Destination XLRI Valhalla 2014 – Part One

It’s not often that you go to a different city with your college folk, play sports, sledge, and cheer, make noise and have fun, especially if you are in a B-school, and a top one at that! But that’s exactly what happened for 30-odd adventurous folks of NMIMS, over the last weekend of July 2014.
Our contingent for Valhalla, the flagship cultural event of XLRI Jamshedpur, reached the XLRI campus on Friday evening, the 25^th of July, for what would turn out to be one of our most memorable events. On reaching the Tatanagar railway station, we were received by a liaison officer, a first year Sardar student, good man. He had come to pick us up in a van. The journey to the XLRI campus was smooth as silk. A little bit of rain made the atmosphere pleasant, it was a 30-minute travel to the sprawling campus. Accommodation was provided in XLRI’s newly constructed hostel – we were possibly the first ones to occupy it, for, XL’s own students had not yet ‘experienced’ it.

Home, People!

After a long time, I made it a point to visit my hometown. Going home is one thing, going to hometown is something else. அது வேறு இது வேறு! You can go and settle down in some city or the other; build a house there, rent, beg, borrow, steal, stay... but hometown is something different! You feel you 'belong' there.

Chennai is big, cool and awesome; but it's not home!

The Royal Game: Fostering friendships, promoting joy!

Welcome back!

It was a surreal Sunday last week (November 9, 2014) at NMIMS for the chess folks. With no games scheduled the previous day, the players got some time off. Scheduling became an issue for Sunday. As is often the case, the ‘cruel’ B-school mails before we close our eyes at night meant that I had to stay awake till 2AM (essentially running into Sunday) to finalize the fixtures for Semi-finals and Finals. With help from ‘sporty’ seniors over Whatsapp, I somehow managed to do so!

‘It’s a B-school; we cannot do everything single-handed!’

The big four teams of the semis were NM Warriors, SP Jain, Sydenhams and KJ Somaiya. The first semi-final of the day was between hosts NM Warriors and SP Jain. The visitors arrived bang on time at 1 PM. This time they reached the correct building without much hassles! After logistical delays, the match started at 1:30 PM at room 507. Fittingly, it was the Council room for the day, and it takes its rightful place in history!

Quite a Sweat in the AC Room!

When someone tells you chess players are punctual, you can believe them. Yes, even in Mumbai!

Almost all the participating men came on time to room 707 in the new building, where the boards were neatly arranged for the royal game to start. Only one team – SP Jain boys, had trouble arriving; they went to 707 in Mithibai building and phoned the author and said “It says School of Business Management and I am in 707! Where are you?” Poor guys, had to explain to them. Their captain, Shyam, spoke in Tamil, I had some old memories :P (Made friends easily with him - yeah, I am a little proud of my mother tongue, so what!) To the action now…

True to the IIM tag, the IIM Indore Mumbai folks were hooked to the books, well, binders – right from around 2 PM. And our stars SP Jain famously arrived to start their head-to-head match at 4:30 PM. The result of this match truly depicts what will happen when one highly enthusiastic bunch of guys meet three people who live with their books – SP Jain blanked IIM-I three games to nil. With that, they were through to the Semi-Finals.

Some things never change!

I am in Mumbai now for MBA. That meant a lot of changes - no Marina beach, no Chennai Tamil, no Tamil, more Hindi (as if SRM wasn't enough!), more celebrations (Dussehra, Ganesh Chaturthi et al.) and some irregular mindless food and sleep habits.

Mumbai is fast guys, I can tell this for sure - it's full of people and there's no idea why they are running so fast with their lives.
'If everyone is running so fast, why there's a lot of traffic jams?
Or is it because they are so fast?' I do not know.