As the year ends...

One of the memorable quotes that I read goes something like this: 'The safest place for a ship is the shores, but that is not where it is supposed to be'. True. Very true.

Every time during this period of the year - this end-December time - I try to sit back and think of what the year offered me. Every year some new things happen - some good, some bad.
In the beginning of the year I lost my dear grandmother. The year took her away from me.In the first month I went to Haridwar (of which I attached a self-made documentary in my blog) and thanked GOD for everything and seeked his blessings for the life ahead.
This year I worked in the headquarters of prestigious International Monetary Fund in Washington DC. I made some good friends during my last working days in the company. Then of course this study, something I don't want to write in this piece and bore you all.

If this year had something really special to offer me, it was to re-discover myself. The motivation to take the ship out in the ocean. The pleasure in rejecting the safety that the four walls of our room provide. The joy in the sorrow of missing your near and dear ones. Rediscovering the student in me after so many years. The list goes on...
My ship is still sailing in the ocean. The problem is as you come to know new things, you realise how much you don't know. The more you discover, you realise that there are more to be discovered. There seems to be no end to it. There is a saying that says, once a man eater tastes the blood of human beings the tiger falls in love with the taste. The problem with the ship in the sea is more than that. You know that there are so many lands that you can potentially go to, so many opportunities awaiting for you. So even when you reach that shore, you are never complacent. You stay there for some time and then start a new journey again. Once you realise the vastness of the world, you are no longer content with the small piece of land that you owned so long. Your journey never ends. You have tasted human blood and nothing sort of it will do. And each time you want to outperform yourself. The game is interesting. But the game is equally dangerous!
So my getting into the course is in no way an end; it is the beginning of a journey. And that's the most valuable thing 2007 offered me. It started a journey for me. The study is not the end of a dream; it is a platform from where I can see many other dreams. It is a stepping stone. And this is what I remind myself of each day - stepping stone.

Last year this time my ship was chained to the shores. Today my ship is out into the vast unknown ocean. I can see, for the last time in 2007, the sun set on the western horizon. Soon, from the east new rays of the sun with new hopes in a new year will bathe the world - my world, your world, everybody's world. And in the new dawn my journey will continue. And so will yours.
This is a small world, my friend. So someday in some shores we will meet and talk about our journeys. Till then, 'Adieu et bon voyage!'

The journey so far...

The actual MBA started on the 1st of October. On 20th of December Term 1 ended with the last examination of Strategic Decision Science .The next Term starts from the 7th of Jan.New set of case packs have been collected.
I thought its time I reflect what went on in the last few months. Is there really a change that took place in me? I don't want to get into any type of debate...but a thought, that, is the MBA really doing good to me. Is it worth doing, in the first place? It is very easy to say 'YES'. Because that's what you would like to believe. Because that's what the world will like to hear. But I am not doing an MBA for the world. I am doing it for myself. Its time that I look back and 'take a stock' of what went over me. The question is 'Why I want to 'take a stock' in a blog , publicly, when I could have done it in my diary?' My answer is, I might just give others an sight of what happens in an MBA school - sort of an inside story. I am not promising the moon! I am not saying this is an exhaustive piece; it may be just a glimpse; a view of how I see it. And this may differ entirely from what others think or view. And if this piece, by any chances , makes any reader at least think once that 'Shall I go for it?' , then I would consider my blog a truly successful one. Because, I have also realised in the last three months there is as much joy in getting education as much it is in inspiring others to go for it. Though out of context, yet I want to mention that I will more be more than happy to answer any question that follows the 'Shall I go for it?' one (my answer to the 'Shall I go for it?' is a big YES for everybody!).

The term had a number of subjects, none of which I studied before. Economics, accountancy, operations management, marketing and organisational behaviour. On 1st october, I knew nothing of them. Today I know something of them. I know what return on investment means and what is opportunity cost; I know how cheap airlines operate and how coke was introduced in China.Things are never the same as before. I have definitely developed a broader view of the business. I have learnt to see a holistic picture, while keeping focus on certain areas. I have learnt why GOD has given us two ears and one mouth - so that we hear much more than we speak. The learning experience goes on. What is most fascinating is that everyday, yes everyday, here I learn new things; something that has never occurred in my life before. Imbibing virtues from the professors, classmates - the learning curve never seems to dip. Sometimes there were days which were tough to pull through. Tough assignments, strict deadlines. But I made it. Today it gives me the strength to think that I was able to pull myself off from such situations. The road surely was not a smooth one. Nobody promised smooth ride! It was bumpy. But is it not the boulders and rocks that make the mountain brooks to gorgeous to look at? Is it not the test of fire that makes fine steel? Perhaps this is what an MBA is. It teaches us to cross the hurdles; it teaches us to brave the fire. It brings out the best in us. It unleashes the potential in us. In our words, its a 'risk-free zone', where we can try whatever we always wanted to do, without the fear of losing.


