The Week That Was-Edition 10

The week that was (04/08/2010)

Nothing is certain in this world except death and The Week That Was, I am backJ. Hey everyone, it is nice to see you all back in the campus and as usual my mate is eager to befriend all the pretty juniors (beware of him girls). I got so frustrated during summer holidays that I started reading my textbooks to beat boredom. I missed a lot of things though, from alcoholic-hostel-sambar (it really does get u drunk after drinking couple of spoons) to the last minute preparations for exams and surprise quizzes. The summer holidays were too damn boring because I spent most of the time on my couch wondering, whether changing channels in the TV could be counted as an exercise and how many calories I would have burnt in the process.

I don’t know if you have noticed this, it takes two minues to go from additional hostel to the parking lot in bike and 15minutes to walk from parking lot to Campus, but you can go from hostel to classroom in 14minutes if you decided to walk instead. I was out for a movie (Madarasapattinam) with my mate the other day and whilst searching for some loose change to pay for the ticket, my mate accidentally picked a used ticket of Avatar from his pocket. He went on and on about what a great movie Avatar was and how brilliant James Cameron is. But I couldn’t concentrate on it, coz one thing distracted me continuously, “how could he have an old ticket of Avatar in his Jeans? It’s been a few months since the movie has been released isn’t it?” I kept asking myself, then after a few moments it struck me, so I said, “Dude, your frickin Jeans needs a wash for God’s sake”. Talking about movies, why do all girls love Twilight so much? It scares the hell out of me on thinking that all girls fancy their boyfriends to be a man-eating Vampire.

Last few weeks most of you guys were busy preparing and presenting the Term paper/summer project report and we all know how it is going to help us in the future! Congrats to those who completed it successfully, I met the Head Chef of Additional Hostel the other day and we had a lot of catching up to do (we have become great friends you know), so when he asked me what I did in Vacation, I told him about the Term paper I did and to my utter disbelief I heard that he also had Term paper when he studied in his Culinary School. He said he found it difficult because, Term paper was meant for people who had arrears and asking someone who failed in studying one book to read 100articles is like asking someone with asthma to blow 100baloons/day for two months. I would like to quote his exact words, “I have a tough time identifying a unifying theme between 30 rock-hard Parottas I cook, so asking me to identify a unifying theme from 30articles written by 30authors proved to be a nightmare”. I dismissed his opinions straight away because I don’t believe that he learned about cooking, he must have inherited the skills from the angels preparing Amirudh in heaven.

I have become arrogant these days thinking that I have spent an entire year on learning about Businesses and how to be a Manager, so I know the best. My belief was that, I could solve any problem in the real world if I think like a true manager and this was the reason for my Arrogance. So when my mom asked me to buy Coconut the other day, I started thinking about the entire supply chain of the Coconut industry and started calculating the opportunity cost of not using the Coconut in the Chutney. I also wanted to use the knowledge of statistical packages like SPSS and I intended to design an optimal transportation model for the Coconut from the Farmer to the Consumer (having failed in Research Methods-2 and Quantitative Techniques and re-doing the course it was obvious that I needed to improve my knowledge). I did Correlation analysis to find out if Coconut makes Chutney taste better, having framed the null hypotheses and doing a rigorous data collection, I managed to get the feedback from 240 respondents and many of them didn’t choose any of the options from the five point scale, instead they answered in two words “**** you”.

After doing all the tests in SPSS (including blood test) I rejected both null and alternative hypotheses because it took more than 2months for the study to be completed and the two month old Chutney started smelling worse than my room-mate’s pillow cover (bugger washes it once a year). I was disappointed that my knowledge of Re-Do went astray, it became do-do-tutudooo. I am highly motivated to use my knowledge for the betterment of mankind in the forthcoming years, some of the hypotheses I am planning to test are as follows: Why do all rowdies eat leg-piece of Chicken in all the movies?, What effect did changing the name of all TASMAC’s in CBE post Semmozhi conference had on the welfare of the classical language Tamil? How many managers actually solve accounting/financial problems manually instead of using softwares in real life (because one can never graduate from any b-school without knowing how to calculate values manually even though a PC can solve it in 2seconds)? Some say I spend too much time on Facebook and Some say I am crazy, well I don’t care about all those, I can prove that everyone who likes me is perfect because I am the best example of their choice J. Anyways enough of my BS for this week, love you all, I will see you when I see you.

                                                      T(amanna is gorgeous)hank you.

