Extremistanian, are you?

Disclaimer: This blog is inspired from my friends Samarth Garg, Divyaprakash Dubey and Gurpreet Singh. However, my analysis pertaining to economic support may not be applicable to them. ;) . Please visit site and blog link to know more about them.

Easy. Easy it is for us to dream and easier it is for us to crib.
Being a normal job-oriented graduate/post-graduate, most of us have friends who do this easy task. Cribbing about our (inhumanely non-rewarding and pathetically non-exciting) jobs and summoning the gods for miracle and turn us into Sachins and SRKs and Schumis. Wish we were them! Wish I had never pursued engineering and rather formed my own rock band! Oh, my passion is something different…

And why, you have icons supporting the same issue. Mr. Amir through his movies like ‘Taare Zameen Par’ and ‘3 idiots’ and recently Mr. Manjarekar through his ‘Shikshanachya..’ have tried to address the same issue. Why burden children with traditional fields and subjects of mathematics or science or history? Why not let them be musicians, painters and cricketers? Revolutionary, aren’t they!

Sure, we could, for all but two reasons.

A(Re). The level of economic activity supporting the child: Until recently, India was (and is still being) considered a third world economy. The basic aim of around 96% of the Indians has been to ensure a steady cash flow in the households so as to support the family. A quick glance at this and that article will give you an idea as to how crippled India is to pursue its so called ‘passion’. And we are blaming the education system that it is just an employee generating factory.

I support our education system. India needs a plain ‘job-factory’ kind of education system so that we could earn a respectable salary and feed our dependents. About passion, please, let us ask ourselves, do we have one?

B(Re). It’s an Extremistan environment: Referring to the concept of extremistan in the book ‘The Black Swan’, Nasim Nicholas Taleb (NNT) argues that fields like arts, sports, music belong to extremistan environment. An environment where pay-offs are huge and exciting, however, success probability is extremely low. E.g. one Sachin Tendulkar will have Ferraris and during his era 2000 Ranaji player would hang their shoes totally unknown. As opposed to that, mediocristan environments are one where distribution is quite even. Payoffs may not be higher but a decent chance of surviving. E.g. the reader of this blog. Point is, would you wanna throw your child in an extremistan environment where chances are he would end up as a failure in the eyes of society?

So, if economical support is critical and we are still lingering on the issues of passions, what is the solution? I can see two scenarios happening:

A(Sc). Be an Howard Roark or a Steve Job.
B(Sc). Pursue normal education. Be safe enough to support the critical liabilities. Invest enough that even if your income source shifts from mediocristan to extremistan environment, returns on your investments are good enough to take care of your liabilities. And set off for the chase. The chase of your life.

Obviously, in second scenario, there may be some passions you would never be able to chase. Something like, playing for nation. But you still could contribute by creating a funding source for aspiring players, may be by analysing and providing solution on how to improve the game’s social infrastructure and its rural reach. May be simply working for a PR firm that organises events to raise advertising funds for upcoming series of that game. Or anything similar!

So let us all stop cribbing about the facts and wait for our own moments of entering into extremistan environments, if at all. Salute to the three heroes (mentioned above) inching towards it!

We, The Puchka Pickers.

Yesterday, I was standing outside Byculla station, waiting for my Boss to come. We were to go for a client meet. Client had called me earlier in the morning, asking if we were coming for a meeting. That made me feel important. (And note the last line, it would matter in the end!)

So, here I was, in front of Byculla station watching people hurrying to catch their locals. Bunch of people who had smuggled a Konkani fruit trying to distribute amongst themselves so that individually they can sell maximum. Then I saw ‘the’ incident!

One hawker, carrying guavas in his cart, was trying to enter the station premise. And the Police-wallah shooed him…cause is irrelevant, but the cart spilled some 10 guavas on the ground. And then came the story of shining India. A woman, not exactly beggar, the type which carries crap stuff from here to there (god knows where!), saw those guavas on the ground. She had a baby with her and at least 7-8 kgs of crap bundled in an old saree on her head. It was really difficult for her to even walk. Yet with all that load, she actually ran towards those guava, picked two, gave one to her baby and held one firmly in her hand. There was no intention to eat it. May be that was lunch. May be dinner. Whatever it was, the happiness she had on her face, even Dhoni did not have it when he held that T20 WC in his hand. (May be because Dhoni didn’t work this hard!)

That reminded me of one incident that happened in Nagpur, my home town. Me and my friend, Kapil, were chatting in front of the ‘Eternity Mall’. In front of the mall is a footpath where you could find hawkers selling eatables and small stuffs. Legally, they are not allowed to stand on those footpaths. But they are in India. So its allowed. One Police-wallah, may be out of sudden consciousness of his job or may be out of frustration or whatever, started shooing these hawkers. And during all these haste, one ‘Puchka-wallah’ (Pani-puri wallah) spilled his Puchkas all over the footpath. And he just ran away with his only fixed asset, the cart.

Here we were, looking at those Puchkas. And suddenly, one gentleman, mind you definitely not a beggar again, started picking those Puchkas. And he was so, so happy. (Dhoni, are you reading?). A mall, an MBA and an M.Tech., the ‘pucka-picker’ and the posh road of Nagpur under a flyover! Shining India!

I was disgusted. And Kapil caught that. So there he goes, the legendary lines. (context: Kapil works for Oracle Corporation, Bangalore) –

“We are just like this guy. In my case, Larry Ellison throws some Puchkas to me, I pick them up and I am happy.”

How, how true! We are not entrepreneurs. We don’t create anything. Its just the fate of us that we attach fancy word like MNCs, I-banks, CRAs or whatever. What if Godhas not gifted us with that ‘IQ’ thing, the ability to think a little bit extra than others? We might as well have been there!

The thing is, WE are, in simple words, the Puchka-Pickers.

Idiots, go for it!!

Read the news recently that number of CAT'10 applicants have actually gone down as compared to last year. And, as u don't need to be a rocket-scientist to pass a judgment, its being attributed to the slump. Further, I get a call from someone who asks me, 'is it ok if I go for M-Tech, as in would I get a good pay?' Trust me, this guy wanted to work for an investment bank until recently. So I asked, why?

Reply: Who would wanna throw himself to such a risky field?

Hah!

Now that my batch, batch'09 of MBAs, is experienced enough, it would surely tell you that timing could not be better than this year to enter (presumably, stud!!) MBA world. For following reasons:
A. 2 years down the lane, job market wouldn't be bad. In fact, it would be sparkling.
B. You'll get recruited at the upsurge of a business cycle, so you get enough time to settle down before you face a (next) business downturn
C. Chances are, you will enter a company that has survived the downturn. It has got something in it. (Although this third arguement is third-class.)

So, guys, go for it!!

(And on top of it, if you think that other Post Grad courses have not been affected by downturn, better get some Cerelac and Huggies for yourself!!)