I have become much more matured in the last three months. Not only do I look into any business in a different point of view, but also the way I look at the world, in general. I have become a better human being.
And then I think that if in 3 months I changed, what will happen by the end the course gets over? I am myself eager and excited to find it.
While the course concerned is MBA, there are certain things that rise above the MBA. The education in a world-class university , the philosophy of the knowledgeable professors, the maturity of your friends - all rub you in the right way, day in and day out. And they all have an effect on you. The effect is clearly visible. I would say, the entire effect is called education. Its just not what you take inside you what was printed in the books. Its not about attending lectures and replicating them in the examination hall. Its about the realisation of who you are and where do you belong to. I am not saying MBA taught me this, or this was the reason that I am into an MBA. I am saying what a good education has done for me. It made me think those thoughts that I so long never felt the need to have a look into. It made me think! It made me think about the business world; it made me think about me and my strengths and weakness. And all these in only three months!
When the school reopens things will be tougher, with the the number of subjects increasing. The pressure becoming even more, with the obvious thought of hunting for a job added to the tension. Things will not be easy. And I know that. And yet, I know for sure, that I can't wait for the school to re-open and plunge myself into the 'melting pot'!

In the land of Sherlock Holmes...

Wishing all the readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
May all your dreams come true.

There was another prolonged gap in my writing. The reason being exams. We just completed the exams last week and the body is crying out for a much-needed rest.I have to oblige its demand as its revolt is no good to me. We have vacation till the 7th Jan.The university reopens on the 7th of Jan. Till then I have virtually nothing to do. That's good and that's bad. Good, because I have after a long time got a break from the hectic running-here-to-there schedule. Bad because I dont know what to do. I do have some plans, but I have a feeling that like New Year resolutions the paper on which I wrote all my plans will remain on the board - never to get turned into reality.
I will write about the university life in the last few days sometime later. Because, I feel, just a plain writing of events will make it a report, not a diary. I don't want to write reports here...I have had enough of them for the last 3 months and more to follow!
By the look of some pictures you might have already guessed the campus has a lot of greenery. In the morning, I can't say that the sun rises. because its so foggy. I can say that the day breaks at about 8 am. Pretty late. At 7:30- 7:45 am its still dark outside. You might just want to curl in your bed for some more time. When the dawn eventually breaks, you just see a thick blanket of fog surrounding all around.The distant trees , with no leaves, are hazy. The grass below have a thin layer of frost. The cars in the parking lot has also got a white shroud. The sun is yet to show up. The picture is lazy and hazy! Its whitish and greyish . There is no golden touch, otherwise provided by the sun. There is not much green as the trees are all bare. Everywhere around is quiet.

If a day starts this way surely the rest of the day will not have something dramatic to offer. The cold wind outside is the least tempting factor to inspire one to step outside the comfortable and cosy rooms.In exam time I studied, now I become bored.
In the evening, things ends in a similar way as it started. But I feel its something taken out of the leaf of some fairy tale.At 4:30 pm its dark. And then misty. A thick fog descends as the sun goes down.When I return from the university or the examination hall, I always felt that I am walking in the area which was so often described as the English countryside by Sir Aurther Conan Doyle. Yes I am talking of the stories of Sherlock Holmes. As if I can feel that I would see the man with the typical cap,pipe and coat appearing in front of me from nowhere. You may think its childishly foolish and laugh at my thought. But perhaps in my situation many would have felt that way, perhaps not.
So when the examination ended the first thing I did was to log on to youtube and see 'Sherlock Holmes and the Speckled Band'. This particular story of Sherlock Holmes was the first I read when my father bought it for me and my brother on the day my Standard 2 exams ended. After reading the story, I almost instantaneously became an admirer of the character. Two days back when I watched the Sherlock Holmes, my thrill was no less though there was a gap of about 2 decades - 20 years!
While the time changed, the place changed, some feelings never seems to change.
Like that day, today also, one of my dreams is to go to 221 B Baker Street in London(the residence of Mr. Holmes), which, today,however, does not seem as distant as it were then!

One city many moods

It is a small documentary on Haridwar that I made during my leisure time some months back. I thought of sharing this attempted creative effort with you all...
Though Haridwar is supposed to be holy place of the Hindus, this documentary has nothing to do with the religion. I have made an attempt to capture many moods of GOD's most wonderful creation - human beings or may be the moods of the people when they have faith is some power and seek blessings from it.
I hope you will like it...Its about 5 minutes and should not bore you.