The Week That Was-Edition 9

The week that was:  (17/02/2010)

Hello ladies and ungentle-men J here I am back with a yet another column of mine. I hope you all had a great weekend; I didn’t have a great one to be honest. Staying with couple of lads and doing assignments over a weekend is not what I would call an ideal way to spend the week end while the rest of the world is out chilling and then follows the God forbidden Monday. I hate Mondays; the thing about Monday is that it is followed by Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday which means yet another week of doing things which you hate the most, just for the sake of fitting-in with the rest of the world and not looking out of place. I have sworn on myself that I would never crib about how bad the food is at hostel or what a Muppet the cook is. The inspiration behind this is Chetan Bhagat who has cribbed about food in a much more humorous way in Five Point Someone and 2States, if you haven’t read it then read it, if you did it already then Hi-Five.

Mayawati a.k.a Currencywati has created yet more controversy by accepting a garland made of 1000rupee notes worth around Rs.1Crore, narcissism at its worst. Anyone who votes for such a person should be shot first because the one who supports a crime should be punished more than the criminal himself/herself. How can anyone do such a thing, for flip sake she is the leader of a state in which 2/3^rd of the population is either illiterate or in poverty and this little dinosaur is flaunting her rupee garland made by damaging the currency notes. Indians are the only nationals who scribble on their currency, fold it in awkward shapes, punch holes in it and even destroy it as part of their prayers and ceremonies, not surprising when majority of the country is filled with illiterates. Surely she must hate herself if she looks at her from a third person’s point of view, for being so obsessed with herself and going to an extent of building expensive statues, I think given choice she would not even vote for herself.

The Kerala government has added 12more Important Bird Areas (IBA), IBA is a programme which aims at identifying and protecting key sites for protecting birds and other biodiversity regions. The state now has 36 bird havens (3^rd highest in India), bird watchers are said to be extremely delighted at this announcement, and my mate reckons such IBAs should be set up at RS Puram, Peelamedu and outside every Coffee Day in the state. I had a tough time explaining that the ones set up in Kerala are completely different to the ones he has imagined. My mate from NASA said that the US satellites have been concentrating on Varadaraja mills recently suspecting that Weapons of Mass Destruction are manufactured every Wednesday night in Additional Hostel; however I reassured him that they are not WoMD, they are indeed parottas. You should all thank me for saving India from a possible US invasion.

I recently attended a management fest conducted by a private b-school in Coimbatore and I felt extremely sorry for their students, not because they were lacking in infrastructure or anything but it was their flipping dress code. They were all dressed up in blazers, with tie and stuff like a corporate executive but only downside was the temperature outside was more than a 100degrees Fahrenheit and it was a place where deodorants seemed to be a luxury for them. It is all well and good dressing up for the occasion but wearing a blazer at 100F is absolute madness and anyone who vouches for it must have a brain the size of black pepper. The Brits wore it because it’s too damn cold in England and even they flex their business attire during hot summer. But we wannabe business professionals keep our brains inside the refrigerator and take the blazer outside for Occasions!

It is scientifically proven that wearing clothes that increase your body temperature will cause male impotency and I think that is the reason why most b-schools make it mandatory for its students to wear blazers as part of a Corporate Social Responsibility in reducing India’s ever growing population. Some think it is super cool to wear them but it looks as ridiculous as trying to sell an A/C to an Eskimo or should I say being a Vijay fan. TV bosses in the US have apologized after preview clips of Playboy channel were accidentally played on Children’s channels, I am sure those kids would have learned a lot of Biology J.


The MNS have struck yet again, the racist party led by Raj Thackeray announced that foreigners should not act in bollywood songs/movies, week after week the atrocities of these mules is increasing and someone needs to do something to stop them else  India will become like Afghanistan. I am seriously planning to become a writer like Chetan Bhagat but only downside is that I haven’t got any gist or inspiration to write. And I do find it extremely difficult to write diplomatically or use politically correct terms. As I mentioned earlier in one of my previous columns, I call a Spade a Spade and not a soil redistribution implement. Most people have a tough time facing negative criticism and I think one can never ever grow up if they can never take negative criticisms, so let’s not worry about those low life creatures. I hope you all have a fabulous weekend, stay safe. I will see you when I see you.

