The Banking Conundrum

Being coltish and young, and intrigued by the cosmic nature of the world, LIBOR set out on a tortuous journey to find her place in the world. Barely after her start, she was in for a surprise. Unknown of the destination, let alone the path she should be treading on to get there, Her movements across the Wall Street evoked suspicion as she walked into the precinct of SPECULATORS. Instilled with vicious intent and devious motives, drooling with insatiable glacier of greed, they didn't pass for a kind lot to her. As she approached the Town Centre, buzzing with shrieks of Call and Put Options, her gaze stopped at a WatchDog wearing a band that read SEC. The watchdog looked indifferent, barely short of getting classified to be in a state of trance.She asked for directions to exit the bastion, but her request fell on deaf ears. Wary of her surroundings and mindful of her probable entrapment, she scuttled with a pace that left others in a maze. After ensuring a comfortable distance between her and her abductors, she stopped and looked back. To her relief, she wasn't in pursuit anymore. She caught a breath and grew apprehensive as her escape-sprint had brought her in an unknown territory. Overlooking a fortress marked with well positioned outposts, she wandered in, cautious at first, but relaxed later on as the people around looked a bit protective and comforting to her. They were called the HEDGERS..
Hedgers, moved by her dismal state of appearance, offered her shelter and food. LIBOR wasn't given to that kind of treatment and being gullible and naive, didn't cast a doubt on their intent. She looked like she could use some rest. While resting in the cottage, she heard murmurs coming from alley beside her cottage. On close scrutiny she heard so called hedgers talking in hushed tones of a plot to confine her as they stood to gain from a stationary Libor. A chill of fear drove down her spine. Thoughts ranging from persecution to execution traversed her mind. Before she could regain her sense of calm, the voices dropped dead. The eerie silence coupled with engulfing darkness cast a pall over her state of mind. In the dead of night, she apprised herself of a latent talent she possessed, Stealth, and put it to a magnificent use, resulting in her triumphant escape. She wandered aimlessly for hours, meandering, subsisting on petals of flowers, leaves. Despite being dead beat, rendered fatigued and listless by her tumultuous enervating loiter, she was steadfast and ready to move on. Dragging her feet in unknown bearings, she barged into a fiefdom of ARBITRAGERS. Over-cautious, courtesy her previous ensnaring attempts, she drew out her defensive demeanor right at the outset. Arbitragers appeared inert and cold, unwelcoming and indifferent to their space being encroached or trespassed. LIBOR approached the Valet at the Inn which offered her porridge and gin. But ,Deja Vu, this time, the harbinger of bad news was the kindhearted valet who tipped her off of her possible abduction. Arbitragers intended to use the price differentials by selling her off in a foreign market and later on buying her back, so on an so forth, until the arbitrage opportunity is fully exploited. LIBOR, furious and livid yet composed and mentally functional, she devised her escape plan with relative ease and executed it to a T.
Tattered and shattered, she dug through the pile of rubble of her desolation to find that one inconsequential quintessential element that had brought her thus far, Hope, and clung on to it like a newborn to her mother.
Her movements lacked swiftness and lethargy was all that was written on her face. Yet she went on. Her trek had brought her offshore where she bumped into her distant cousin MIBOR, who too looked equally puzzled and lost. Hoping for some guidance and orientation, MIBOR, instead, confounded her with her randomness.
The crescent of despair and hopelessness converged to aggravate her misery. She was flummoxed, trying to recall the track that had brought her here but ruled out the option of going back through the same route without an escort. That's when she approached the cops, Federal Reserve, classy attire, waxing economics and finance even in most lightest of banters. LIBOR pleaded, Federal Reserve shrugged and her perception of threat was summarily dismissed.
Harrowed and distressed, she found herself hapless in the face of her fate and took on the challenge of going down the same route unaccompanied. The perilous route threw its first bout of challenge, when Arbitragers tried to box her in, the strategy being flawed as she spotted the lacunae which foiled their bid. Relieved momentarily, the next hurdle was to get past the trap laid down by the Hedgers which was much more foolproof than the one laid by the Arbitragers. With Oden's blessing in her kitty, she overcame the hurdle by the skin of her teeth. Alas, her's wasn't meant to be a script of a great escape as the vicious of all among her tormentors, the Speculators, managed to pin her down. Her yelp of help echoed through the hollow auditory canals of onlookers and passers-by while she was gagged and dragged by her ultimate abductors. They did what they do best with their booty. Libor was traded mercilessly, brutally massacred on the bourses of the bourgeois until she finally became a lifeless commodity. Since then, she became an immortal soul, lingering in the books of FRM :(

Potpourri of Restless Souls

In the thick of things, we tend to pass over certain extraordinary phenomenon taking place right under our noses. It's this phase of your life where you unilaterally zero in on one thing which has undeniably gone on to become sole objective of one's soul - minting moolah, thus blinding you from moments that otherwise would have gone on to make a profound impact on your psyche.

