Racy Cases

Characters: Neha, 22 years, engineering student.
Vijay, 24-year-old chartered accountant, Neha’s brother.
Renuka, 48 years, housewife, Neha’s mom.
Rajesh, 52 years, banker, Neha’s dad.

“Hi everyone,” said Neha, as she came home from college and walked into the living room, where her family was having hot pakodas. After freshening up, she came and sat next to her dad. He looked at her inquiringly. Popping a piece of pakoda into her mouth, she said: “Dad, I’ve decided to invest my savings.” Her brother laughed aloud. “Have you won a lottery? I didn’t know you had so much excess savings. You can lend me some money and I’ll invest it if you want.”
“Ha, ha”, replied his dad in a bored voice. “It is actually a very good idea to invest your savings. What do you have in mind Neha?” he asked.
“I hear that a very reputed company is coming out with an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Can I invest in that?”

Why we jump traffic signals

2008-01-08T15:36:00.001+05:30

From amber the signal had just turned red. And Wafers, the young CA, had stopped her bike. The road ahead was free. The car from behind honked. A second later, it honked again. Wafers felt annoyed; she turned around to stare at the man seated behind the steering wheel of one of the costliest cars. He rolled the glass down, honked again and said: “Big time Mahatma.”

It got to Wafers’ goat. “Learn to wait, man,” she said, scarcely being able to hold her rage. Just then an auto-rickshaw whizzed past her on the left side jumping the signal. A motorist coming from the perpendicular road had to screech to a halt.

Some light on spectrum

2008-01-01T16:09:00.000+05:30

Scene: Raja and Priya’s house.

Characters: Raja, 28, works in a service provider company; Priya, 25, Raja’s wife, works in a software company; Vijay, Priya’s dad, 62, retired government official; and Saranya, 57, Priya’s mom, housewife.

There was a knock on the door. Priya ran to open it. Her parents came in, bags in hand. Raja greeted them with a smile.

“Hey Raj, how are you doing today?” boomed Vijay. He had recently retired from government service. They had come for dinner to their daughter’s place. They did this quite often. Dinner would be followed by elaborate discussions about things which interested them.

Hey, it’s all in the mind

2007-12-31T16:26:00.000+05:30

V. Pattabhi Ram

Wafers met up with China that Saturday evening at their usual joint; the Chennai Coffee Club. She had a problem on hand. That wasn’t surprising because the troubled lass was eternally in thinking mode.

The previous evening Wafers had escorted her two friends to the airport. One of them, Muskan, was to fly to Delhi and the other, Tushar, was to head towards Kolkata. The flights were to take off at 7.30 pm and the check-in counters were to close half an hour earlier at 7 pm.

They took a cab at 5.45 pm giving them ample time to bite a snack at the airport. But the traffic was horrible. By 7 pm the trio of Wafers, Muskan and Tushar, were still quite some kilometres away from the airport. It was unlikely that they would catch the flight. And there was no way that they could turn back to the city; the procession coming from the opposite side had made that impossible.

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A high-speed discussion on slowdown

2007-12-10T16:11:00.000+05:30

Lila Rajiva

Scene: Chennai airport passenger’s lounge. The Air India flight 172 to London has been delayed for another hour, so passengers are moving around and chatting with each other.
Mrs Spendthrift, a pleasant, matronly young woman in an over-wrought maroon churidar is on her way back to the US after visiting her parents. As she settles down, a chubby man in an expensive business suit, Mr India-bull, rushes in to the lounge.

“Has Air India flight 172 left yet?” he calls out to no one in particular.

“No, delayed an hour.”

“Oh, thank God!”

Pocket-sized dynamos

2007-11-26T14:43:00.000+05:30

Wafers was short-listed by her office for her first overseas trip. It was part of a rewards package for stellar performance during the last year and would include a week-long paid holiday to Dubai and Singapore. A year ago, when she had joined the KPO (knowledge process outsourcing) firm fresh after qualifying as a CA, Wafers hadn’t thought that life would be so great for her. Even the encyclopaedic China had grudgingly admitted that the pony-tailed lass had come a l ong way during the last 12 months.