The Week That Was-Edition 8

The week that was: (28/01/2010)

What a weekend it was, I hope you all had a great time at the talent night. I was wondering what talent I had, well if bird watching was included in Olympics then I could win gold medals for years to come. Mamata Banerjee announced her second budget for the welfare of Bengal. According to her, India has only one state and the line of control ends there; I can’t see any state other than Rasagulla state being benefited by this railway budget. Great news for the lads is that Cheryl Cole dumped her husband Ashley Cole for cheating on her. He is an idiot of first order for eating in roadside shops when he had five star foods available at home.

Inter Milan thrashed Chelsea 2-1 at San Siro and I expect Mourinho’s men to repeat the same in Stamford Bridge and send the Londoners out of the champions league. Everyone was going gaga about Sachin scoring 200, but my mate reckons passing in a Surprise quiz in which you have no clue is a much bigger feat than this. India is finally following the trends of the global manufacturing giants, not by being excellent but by being as pathetic as Honda and Toyota. Maruthi has just embarrassed itself by announcing a recall of its A-Star; it’s not A Star anymore. What is wrong with these car manufacturers? I think some clown must have gone to sleep in the production line and creating an absolute havoc.

Vijay has got the rights for 3idiots movie remake, I don’t know what role he is going to play in the movie, maybe he should try getting the copy rights for “101 Dalmations”, the movie would be a super hit. The finance minister has announced his annual budget hiking the prices of Petrol, Cigarettes, TVs and cars. While loads of people call it as a sensitive and a well balanced budget, I tend to disagree with him on giving concessions for toys. Why should the rich guys who buy expensive toys for their kid$ should be given a concession whilst the rest of us are struggling to make ends meet. You don’t find lower middle class people walking up and down the supermarket aisle to buy toys for their tweens. If I was the FM, I would have taxed the toys a premium of 25% and on set top boxes, I know the FM has an affinity for reality TV shows and seeing bollywood beauties on high quality digital TV but that doesn’t mean he should give concessions for those who buy set top boxes. I am no financial expert but I do think that you should tax only those who can pay instead of ripping off from the guy who smokes Malabar beedi, trust me I am a non smoker but I still find it unfair to tax the guys who will have a miserable death anyways.

The clowns from the opposition parties walked out when the price rise on petrol was announced. Anyone with a bit of common sense would realize that the petrol in India is highly subsidized and we are losing millions, it’s high time that the rate of petrol is raised to a reasonable level. I know it will hit everyone hard, including me and the inflation will go up…etc but we have to come to terms in facing reality. Whilst everyone else talks about how India has developed, anyone who has stepped out of the Indian border will realize that India is still like the west in 1970’s. We have a long way to go in terms of infrastructure, health care…etc. So even if the opposition disagreed with what he said, they should have given constructive criticism instead of walking out. My mate wonders whether he will be allowed to walk out when he disagrees whilst a lecture is being delivered; I wasn’t surprised when he asked me this as he is the son of a politician.

The Dada and Didi have announced the financial and railway budgets respectively for the welfare of Republic of West Bengal and we might as well focus on other things because no one would give a damn about your opinion or my opinion. Do read about it as it might help during job interviews apart from that there is no benefit, nothing whatsoever. The times of India came up with an interesting research saying that Curvy women are cleverer than their apple shaped counterparts and they also give birth to intelligent kids, so start you’re your exercise routine ladies, I am not making this up I just quoted the exact lines I read. I was absolutely furious when I read that our government has spent around Rs. 5.5crores till now just for the cell in which Ajmal Kasab was locked up and this doesn’t include the legal fees, security costs…etc. It would have been better if they just shot him as he has not coughed up any vital info yet and is making a mockery of the Indian judicial system.

Writing Week that was normally takes less than 30 minutes for me as I write whatever that comes into my mind, but this edition was the longest I took, it took me more than 3hours to write 5lines. I think I am suffering from a brain drain and it is a daunting task to meet the expectations of the highly demanding readers, so I apologise in advance if the standard of my articles are coming down. By the way, to celebrate the overall shield that we won in Sri Venkateshwara institutions me and my mates are planning to organize a booze party in which all guests will be served pints of Ho***l cooked sambar so that we all could get drunk and wasted, everyone is invited for the Sambar party. Till then, I will see you when I see you.

The Week That Was-Edition 7

and this how I apologised :) :)

The Week That Was: (21/01/2010)

Hi everyone, it is awesome to meet you all once again after a year. The most talked up subject in the campus apart from Surya's visit are the results, congrats to those who have got excellent marks. And to those of you, who have slipped up, don't worry, as my mate always says learning is inversely proportional to your earnings, failing couple of papers isn't the end of the world. He goes onto say that “Kotler has earned millions teaching Marketing all over the world despite studying Economics till Ph.d”, I won't add anything to what my mate says because he has created so much controversy about his understanding of Debenture expressed in my previous column.