As I sit on the third floor of my RBI's building, (near perfect view for an overseer-cum-regulator), the sight of the world going by as seen through the colossal window both engages and enthralls me to the core.

The sight as captured by the realms of my vision from a cylindrical viewpoint (pardon my CAT prep hangover) comprises the entrance of a college, the busiest traffic intersection of the city, a gas station and a grand hotel.

Commuters plying on the roads, monolithic buses overshadowing everything coming in their way, college brats engaged in spats, traffic policeman (Actually it's women these days - no sector will be spared) trying to organize what appears to be a born-to-be-chaotic traffic flow is a common commotion that one witnesses virtually everyday . Amidst all this, some peculiar incidents capture my attention and deserve a mention.

It was a day just like every other day when the coffee vending machine didn't have enough coffee beans, when path from parking slot to the entrance was interspersed with water pools, when the aroma of freshly cooked samosas billowed out of the canteen. As I rushed through the staircase to show up on time, a member of the feline family apparently lurking in the dimly lit corridor intercepted my course (considered as ill-omen) and halted my ascent briefly, forcing me to double up on my pace of steps. The day begins on an energetic loud note with pleasantries being exchanged incessantly and ceremoniously. As I stood motionlessly in front of the the behemoth glass pane, my gaze transfixed on an altercation that had broken out between what looked like a guy in his early twenties and an adult office going male in his late thirties. From where I stood, I couldn't figure out the bone of contention between the two, but through gestures and expressions it felt like neither of the two intended to relent anytime soon. In a matter of seconds, the crowd swelled up and what started as a spat between two became a congregation of some sort. It wasn't an uncommon sight but what really got me thinking was the way the worlds of individuals overlap and throw up interesting insights into the human nature. This wasn't an isolated incident.
As paths of people from diverse social, academic, economic and professional background converge, the encounter usually turns out to be nothing short of a spectacle. We co-habit in an interconnected world, no matter how alienated we wish to become to seek separation from the worldly affairs, the trail of connections, associations doesn't seem to de-link itself from the rigmarole of our daily lives.
The Potpourri of Restless Souls, as I like to call it, is an interesting motley of individuals with bewildering dispositions meant to confound and complicate a situation or a piece of work with great fervour and animation. We Indians. as the west opines, make a fine mess of things.
Notwithstanding the dwindling treasure trove, our extravagance surpasses all. We are given to cut coat exceeding our cloth and we have no qualms about doing so.
Talking, as it occurs to me, has gone on to become our national pastime. We are undoubtedly the loudest nation on the planet and there appears to be no sign of us quieting down in the foreseeable future. The adage, If Speech is Silver, then Silence is Golden" is definitely not for us.

Do It Blabber

This day would probably mark the longest wait of my life. Something exciting might be just round the corner or it can be another brick just waiting to bump me on the frontal lobe.

Anxiety mixed with excitement is on the rise. There hasn't been a single day in my life when I had not wanted to break free ever since I got stuck in this mess and it appears very probable to come about.

The Do It blabber making it worse for me day in and day out. "You can do it, pal" "You are made for this", Get your acts together, Something nice is waiting for you at the end".. Well, I regret to inform you all, the end  has long come and gone for me and nothing nice was waiting there to greet me.

I had never known I was growing to become to lamb to be chopped at the slaughterhouse, the only thing stopping from that happening now is perhaps my low pay.

Tears have dried up so have emotions. Don't feel a thing no more.

After the smoke of innocence cleared the screen, I was able to see things far clearly and came to an interesting hypothesis.  It's called as the dilemma of being a male.

You slog for hours, confine yourself to a room full of books, pick up skills at a sport, work-out, sport a beard or a stubble (subjective issue), indulge in culinary art, you may be the mugger topper of your class throughout your schooling, you may be the Solution for technical issues (Laptops, Cellphones, and other gizmos), you work hard at the workplace to meet deadlines, listen to rave and rant of your boss, take out time for your paramour, yet all of this falls flat when it comes to making them feel how intensely you love them.

