The stinging pain... ahh

Lots of things happening in a short span of time can actually leave
you overwhelmed.
It's barely 20 days into the New Year, and I have already been a part
of a lot many significant events in my life. But one common thing
about all my experiences in the last couple of weeks is that I have
been a passive participant, though I have had privy to the necessary
details, I have never been the protagonist.
I was in touch with a close friend who suffered a tragic loss, till
the moment the sad news reached him. This did have a profound effect
on me, on a subconscious level as well. It set me thinking on lines
that left me numb, bereft of any further thought. If that was ebb, the
crest of the wave soon came to wash me over with a new kind of joy.
The sound of wedding bells chimed in happiness; when I came to know
that one of my close friends is gonna tie the knot. Having seen her
struggle through life's hardships, this ray of sunlight in her life
also bathed me in a new found moonlight. For the first time, I could
see the reflection of another person's sorrow and joy in my moods.
The following days brought in incidents of separation. Two of my
closest Friends, had to leave on assignments overseas. Though I had
known about this weeks earlier, the actual impact of it sank in only
when they had left.. To be precise, only when one of my other friend
was moved to tears by the separation, did I realize that I too would
miss her... Her idiosyncrasies, and all the late night chats, the
games of badminton in a garbage dump, roaming the streets of Delhi…
And proving time and again how gullible I am, by buying her crazy
stories… I didn't know why, but I wanted to spend as much time with
her before she left.
A few years in hostel has conditioned me to get along with people
coming and people going.. There were times when I grew really close to
people that I would wish their trip gets cancelled cos of some last
minute mishap... But this time over, I felt a new kind of reaction. I
didn't experience that excruciating pain of longing, that white angst
against the cruel hand of fate.. All I felt was a need to make best of
what I had - the few moments left before the flight. I knew it was a
great plus to her career, and I wholeheartedly wished all the best for
her. And at the airport, when she hugged me, I really felt a weird
sense of completeness, an uncanny fulfillment, which said my life has
been embellished by this wonderful person, and wished that the feeling
was mutual.
One separation followed the other, one more person with whom I felt
close, also left, though this time, I wasn't there in airport when she
flew, and Heaven be praised, she is going for a shorter term.
My interaction with humanity, elsewhere, also provided me with some
enlightening insights. I started seeing things in a new light,
perceiving dimensions which were erstwhile invisible. People removed
layers of their masks revealing hitherto unseen countenances… Some
hideous, some beautiful…Leaving me with lots of thoughts to mull
over…. Besides giving a reason to expect new things from the same old
faces..
A multitude of emotions and a myriad of thoughts can either cause
complete clamor, or can leave one in a state of unadulterated calm. Till now, I have
had the joy of experiencing the latter. Hope the Equanimity prevails.

My First Time

My First Time
It gives you a sense of accomplishment... makes you wanna stand atop a mountain and go AAaaaAAAAAAA!!!!( a la Tarzan)...Damn it feels so good...
OK!!! I had been to the first base many a times... second base quite a few times... third base sporadically but surely... but fourth base and home run.... now I am talking achievement...
I was a cooking Virgin.... kitchen is as much of an enigma for me as the rain forests of Africa is to many explorers.
Does that mean that I have never been inside a kitchen...NAH!!! I have been to the first base of cooking many a times...making tea (all smokers know how to make tea)...and also to second base of cooking a few times (making french fries) .. and the third base at times (tryin some rice and all)..but I had been so uncomfortable in the third base that I thought that I would never go beyond it my whole life...
This was on 14 Jan 2006....read on

Chemical Brothers was playing on at the loudest possible volume levels.... and it was around 2:30pm. I had to choose ... Music OR Lunch...as the place where I have my lunch closes at 3pm.
I could not be a musical philander (like thats even a term .. HAH!!!)... I thought why not make myself some lunch.
Sometimes I live with my cousin... and he knows how to cook .. so I had seen him cook many a times... and at those times I had asked him questions that a Kitchen Virgin would... I tried to recall the answers to each one of them.

Challenge no. 1
Recall all the answers and figure out what you wanna cook..It's not that I had a plethora of dishes to choose from so I decided upon Chawal (Rice), Dal (Pulses) and Aaloo ka bhujiya (WTF is bhujiya called in english)

Challenge no. 2
Some background info...When i was in Std-8 my mom once asked me to open the pressure cooker coz she was on the first floor and the kitchen was on the ground floor where I was.Now tell me, how the F@#$ was i supposed to know that you first need to release all the steam and then the lid would open... I thought I was not opening it right so I applied some force and then BAMMM!!!!! All the hot water and steam on my left hand.....badly "Steamed" left hand..Since then I had never come close to a pressure cooker.... UNTIL THIS DAY!!!!

Challenge no. 3
Take the container in which we have the milk powder and keep it in the bedroom lest I use this instead of salt.

Finally I got the courage to put the pressure cooker on the gas stove... and sat a good 6-7feet away ...DAMN !!! I was scared... MAN!! its scary when the cooker goes WHOSHHHHH!!!!! After the apt no. of steams came the challenge to turn the gas stove off.. and that meant getting closer to the cooker... If I say that I would have looked extremely stupid when I was turning the stove off..that would be understatement of the year..
I also made alloo bhujiya but that was more like french fries in a different(much smaller) shape...


Finally after 30 mins I had my lunch on the plate.. and when I had the first bite I realised that all that milk powder thing did not help at all coz I had forgotten to put any salt in it.. so added some salt to the already made food...
Certainly one of the @$#@$ food I have ever had ... but I felt like a caveman on his first successful hunting escapade in search of food...
I am no more a Kitchen Virgin...... Sanjeev Kapoor... Take guard...