Please note that there may be a buffering problem, so you would ideally want to pause and buffer the entire video and then see it at a stretch than view it in fits and starts.

Now relax, sit back and enjoy!

As things move on...

First, my apologies for not writing for a long time, when I had promised that I will write every fortnight. Well, there are some things in life that you don’t expect and when it comes you take time to get adjusted to it. One such thing is the ‘Cranfield Experience’. I don’t want to bore you all by saying how busy I was, because, wherever we are and whatever we do, we all are busy in our own world. And we all have to fit all our work in the 24 hours of a day, 30 days in a month (though there were times when I thought a couple of extra hours a day would not be a bad idea :) )

Cranfield Experience has so far been a very enriching experience for me. Back to school was never easy after more than six years in work. But, now I have slowly got used to it. Morning lectures, evening team meetings or the other way round seems easy to handle than it was in the initial days. Though I am not very fond of parties, sometimes cooling me heels off in some light ‘get together’ is not a bad idea. When everyone around has a glass of beer or whisky, I seem to be the odd one out with a glass of coke. But I have learnt to be in the crowd and yet not imitate them.

I have tried to regain my old touch in badminton and found I enjoy just as much as I did 15 years back.

Today we had a ‘mega submission’ or in Cranfield’s lingo, WAC (Written Analysis of a Case study). We were given a case study yesterday 1 pm…we had to discuss it within our learning teams (group of six students mainly) and then with the entire class and had to individually write a report of about 1500 words before handing it over. It is not as innocent as it seems, since reading, understanding and then reproducing within the word count may be quite challenging especially within the limited hours. Working till wee hours of the night and then catching some 'power nap' before getting back to work again the following morning was the tricky part. The atmosphere was charged all the time…the irony is here it was charged with the WAC, while India was charged with the celebrations of the Diwali or festivals of lights.

The indications that winter is coming are pretty much loud and clear. People have begun wrapping themselves with more winter clothes. Thick sweaters, gloves, mufflers have come out of the wardrobes. The areas below the trees are carpeted with brown dry leaves, blown here and there by a chilled breeze. The murmuring sound of the leaves and the whistle of the breeze seem to play nature’s orchestra welcoming the winter. The days have become shorter. By five it is completely dark and cold. The tree in front of my window has started shedding off its leaves. When I first came here it was covered with green leaves. Now it has a mixture of green and brown leaves and ,at places, no leaves at all – only the bare brown branches.

Season is changing, time is changing…and, perhaps, so is my life…

A 'worldly' thought...

It has been more than week that we are safely seated in the MBA-flight. Seat belts are fastened, but there is no guarantee that there would be a smooth ride ahead. In fact, indications are many that more often than not we will face turbulent weather.The seat belt sign is implicitely on!
Many times I felt tired and thought I would go to bed early, that is, by 10:30 - 11:00 at night. But everyday I end up going to bed pretty late. Some thing or the other comes in the last moment and I end up staying awake till quite late at night. Everyday is so eventful. Everyday I learn lot of new things; learn a lot about myself. Already the marketing-accounting-economics jargons make some sense (however little they may be!) to me. It has ,undoubtedly, been a steep learning curve.Today there were some personality developement test. It was fun; it was interesting. You realize that you are either introvert or extrovert, go by the heart or by the brain, whether you judge or you perceive things and ,last but not the least, whether you are more practical or you go by intution.
At the end of the session I realized that all I do and feel are guided by some very basic features and characters that is otherwise deep-rooted inside. Personalities tests such as these bring those characteristics out in the surface. I became more conscious about myself. I realize the way I see the world and interpret things are different than those of others.The same pictures/images and sounds have different meaning to different people. We all have our own thoughts, views, principles and ,of course, our own world!
Though we all have so much common among ourselves, yet are so different from each other.

The beginning of a journey

The Pre-MBA which started from the 17th of September and continued till the end of the month was a sort-of warm-up to the actual MBA program. So it is not surprising that about 48 of the total 138 students attended the course.
There is a long gap between a certain date in May,2001 and 17th September, 2007. Huh! A gap of more than 6 years. And for all those who are wondering what that gap in the calendar has to do with the blog, it is the gap between when I last sat in a classroom attending lectures for my Bachelor's Degree and when I sit for the first class in my MBA (or may-be the Pre-MBA).
The thing I feared most is, I would fall asleep in the class during the lectures. But ,to my pleasant surprise, I did not! And not a single time. The credit in no way goes to me. It goes to the wonderful professors of the university who ,it will be an understatement to say, knows the art of teaching. Many times I was left in awe by their presentation and views.
Beside studying their were get together, socialising (It was a bit of hiccup for a not-so-social person like me!),sports (I almost thought that in my age of late twenties I would hardly get a chance to enjoy sport so much!), quizzes and what not?
I developed a liking for the place, the university and all that is associated with it.
In a very short span of time, I developed friendship with so many classmates from so many nationalities. Did i say there are students from 38 countries this time in the SOM in the Full Time course?
By the time the pre-MBA was over, I realized I had made a very correct decision in my life.
I realized, my journey has begun. I am in a train, which is about to leave the station.The guard has blown the whistle.The signal has turned green...the train is on its way to a new destination...
there is no looking back...