Which part did we miss out on in the process of growing up .. Wooing.. We didn't know it was that important .... Severely crippling our chances of getting into a relationship. Guy with a spects gets dismissed as a nerd right away, guy with good physique has to make do with snide remarks of not being brainy, if you  talk incessantly you are more of a pompous personality, if you are monosyllabic types, psycho vibes emanates out of you. And the worst case scenario would be people of my ilk, the average mediocre nobody and if you fail to beat some unruly guys at the street, it's gonna go down in the disqualification list.

What bloody super-human are we supposed to be - knowing everything, equipped with bone-tickling sense of humor  sweating out at the gym to not the let the belly come in the way of a bear hug, reading WSJ to ensure we care about our financial future, driving for hours in traffic snarls yet making it at 8 pm on the dot for the promised anniversary dinner.

It isn't a child's play to be a juggler and yet we are seen as engrossed only in particular activity which is earning money.. How true is that...

If we wanna do it, they think that's all we want to do and if don't want to do it, they think we don't want to do it at all.. Quite a predicament that becomes.

All in all, I have tried to sum up the confused state which we(males) live in, for whatever we do, it's viewed as a plot, a gimmick to get laid, which to my mind, is so grossly wrong and stereotypical.

It might appear to very uncool if you fail to make a capital out of the talent you posses which can be scholastics, sports, street-smartness, computer gaming - yet I would urge you all to remain tethered to areas of interest, no matter how isolated you feel in that process...

My Temper Threshold

So here I am again.. No points for guessing, This post too is about me.. Self-centered, reclusive Me


For starters, I don't get angry. No amount of goading, mortification, insinuation, instigation can ruffle my feathers. I m so inert and immobile to taunts and jeers that they virtually fail to galvanize me into reacting to them, without fail.

Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Apropos.

It's unfortunate but you won't get to see me in a red-hot mode, blowing hot and cold even if someone spews a spate of expletives on me. So that puts me at par with lithium in the periodic table, I guess. Non-reactive, dormant, impassive to the mocking around me that abounds me.

My erstwhile FB account memorable quote :  "Flummoxed by failure, Flustered by iteration, Famished of Hope, Fueled by desire "

That might explain, in part or full, the reason of my reactive inertia.

I m so badly engrossed in the pursuit of ever-elusive success element, that I presume, can't even be traced like the much talked about Higgs Boson God particle in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
Zeroing in on something with such ferocity is bound to have far-reaching undesirable effects. Autism, monosyllabic, schizophrenia, paranoia, cynical are few of the traits that I have unwillingly acquired in that process.

And that unceremonious break up of mine, raised by Temper Threshold my several notches. It's inaccessible to the point that even if I am whipped and stripped and made to run nude in the busiest street of Washington, I won't harbor a feeling of rancor against those who did it to me. Playing out Personal Vendetta isn't really my style.

So there you have it folks...

Next time you meet me, save your mocks and jeers for those who won't let your provocation go unchallenged. Period !!

Much to my chagrin

I have mastered the art what no one else hitherto has perfected before. I have excelled the art of chalking up failures to my experience. There are times in life that give you a high, raise your hope, make you believe in the intrinsic goodness of people. Snap, right there, comes a jerk which puts a blanket on everything. You are compelled to think if they were for real, if that instances, that exchanges of pleasantries, that moments which brimmed you with hope are nothing but a mirage, a delusion of enormous magnitude that puts a world on your eyes to blind you from the truth, the fact that you are being duped, used and betrayed. .

I feel used on virtually all occasions.  It's the incessant, relentless flurry of emotions, that puts me on a splinter, just waiting to explode and burst-out every now and then every time someone approaches me. I can't settle down. The jittery bug keeps crawling on my spine. And the poor soul senses something's wrong even before we greet each other. "Why is this chap always on a springboard" .. First reaction to be precise

Being enigmatic really suits me to a T.

Their furtive glances say it all and I have stopped caring less about it now. Its like an unsaid, unstated pact between me and the herd about where to draw the line.
How did i become so workholic.. Where did the "ME" in me disappear..To put it in the words of Liaquat Ahmed "Lords of Finance" The bankers who broke the world -  I possess a peculiar prowess to consume prodigious amount of work without any apparent impairment to my faculties.

You may think of me as an outright narcissistic, someone who feeds on personal vanity . Well, it's not entirely false and you deserve brownie-points for picking it in no time.