Holy Hell!!!

(Imagine this)

BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!

The two biggies join hands
For admissions to the next academic year there would be just one entrance exam to all MBA courses in India. Two biggies of the entrance exam scene in India IIMs(CAT) and XLRI(XAT) will be joining hands to set the paper. The new exam will be called BULL-XIT.

”Screw anything carrying two sharpened HB pencils on him/her “ , I give my take on the question paper….

INSTRUCTIONS

Before the test
1.Do not open the seal of the booklet until asked to do so.

2.Calculator,Cell phones, Laptops, Moms, Drawing instruments (this list is indicative not exhaustive) not allowed inside the hall. If you have them on you keep them on the desk. We are fully aware that you have the ability and the time to call your girlfriends / boyfriends during the FREE TIME in between the test. Don’t even think about it.

3.Use only HB pencils. We suggest the ones that you can purchase from the 888th shop on the GT Road, when you are coming from Kashmir

4.Ensure that you personal data is entered correctly.

5.Re-confirm your TEST REG No. Add the digits in the number. Multiply it by 328656324632. Divide the results by 324325432. Find the factorial of that number. If this new number leaves a reminder of 32,47,324,429 when divided by 324,89,4,87 then you candidature will be valid. The institutes have no responsibility if you calculate this wrongly. Once again….. NO CALCULATORS allowed.

At the start of the test
1.As soon as the signal to start the test is given break the seal . Let the games begin.

2.This booklet contains 32 pages including blank ones. Please count them as soon as you break the seal. If there are less than 32 then rest assured you are not missing out on anything. If we have set the paper as we think we have then you won’t get past the first 15 questions in any section anyway.

During the test
1.Mark you answers clearly. Divide each bubble into three sections. One part should be shaded by our recommended HB pencils. One by blue ball point pen and the other by a black one. Our OMR reader are specially programmed to read bubbles marked only in this way so be extremely careful.

2.Rough work if any should only be done in the space next to the questions. Use the two blank pages in the end to draw caricatures of the invigilators if you have the time.

3.Follow the instructions of the invigilator.

Negative marking
1.Each question carries some marks. That’s all we are gonna say.

2.For the first 5 wrong answers in each section 1/3rd of the marks assigned to the question is gonna be deducted. Next 5 will fetch you -11/12. Next five will fetch you -13/7. Beyond that it doesn’t mater if you get a question right or wrong. We will deduct some marks anyways . JUST IN CASE. For every third wrong answer in each section ..candidates wearing black undies will be fined an additional -1/3 marks.

ALL THE BEST ;0)


SECTION 1

Choose the word closest in meaning to
1 – Paramonteristicalonicyst
(a) good (b) very good (c)either a or b (d) I know but I won’t tell you

…
……..
…………

40 – Arrange the sentences in correct order.
a) It’s getting harder to breathe
b) Jimmy is the name of my pet dog.
c) Do you know it’s very old outside?
d) This one does not fit.


SECTION 2

1 – There is a box with 25 apples and 36 bananas and 43 guavas. 15 apples are bad. 13 bananas are bad . 1 guava is bad. 1 apple suffers from MPD it thinks it is guava for the first 5 mins and banana for the next five. 5 bananas are political bananas … they talk a lot and engage in a lot of rhetoric with the guavas. One of the fruits is drawn at random. What are the chances that the fruit drawn is a banana which is actually the apple who is thinking that it is a banana.
a).987654 b).987643 c).987654 d).987634

…..
……….
……………
40 – A hare and a tortoise start from two point A and B at a distance of 56kms. The tortoise covers half the distance and then goes back to the starting point. The hare in the meantime covers the distance 6.3 times. The speed of the tortoise is always half that of the hare. The hare travels at a speed which is equal to the reminder when e^0.63867 * 437^3.77543 is divded by e^3.3221. For how long have they been walking
a) 27.34 hrs b)27.33 hrs c)27.23 hrs d)27 hrs


SECTION 3

1 – The answer to this question is
(a) b (b) a (c) d (d) c

…
…….
………..

40 – Ramnarayan has a sweetshop . He makes gulab jamuns, samosas , jalebis and spicy Indian pan crust pizzas. He has 34 jalebis, 98 gulab jamus, 56 samosas and 104 spicy Indian pan crust pizzas. He want to make 56 packets subject to the following conditions….

-There has to be at least 4 jalebis ,6 gulab jamuns, 1 samosa and 2 spicy Indian pan crust pizza in every box
-He can choose to put in a few bad apples from the question in the previous section
-Spicy Indian pan crust pizzas give him double the profit that jalebis give which is .65434 times the profit that gulab jamuns give which is .2323434 times the profit that samosas give.
-He has one 56 minutes to make the packets and each packet takes 2mins and 16nanoseconds to make.

Which of the following seems right to you?
a)8 packets of 4jalebis, 7gulab jamuns, 3 samosas and 2 spicy Indian pan crust pizzas in 16 mins 128 nanoseconds(provided his timing estimates were right)
b)He acing the XAT 2006 quant section if he can really manage all those calculations.
c)He closes shutter to his sweet shop and opens Career Flyer. A MBA coaching institute run by some of the brightest minds in the country
d)He eats a few gulab jamuns, jalebis , samosas and spicy Indian pan crust pizza so that the calculations seem easier.



END OF PAPER


Disclaimer : The author has started to imagine things and also become slightly schizophrenic after sitting through CAT2005 and XAT 2006.