XLers Unlimited

...long long time back... or perhaps not that long either (upto somewhere mid-80s), Dadus was not where the latter batches saw it... it was on the other side of the road, and looked like "this" in the late 70s

From Abhilasha:

"Stop the car right now!!" I shrieked, horrified at the news I'd just heard.

On my way from the Tatanagar station to XL for the Independence wetnight, I had just comfortably settled into the passenger side and casually asked Guppu, my junior, for campus news. He turned to me and, almost reluctantly, said "Dadu's has been broken down".

For a few minutes, there was complete silence as I tried to figure out if he was pulling one of his usual fast ones on me. He looked serious enough, concerned even... I asked him to repeat himself, a little slowly this time, from the beginning... even before he got beyond the first sentence I was screaming for the car to stop.

My eyes brimmed over and through the mist I could see two years of friendship, heartbreak, fun and nostalgia flash before my eyes. Our first days at XL, and finding my first set of friends at Dadus... the autumn evenings seated at the log... 'nimbu paani' by the litre during Ratanjee and XL-IIMC... taking a break during classes, leaning against the white washed walls proudly proclaiming 'Happy Diwali'... express sutta service for batchmates during SIP... winter mornings with seniors, banging on the blue counter window, waking Buddhu up to make a steaming cup of tea when the sun had barely risen... rediscovering friends and observing the new crop after summers, while the smoke trailed from our fingers... jumping the compound for impromptu dinner at Madrasi... from visiting dadus, to making it home--Niranjan da's smile and welcome small talk... discovering, in a cycle that I suppose repeated itself in every batch, friends among the junior batch while seated on the compound wall...

My heart was heavy as we headed to XL, the initial excitement having died down completely... it was near midnight when I got there, and in the rush of meeting people, it slipped my mind... the next morning, we took a walk down and I saw the shell that remained... I could not fathom why anyone would have wanted to break Dadus down--to me, it was as horrific as ripping one's own limbs apart...

Dadu's has now been moved behind GH1, where the broken furniture used to be kept... when I met Niranjan da, he told me all this had happened but a day before I got there... one look at their faces could have shown any fool that they felt cheated, betrayed by their own... to them, XL had been family all their life, and the little room known to the XL world as Dadu's their lifeline... to snatch that away must have taken an awfully cold heart and lack of all human consideration...

Is that where XL is headed? The official reason is that this is a part of an overall plan to beautify the campus.

Many XLers hold prominent positions in the corporate world... I ask of you, when you come to recruit us, does it really matter how green the garden is or how even the pavements? Or do you look for signs like these, that tell you what we value and what kind of human beings we are? And what does such blase destruction of a revered symbol of the XL tradition say about XL now? I, for one, am sorely disappointed......

Huh?

Wasn't it earlier too "inside" the campus?

Secondly to all seniors who by accident or by choice happen to read my blog the not so latest news is Dadu's has been shifted to inside the campus behind the TFEMR hostel, where there were furniture repair earlier.

Abhishek posts just this bit of news !

Any other detailed info, folks?

Abhilasha and Udayan have very similar beginning to their posts !

Maybe its just got to do with how we XLers love to drink and converse and reflect all at the same time !

Dipta hopes on behalf of all the Bachchan fans that AB gets a chance to play these 10 roles.

The 2nd XLRI - IIMC Alumni Meet at Bangalore is to take place on 15 October 2006.

Last time we beat them at Football and Cricket while they beat us forthe Quiz (with some help from Rekha & Vijayan Menon).

This time there could be an increase in the number of games and wouldinclude games like volley-ball, basket-ball, tennis, etc. besides cricket &football.

All alumni who are capable and interested in participating may please send their names to john.idicula @ gmail.com

Contact Titto at +91-98453-24383

Live consulting projects floated by Accenture in collabration with SAPPHIRE recieved overwhelming response with around 20 teams i.e over 80 students submitting project proposals for 4 live projects. Accenture will bear the project expenses of consulting teams as well pay for the consulting, how cool is that?

(Grax is that quite a few XL seniors got help from their summer guides ;-) or at least tried to !)

Watch this space for the results.....

Sapphire's 'Human Resource In Practice' kicked off with a bang on pre independence eve with Mr. Sunit Sinha, Principal Consultant , M&A, of Mercer HR delivered a talk on 'Careers in Consulting'. The session was attend by around 100 students comprising of GMP, BM and PMIR students.

Sunit talked about the typical lifestyle of consultant, myths about consultancy and what students need to look before choosing consultancy as a career. He stressed consultancy is more of a career and not a job which demands self belief, abiltiy to think on feet, presentation of thoughts and resilience.

He also enlightened the prospective managers who are wannabe consultants about what consultants look for in a prospective employee. He also brought forward the fact that more and more women are now joining consultancy and are climbing to success.

There are various online hangouts of XLers...

There's email based groups like Grax and PJAXI

A lot of XLers have profiles on Ryze, check Madhukar's page for a comprehensive listing of XLers there.

Quite a lot are on Linkedin. In fact Kim ensured that we have a XL Alumni group on Linkedin too.

And there are lots of XLers on Orkut, the social networking site. Some XL-related communities on Orkut are XLRI, XLRI (smaller group), Fraxers, MadFaxi, VLAXI, PFAXI. The last three are Prof fans associations !

This blog plans to be a collablog (a collaborative blog).

So, XLers who want to contribute to this blog, by becoming co-authors, please drop me an email !

The id is ggxl99 [at] gmail.com

This blog attempts to start lots of XLers blogging about their alma mater