Its been a mad mad month with mega events like Transcend, The Budget Symposium , The Management Day, Harsha Bhogle happening one after the other. With the excitement finally dying down, everyone is finally trying to revive the attendance that has dipped to dangerous levels. Classes, tests, assignments are the order of the day with the exams looming large. In this issue of Madmag you can check out some of the events that have been covered. The photon factory as usual speaks a thousand words for each of the showstoppers .

Find out what it means to be a crackpot??

Macha seems to have certainly tried to get out of the mould of being the oh so good boy!

Vijay Thomas' cartoon tells you how to get your girl and more..

Priyanka reflects on the contrast there is between the two categories of people she sees while Richa grumbles about the crabby and greedy Rickwalas of Pune.

Aditya takes a tongue in cheek look at LMS @ Transcend and we have a visual extravaganza from Transcend07

All this and more in store for you in this issue.

Happy reading and Wish you good luck for your Exams!

~ Richa

I am a crackpot

Being one of the students of the institute, with the addition of sitting in the vishwabhavan for probably the last time as a student, I was expecting a lot from the management day. And it lived up to my expectations and more. This is not about my batchmates giving sterling performances. This is about being asked to be a crackpot.

There was a speech where the speaker narrated a story that was one that i have heard a million times before. But the moral that he told us to take from it was amazingly new. This was a story about a cracked pot and how it was not delivering the amount of water it had to, but in the process watered the area and gave rise to beautiful flowers.

The general moral is that one should respect the flaws that we have and understand that we are unique. But the speaker asked us “to be a crackpot”.

I guess that is what we have been doing in the last two years. Staying up till when the world is getting up, doing presentations and reports that no one, including me have ever understood, giving exams when the marks really don’t matter, the list is endless.

At the end of the day, I guess that each one of us is a crackpot. This is what one will be called when they sit hours in front of the smart-box, the laptop, searching for information that someone was kind enough to put up on the internet, find that information, dress it up in a nice PowerPoint template and present it as mine.

I guess that I am a crackpot, because I came here with the hope of an education and I am leaving with the mastery of PPT and Google. Truthfully speaking, is there anything more I need to learn?

Finally, I came here for the course and am leaving not missing the place, but missing the people. I came here alone, am leaving behind some of the most important people in mu life. Is there anything more that I need?

A crackpot

Macha is a Good Boy

Yeah Yeah!! I am a good boy. A damn good boy. A nice guy. Smart. Hardworking. I've been told this all through my life and i am sick and tired of it.

My curse started on Day 0 of my life when the fortune teller predicted that i will grow up to be a good, hardworking, studious and religious son. My parents took it too seriously. It continued through my school days. When i was 3, my first teacher Lakshmi(she was hot!) told my parents that i learn fast. Good it seems. By the time i reached my 10th grade, i had developed a similar bad reputation. As i celebrated my 16th B'day, i seriously started wondering about the mundane life i would end up living.

Life became interesting when Mr. Gold Flake and Ms.Queenfisher entered my life. Change of reputation at last. Still people fcuking continued to call me a nice guy who also smokes and drinks. What a waste!
Wow! A girlfriend. Let me project myself as a rough and tough dude. Even after i did her...err..i mean, did things for her, she too called me nice, good, sweet and all that bullcrap. My reputation reached its depth when i joined my MBA. Everyone started calling me a good boy, left right and center. A studious boy it seems. Bull.

I had no choice but to hatch a master plan - "How Macha got Bad, got Spoilt and got a Life".

Easiest way to start is to bunk classes. I stopped taking notes. Started orkutting in class. Parties increased exponentially. I started looking lazy and uninterested in studies. Stopped working on projects. Stopped greeting people. The result was instantaneous.

Abhaya Sharma wondered,"Macha, you have become spoilt nowadays!". Wow!! Golden words. If only he knew how i was craving for this.
Pooja cribbed,"you have become useless this semester". More and more such appreciation followed.

No one asks me for help in studies nowadays. No one wants my class notes this semester. Great,Great,Great!!!. Happy,Happy,Happy!!!