Most people tend to get disappointed after reading my column saying that there is no useful information in the column, well expecting useful info from me is like going to a vegetarian hotel and ordering Chicken biriyani.

I am so glad that college has finally re-opened; I was so damn bored at home doing nothing, all I did was to have 7 meals a day and sleep for 16hours. I started getting restless after the second day that I didn't know what-to-do to kill time; I remembered people always saying that “You should read a lot of books and newspapers whilst doing MBA”. So, I searched all over my house to find some books to read, all I got was 4 copies of Aval Vigadan. I can now proudly say that now I know how to cook Pachai-payaru-satham, thayir vadai, how to raise kids and loads of things that can't be published. I even thought about lending my support and protesting for Telangana but because I was lazy I watched movies instead, to kill time.

I watched almost all movies on my laptop, if you give me a choice of smashing my head with a brick and shooting myself or watching Vettaikaran for the second time, I will choose the former. But if you give me another option of watching cricket or Vettaikaran, I would rather watch Vettaikaran thank you. For some reason I can't stand that game, it was a game which the shepherds used to play to kill time in England while their cows were grazing the field for hours together. Now that the cows are reared in little farms to save time and increase productivity, the shepherds don't play cricket anymore and that is the reason why Cricketers in England earn less than a banker. Now only the retired people follow that game, if you don't believe me check out the next televised game in Lord's.

Life is very different before and after joining MBA, you learn a lot of new things and you are treated as managers instead of students inside classrooms; it is nice to be honest. If you asked me who an Angel Investor was this time last year I would have said “Angel investor is any investor who looks as gorgeous as Angelina Jolie or Tamanna”. But now I know that, that is not the case. Loads of interesting things happened in the past like the N.D.Tiwari scandal, judgement on Ruchika's case…etc, but I would like to keep this column professional by not offering any opinions. The Taliban attack on the Afghan capital just goes onto show that terrorism can't be eradicated by brutal force or power unless the people themselves change or give up. Indian Hockey players were asked to play for peanuts, it is rumored that their actual pay is 1cup of Tea and 2 Hide and Seek biscuits per month, all they are asking for is bit extra money so that they could buy detergents to wash their socks.

I am extremely disappointed to be born in TN were ministers are more interested in not getting their shirts dirty than saving the life of a dying cop, Mr. Vetrivel, just to honour those ministers I am renaming swine flu as 'Politicians Flu' from now onwards. There is a huge media outrage on Pakistani players not being selected for IPL and I for one think that Pakistan should be ignored in everything until their government stops their support for extremist groups. Politicians are more of a threat to our nation than AIDS/Swine Flu, they don't help dying cops, call each other bad names like Deve Gowda, not open their mouth for any question asked in the parliament (Alagiri), whenever these clowns' names are mentioned I feel like puking (FYI: No, I didn't have hostel food).  The Politicians tend to talk as if someone was pushing Harpic up their nostrils with an electric toothbrush, it sounds so artificial and retarded.

I would like to sign off by reminding you of the most important news of last year, i.e. the crowning of Miss. Kaiane Aldorino as Miss World 2009 (hehe ). I know there is a similar attempt to find Miss PSGIM in the Pongal celebrations! All the above mentioned comments are intended not to offend anyone except the fans of Cricket and Vijay, so chillax guys. I will see you when I see you.

The Week That Was-Edition 6

This column created a lot of controversy and the entire finance department was darn pissed. They asked me to write an apology in the next column but I didn’t J

The Week that was: (18/11/2009)

I was told to finish this column within 600 words, so I will get straight to the point. Last week everyone was busy choosing their streams and almost everyone including the watchman wanted to take Finance. If I was the HR guy from an MNC and if I see a guy with arrears in Management Accounting sitting in front of me for an interview with MBA in Finance, I would burst out rolling on the floor laughing. Finance offers exciting job opportunities and handsome paychecks but that doesn’t mean that it is the right field for everyone, I can say this as I have worked for a bank for more than 3years. My mate also chose Finance as his stream and he still thinks that Debenture is a guy who passed out of IM in 2005.

