice!

I very strongly feel and verify through my observations that majority of the kids come to IIT (including most of us) not with a vision that they want to be good Engineers but because they are made to see a dream by parents, peers, seniors, family friends etc. that life after IIT will be extremely Rosy! An Aspirant slogs for JEE only in the run-up to realize this dream.

So, if you carefully observe its not the Engineering Acumen which brings most of us to IIT. Infact JEE or for that matter, no Engineering Entrance Exam in the country (to my understanding) is truly successful in testing the applicants on the practical Engineering aptitude. I pondered over this in my third year a lot, even consulted a few professors for their opinion and I have personally come to a clear conclusion for myself: I am not Mechanical Engineer by choice, it is partially by destiny and partially by the constraints imposed by various parameters during Counseling or similar processes. Though, I may be good at the subject (by chance the risk fortunately paid off! :P) and maybe able to score good grades in it but it also doesn't rule out this possibility that I maybe better and in fact much much better at something else. And, I believe that one should pursue what he/she is "bestest" at and which gives ultimate happiness!! Knowing your strengths and then choosing a career around the same perhaps increases the probability of being successful and at the same time, enjoying your work. So, there is no defined Right and Wrong! Its all up to "SELF" how best you identify yourself!

And Now, coming to what I would advise to my Mentees with whatever limited knowledge or perception I have:
Do not blindly trust anybody, listen to everyone but then don't make a decision before you are truly convinced by Logic, Facts and Experience. I have always advised and probably might still do it in future unless I am corrected: Don't make a decision simply driven by the Glamor of it or what somebody else says about it. For Example: Collect information/facts about Swimming, Dive into the Pool, Observe what swimming is about, Whether you enjoy it?, Come out (if lucky! :D), Analyze and then make a decision. Listening to wisdom of Seniors and experienced people may definitely help to get a realization of various directions. But, the call of - which direction you ought to travel should only be taken by YOU. Take an informed, aware call, give in your best and face/experience the results. This also includes accepting the Results (As taking the responsibility for the outcome of your own effort on SELF is important). So, I strongly suggest one should give the SELF ample amount of chances before giving up on a particular option. In the process, you will keep knowing yourself better and better. I have practiced it and so I do believe on it :-) So, explore as much as you can and then think about settling down (it at all you do!).

Steve Jobs rightly said in his Stanford Commencement Speech:
Keep Looking and Don't settle!!
STAY HUNGRY, STAY FOOLISH