Now that my initial target is achieved, what next? - Rave parties???!!!
~Da Macha

Toonz @ Vijay Thomas

Different People - Priyanka Rathore

There are people who have eyes but do not want to see the agony of men.

There are people who have ears but do not want to hear the cries of the weeping millions.

There are people who have mouths but refuse to speak against injustice.

There are people who have hands but do not want to work.

There are people who have limbs but do not have any aspiration to reach the stars.

There are people who have wealth but do not want to spend for a human cause.

But though, there are people who do not have eyes to see, ears to hear, mouths to speak,
hands to work, limbs to reach and wealth to spend.

They accomplish something unexpected;

They have the courage to stand against injustice,

Determination to help people,

Will power to work,

Compassion for others,

A smile to give

And above all a kind, generous and a spirited heart.

Rick Racket - Richa

‘Symbiosis tak chod do’ I say, to the grouchy rick wala who is blabbering away to glory as usual about NCP or Congress or BJP with the other rick walas, near our house at Gokhlenagar…’NO’ he says, ‘Its too near’, ‘Give me 15 bucks’…’NO’ I say, ‘You are charging a ridiculous amount.’ ‘Damn!’ I swear, as he gets back to gabbling about his favorite political leader. I walk half the way, then decide to take another rick anyway before I lose out on that precious attendance, this guy asks for 20 bucks for half the distance…I crinkle my nose in disgust as I walk away praying I make it on time. I reach huffing and puffing, all grumpy and perspiring.

Another day you say, ‘Bhaiyya, MG road’..you get a cold stare…’NO’ he says…’its too far.’ After much pleading, he does me a favour and says ‘Give me Rs 100’…I give him a glacial look as usual.. ‘No’ I say, I ld rather take the bus!

Try getting a rick from FC road or JM road, back to SB road, and you ll find how harrowing it can get either hailing a rick, or getting the guy to agree to give you a lift home!

It either tooo near for them or tooo far off, or tooo late at night at 930 p.m or tooo early for them to be on the roads at 730 a.m.. To your pleasant surprise, if you do find a rickwala who is ready to go to your destination at the first instance, and that too charging you as per the meter, be prepared to be prepared for either a) He is drunk and will drive like a race horse, b) His meter is running superfast and you cannot argue further or c) He ll ask you to alight midway, saying he thought you said some other location!

Perhaps if we all go on a strike for a couple of days, they might actually start valuing us. Presently, ‘Customer Delight’ doesn’t stand anywhere on their list of priorities and the authorities are least bothered to bring these exalted rick walas to book.

~Richa

Last Man Standing

Anugya was in charge of an event in the recently concluded Transcend07, the last man standing. Being totally uninvolved in the other events, I decided to give her a hand. This article is a narration of the longest night that I ever spent, and the longest night that I made the participants spend.

After having the participants rogered by Yagga, Alex, Farhan, and Anna on ads they had to make for “Condoms for the Small Man”, they had to solve a case study in finance at nine in the night that was due to a small error on my part, incomplete.

They were released from the torturous case, which I have no clue about still, at some time after twelve. This is when the fun started.

At three, I went to the rooms they were staying and woke them up, in the rudest way possible. The awakening was more along the styles of our own PAT, “Be there in five minutes”. As expected when you wake someone at three, they were not there. I proceeded in the same PAT style, “If you are not interested, we can call this off. We are here slogging out a**es and you are dilly-dallying.”

This was followed by a case study that was, well, a fairy tale. They had to read a four page FAIRY TALE and come up with management concepts at three in the morning. Frankly speaking, if I had to read the same even in the daytime I would have fallen asleep.

At five when they gave in the case study, I made them complete fifteen pushups and run up and down eight flights of stairs with a carton of water, containing twelve kilos of water. One must see the condition that the participants were after this.

The reason that I am narrating all this, is that I want to salute those minds that thought of the event. It takes up a mind of some caliber to think of an event like this where it is really the test of “The last man standing”. Trust me, after that night, not one of the participants were standing.

~Aditya

Photon Factory