And is anyone else sick and tired of The Hindu’s overuse of superlatives when describing about Indian cricket team? When India won the match by 3runs after scoring 414, they were using terms like splendid and spectacular to describe the bowling of Zaheer and Nehra. In all honesty the Indian bowling was pants, I was embarrassed to see it on the screen and when I read terms like majestic and dash of bravado to describe the fielding of our guys I nearly puked on the paper. Seriously, I could never imagine any guy worth his salt would have written such a post match report after seeing the match on tele unless he is an illicit lover of some player in the team.

It was revealed last week that David Headley the Pakistani origin, American terrorist (surprise surprise) used to work as an undercover CIA agent and also worked with the Drug Enforcement Administration before turning into a fulltime terrorist after he got placed in the Lashkar-e-Taiba with added perks of paid holidays and family health insurance. It was learned that he learnt all his terrorist skills from the American government itself just like his predecessor Osama Bin Laden. While working for the DEA he made frequent visits to Pakistan and he found interesting information’s like 70% of all Pakistanis are terrorists and the remaining 30% have just been shot.

PMK party leader Ramadoss wants the by-election to be cancelled as he thinks that people are given cash for votes. I would say that it’s just soar grapes, everyone including the guys in Election Commission knows that the ruling party gives everyone money of around 500-1000 bucks for every vote so that the poor people could use it for variety of purposes like buying rice to paying fines. During the last election I was the first to queue up in the voting booth and I registered it for 49 ‘O’. My advice is whilst voting, Vote sensibly.

I can’t resist talking without mentioning about it at least once in my column so here it goes, If the place where I am forced to eat everyday against my will, brings out a menu card it will have something like this “Chicken torn into pieces”, “rather burnt rice served along with an exotic Cat’s Poo”, “Pappadam which you need to tear than break and curd which tastes worse than Toddy”. The 2^nd trimester is within touching distance fellas, start preparing for it as CGP plays a vital role while sitting for placements and guys like me who have flopped in the 1^st trimester need to start studying instead of wasting time.

I guess my word count is over, I will see when I see you.

                                                                         Danke

The Week That Was-Edition 5

The week that was:  (10/11/2009)

I know many of you were expecting my column last week but we had more interesting things to narrate which happened in the campus than me cribbing about something. The reason for my column missing out was due to space constraints and few were moaning that the editors were biased in giving me regular space in the newsletter, so they thought of giving me a week off. But most students did really miss The Week That Was and in order to avoid their disappointment, I am back. The positive comments that I receive from my fellow students were the only thing that brought me out of my misery, i.e. the results of 1^st trimester.

I got the 2^nd highest internal marks in my class but failed in the externals on one particular paper, it is like running in a 100m dash and leading the race for 96metres like Usian Bolt and tripping and falling on the ground just before reaching the finishing line. I was so depressed that I was binge eating on the noodles with onion chutney to kill myself but then I realized it is better to re-do the course than eating the hostel food, so I gave up.

The Sun newspaper reported that Women slap 515 chemicals on their face and body every day - and many could be harmful. It seems that beauty-conscious girls ( or should I say ugly looking ones) use up to 13 products per day, most containing more than 20 ingredients, Lipstick contains 33 elements, body lotion 32, mascara 29, and supposedly the purest product, hand moisturizer, 11,  that study shows. I know a few in IM who use more than 20 products before coming to college and they look like Cruella de Vil (the lady villain) from 101Dalmations. These chemicals are not only carcinogenic in nature but also make you look weird, I for one will vote for those who go with the natural look.

The Liberhan commission’s findings on Babri Masjid was as shocking as reading a news revealing ‘the pope prays several times a day’, they should start taking action on the culprits than writing 1000s of pages about some utterly useless findings. Another important thing that happened last week was, I got a call from the girl whom I had a crush on since school days. After 7 years, I thought that she finally realized what a great chap Ifthi is and she was calling me. The thing is I never spoke with her whilst at school, how wrong I was, she called me to say that she is getting married next month and wants me to be present at her wedding. Poor girl didn’t know that I had a crush on her, once I actually got a bit of courage to say about my crush to her in person, but the worse thing I did was to ask for my friend’s advice.  That idiot asked me to say it with a box of chocolates. I took it and I bought a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates and on my way I was wondering what is more important to me, I was in a dilemma. I had a really tough choice to make; after walking for 10minutes I ate all the Ferrero Rocher and returned half wayJ.