I have had my falls and much to my disappointment they have been rather continuous in nature ( not even a discrete series like the one we used to have in Statistics)

Epic Fall # 1 : CAT 2007 throws academic career out of gear.
Epic Fall # 2 : CAT 2008 - desperate times call for desperate measures.
Epic Fall # 3 : SBI PO 2009 exam makes life a living hell.
Epic Fall # 4 : SBI PO 2010 exam proves to be yet another nail in the coffin.
Epic Fall # 5 : SBI TO internal promotion exam throws cold water on all hopes of a comeback.
Epic Fall # 6 : CAT 2011 bring the situation to a point of no-return  
.
..
....
And finally came 
The Quantum Leap : CAT 2012 – a gateway to IIM A – breaking into the Engineer’s bastion. 

The "Quantum Leap" remained a Pipe Dream.

How could one survive so many falls beggars belief.( like Peter who survived the death defying fall when Skylar shove him out of the window after his ability was treacherously stolen from him by his putative father in Heroes Season : Unknown, Episode : Unknown.)

The lure of minting lucre is missing in me which cost me my girl. Although it brought my Muse Back and I m back to writing like never before.
The depth of solace that I experience in the space of my blog is inexplicable and gratifying.

Despite allurements, betrayals, falls, I have remained the same. I weathered the storm far too fairly than I thought I would. Still the same, young, coltish, impressionable, idealistic guy, free from malice, ill-will and trickery and chicanery.
Arguably the only un-corrupted soul in this corrupt world still alive. It's my conscience and innocence that I have kept intact ever since I set off on my journey of claiming acclaim, pursuing perfection and vindicating myself.
There have been moments when I just felt like I should let go, I should give up, but I didn't and that has made all the difference. It brought about a significant change in my outlook. It opened me up to the world outside. Initially, It was too much and too hot to handle. Over time, I got the hang and grip over things and I firmly hold the strings of my life now.

I may be hasting and hurtling towards the end but there is just so much in me waiting to spew out. I don't promise to give you a spectacular show, an anecdote, a fable that would summarily chronicle my rise to riches. But I promise you this, It won't be bland.. ..xoxoxo

Grin and Bear It

Seven Months on, I have been slogging my guts out at my new workplace ( The workplace looks new, but I look as old as if I have spent an entire lifetime over there). As a penance, I will have to continue working here for perhaps more than double the months I have already spent here. What a snail-like journey it had been and now I m narrating and recounting my experience ( more of a plight which is ) over here, venting my ire and disgust in vain.

Why oh why ( I ask myself this Q every single day) did i come so close tasting the pie and never tasted it?

I have become very insensitive, indifferent and impassive to the financial miseries of the people who rush into my office. I wear a blank face all the time so as to let my disillusionment and disappointment come through.

To be blunt, I have sunk into depression. So much so that it has become so unfeasible to be rescued unlike the toddlers who fell into the open pits and got much media coverage and were finally rescued.

I feel I have united with the gloomiest and darkest edge the world has ever seen and from this instant forth, things will only brighten and gleam for me. Nothing more worse can possibly happen to me and nothing and I mean nothing under the sun can bog me down now..

But that's what I feel.

Much Ado About Nothing

And there I m. Listless, Broken, Battered and Languid.

Two years of intensive preparation for CAT, and I m still at home writing about the events and developments that took place in the gone by year. Alas! It's finally over, though on an unsuccessful note.



I learned it the hard way. " One must be realistic about his aims and goals and shouldn't be too optimistic regarding future". Sounds cliched but means a lot to me, especially now.

Now when I look back, I realise how insane I was in being so dogmatic and hell-bent about the things I wanted from my life for my life. Meticulous Planning not accompanied with precise execution is bound to produce undesirable results. It's very disheartening and lugubrious when months of labour, toil, pain and efforts go in drain like this.



Although this incident gave me reasons to cheer in ways more than one. I am far more intellectual now than I was 2 years back, logical, thoughtful and wary of my next moves.
"You lose some, you win some"



One thing that I m always going to grumble about is the fact that what I lost was very tangible and could be produced and shown in physical form ( my test scorecards) and what i won is not visible through the naked eye( my acuity, my keeness of perception).

There were many boulders that pounded me hard throughtout the entire journey, or Shall I call it an ordeal which came to an end. I was turned into a punching-bag by formidable adversaries like CAT, NMAT XAT that showed no mercy to me and knocked me down yet again.

It's an end of a chapter and a beginning of another one, A new lease of life, A fresh ray of hope. A lot is riding on me now, hopes, trust, confidence. With great resolve I claim I won't crumble and give in to the pressure this time. No matter how burdensome the burden is, I won't give in to it.