In Search of Thee...

I searched you in crowded trains,
I searched you in packed auditoriums,
I searched you in lonely highways,
...In temples,churches and mosques.

I searched you in the garden,
I searched you in the morning sunlight,
I searched you in spring-time flowers,
...In old albums.

I searched you in my memories,
I searched you in the blue sky,
I searched you in the deep oceans,
...In books and music.

I searched you in the twittering of birds,
I searched you in my dreams,
I searched you in the sunset,
...In the green mountains......

Until I heard your voice from within -
All along you were within me...
In my heart and soul!

A dream-come-true and a note of thanks!

1^st October, 2007.

When dreams become reality, we are thrilled and overjoyed. But if the reality is something you haven’t dreamt of? Well, this is just what I am into right now. When I was small, or may be a year or two back, I heard of people who studied abroad and how they are looked up and admired in the society. Especially, people who went to UK or England to study. There were a couple of friends of mine who went to US to pursue higher education – MS and then Phd. But studying in UK always meant something different and special, I think, for the Indians, or may be more specifically Bengalis (sorry for getting too regional). But perhaps it’s the close association with Great Britain for a long two hundred years that has somewhat moulded our thinking.

In the photos I used to see the typical universities – narrow roads lost its way into the distant trees. Small houses, two or maximum three storeyed high. Windows that seem fairly large and less in number. Green lawns, lush green fields, the blue sky, with white clouds floating, bright sunshine, but nevertheless a bone-chilling breeze. Or may be sometimes dark clouds overhead and incessant rain – sometimes drizzling, sometimes pretty heavy. And you find people/students under umbrellas hurrying back to their hostel or may be running towards the university. All these seem so out of a movie or a book or may be a dream to a person like me who have started the journey of life from a small city in India. But when this is what you see around, you pinch yourself and wonder ‘Hope this is not a dream!’ And when you realize that its not a dream, you look up and say ‘GOD! I thank you for all these.’ And you thank all the people that GOD sent around you without whom this dream would never ever have been possible.

Its too late today for me to write about what happened in the last fortnight in our pre-MBA. Its 12:17 am, so theoretically its 2^nd October. The class starts in about 8 hours…seems long but I have to squeeze in a night’s sleep after a busy and hectic day in the office. Then there is a bit of preparation for tomorrow. Seems like I have to start planning, get organized and improve upon my time management to make the most in the coming year. One more thing , last but not the least, that I plan is to write a diary. Surely, not possible to write everyday, but may be when inner voice wants to say something and my body permits.

Today is just the foundation stone laid for it, primarily with the sole objective of thanking all the people around for helping me live a dream that I never dreamt of a year back! Thank you LORD for sending so many wonderful persons around me. I am really grateful to you and them. May I say my ‘Cranfield Diary’ is dedicated to you all.

Beginning of a new chapter in my life

As if it were yesterday....15th january,2007. How can I forget that day? On that day I was informed by one of the best MBA schools in the world (The Cranfield School of Management or SOM) that it has selected me as one of their students for their Full-Time MBA 2007-08 classes. My joy knew no bounds...the starting date (16th September) seemed a long long time then.
After a long wait of 8 long months, the day did arrive.
At 6:55 am sharp the British Airways flight BA 0146 took off from the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport,Calcutta.
Destination: Hearthrow Airport,London.
One of the passengers in the flight was Amitava Chatterjee.
Destination:Cranfield SOM
A cab was sent by the University to receive us (there were some more student for the
SOM in that flight).
At about 4:30 pm,16th September, I was in room no 1.18 in Fedden Flats; some thousand kilometers away from my hometown. My room is west facing. When I unpacked a couple of essential items, I looked out of my window. The sun was setting. It was as if, a symbolic representation of the end of my comfortable IT job. I know tomorrow, the 17th of september, the sun will rise again. But this time it will rise , for me, in the horizon of the land of the Queen!
A new day will bring for me a new life....a life that I have not even dreamt some years back.
I pinch myself and ,to my pleasant surprise, realize, its not a dream anymore today.
It is real...it is very much real.
My associtation with one of the world's best universities has just begun.
Its the beginning of a new day...a new journey and ,of course, a new chapter in my life.........