Every international newspaper was going gaga about the collapse of Dubai share market, now what I don’t understand is why do people  still believe in making money of shares?. Investing money in shares and expecting that someone else will work hard to bring the company into a good position so share prices can go up is like asking your friend to eat when you are feeling hungry. I have a better business plan than share market, me and my mates are offering real estate for sale in Mars, so when the  world is destroyed at 2012, you can build your home there. All legal documents will be given and if you are good at convincing others you can sell these papers at a higher value to others. If you earn a profit you can keep all the cash and if you make a loss you can keep the papers, exactly like the share markets. But this has less risk than share market because your land prices won’t crash when some guy in America sneezes.

The most bleeding obvious news of the week was the top US commander in Afghanistan has said al-Qaeda will not be defeated unless its leader, Osama Bin Laden, is captured or killed. It doesn’t take a genius to work that out, does it? The greedy board of directors of Royal Bank of Scotland threatened to quit last week if the government intervenes in the bank paying $4bn in bonuses. It was the same RBS which was bailed out during the financial crisis and the government owns 70% of its shares. I am glad to inform that my former employers Barclays reported a profit of $9bn in the last 9months unlike RBS who reported a quarterly loss of $4bn. Some say that I crib too much but I say about things happening around me in my column as I see it, I can assure you that I won’t call a spade as a soil redistribution implement instead I just call it as a spade. Anyways I might get fever next week and my neighbor’s granddad might pass away too so I am writing this letter of leave well in advance (hehe, if it isn’t published its due to space constraints, so stage a protest in front of the editors or even throw stones at them). I hope you all have a great day, I will see you when I see you.

The Week That Was- Edition 4

The week that was:- (21/10/1009)

First and foremost I have to thank the millions of fans who were expecting my article in the 3^rd edition and were left disappointed because it wasn’t published due to space constraints. I heard that few of my fans even went on a hunger strike (he he) and our inbox was overflowing with so many emails asking for an explanation, I would like to thank you all, without your support, I wouldn’t have got this much amount of motivation to write.  To tell the truth not even a single mail/comment was received, but with the noble cause of ranting about some utterly useless stuff       and wasting everyone’s time, I am backJ.

Last week I was really busy doing a lot of travelling and didn’t have much time to explore the media but I learned a lot of things. The outside world is very different, trust me. In fact I think they are really stupid and they have a ridiculous life style. I had to park my bike at Trichy railway station so what I did was (like every IM student) parked my bike on the road 2kms away from the railway station parking lot and walked all way to the station but my friends laughed at me on hearing this. It seems that they park vehicles in the parking lot within the campus!

After reaching there I felt tired, so I thought of drinking some hot water; I asked for a cup of colored hot water in coffee flavor and gave him Rs.10 for it but the shopkeeper gave me coffee with real milk in it for only Rs.6! I thought  he  must be utterly foolish, because it is impossible to sell a cup of coffee for less than Rs.10 so I suggested him to double the price of everything just for the sake of it, whether it is justified or  not. I also asked him to blame food price inflation in case customers complained and he could maximize profit. I call this as Greedy Pricing Strategy and Kotler has agreed to include this in his future texts.

The Hindu on 18/11/09 reported that More Americans opt India for higher studies, the reason they say is Americans are bored of using common sense for learning and they also want to memorize pages and pages of theories which won’t help them in any way when they work in an organization. Indian education system reminds me of the Karate classes that I took during my school days. What I learned from it was, in case if you are attacked by an opponent, before kicking him make sure that you wear a Karate uniform, that he punches you only in head, stomach and abdomen because my teacher didn’t teach me how to block any other kicks or punches. Also my opponent should wait for me to recover after I make every block and then he could punch/kick me again. I have got a brown belt and 5 certificates to show that I could defend myself in Japanese way.

Once I took the risk of testing my skills, so I organized a play fight with my 5year old cousin, I was wearing my uniform, stood in the kata (fighting) posture and asked him to attack me. Needless to say I got hurt very badly, he didn’t follow the rules, he slapped me, kicked me and bit on my forearm which I was supposed to use for upper block! I gave up Karate ever since.

I am often criticized for not writing any business news, so I am going to try it from this edition. Prabhu Deva Inc has proposed to acquire 51% stake at Nayanthara Plc subject to Simbhu’s approval. Share prices of both firms have gone down since the joint venture was proposed. Enough of B-news and I want you all to do a literature review before reading my next column, if you fail to do so you will be charged Rs.10 for the 5^th edition of Atulya and the proceeds will go to Ifthi’s coffee drinking fund.