Dubai airport

As she stepped out of the aircraft at the Dubai International Airport, she was completely taken by surprise at what she saw. Nothing, yes nothing, had really prepared her for the sight. Wow. It was a massive airport, spic and span and with walkathons for the lazy, golf-carts for those who couldn’t walk the distance, huge duty-free shops where you could gaze and gaze with little thought, and a sea of humanity.

A primer on sub-prime crisis

2007-11-26T14:42:00.000+05:30

Srinath Sridhar

Rama Sridhar gave a groan as the announcement came over the airport loudspeaker. The flight to Hyderabad was delayed by another two hours. It was scheduled to take off at 11 pm now. Her son Ajay — a chartered accountant, working in Hyderabad — was nonchalantly flipping through the pages of a financial magazine.

Pleasantries exchanged.

Suddenly Ajay saw somebody calling out his mom’s name loudly across the airport waiting room. The middle-aged lady came running over and hugged his mom. Ajay now recognised the lady as Shalini, who was his mother’s old schoolmate. A middle-aged man standing behind her was her husband Vinod, who was working as a manager in a bank. As they all sat down, few moments were spent in pleasantries, even as Ajay got bored and got back to his book.

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Mobile number portability

2007-11-20T15:19:00.000+05:30

Scene: A train

Characters: Avinash — businessman, age 34; Vinod — an employee in an established GSM company, age 50; Anu — B-school student, age 22; Susheela — customer, age 40.

Avinash sat down with a grunt and deposited his heavy suitcase below his seat. He gave a perfunctory smile to the three other occupants in his cubicle before whipping out his mobile. He remarked grumpily: “No signal again. I am getting fed up with my operator. Now that the Government is planning to introduce mobile number portability, these GSM service providers such as Secure Telecom have nowhere to hide. It’s shape up or ship out for them.”
Vinod coughed gently. “Err. I am Vinod. I work as Manager, Operations, in Secure, the service provider you were talking about just now.” Avinash was shocked. Anu grinned: “Hey all, I’m Anu, doing my MBA.. I see that this journey is not going to be as boring as I imagined.” Everyone laughed. There were introductions all round. The train merrily chugged along.

‘Mechanism design’ in this year’s Nobel

2007-11-12T16:58:00.000+05:30

Indra Nath

Irritated about the Rs 75,000 that he had lost in the stock market, Krishnan sat in a corner. “I am never…I mean NEVER going to that wretched place again…I have had enough of it,” he said to his wife Savithri who looked worried.
Both sighed as Krishnan slowly folded his socks into the shoes, anguish written all over his wrinkled face. As their daughter Priya came back after economics tuition, the couple quickly changed their mood and began humming a new Hindi song.
“Dad have you been trading again?” Priya asked.
“Yes”, he admitted for a change and confessed that he had just lost the money earned as performance bonus last year.
“Papa why do you trade…it isn’t an efficient system. Yet, even the Nobel committee seems to honour the idea,” Priya wondered.

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High integrity and a record of accomplishment - The basic traits

2007-10-31T14:46:00.000+05:30

Wanted, women directors

“It is not enough for best-employers and HR (human resource) leaders to simply focus on increasing the ‘number’ of women in the workforce — either at the entry-level or at the mid-executive level. The priority should also be on including women in top-management positions at the board of directors, president-level or CEO-level.”

Thus reads a snatch from the ‘mandate’ of ‘Forum for Women in Leadership’ (WILL Forum), which is to hold its launch meeting on November 23-24 at the Infosys Technologies campus in Bangalore, with about 40 women business executives in leadership positions nominated from across corporate India expected to participate in ‘an open dialogue on their aspirations, opportunities, nurturing mindsets, mentoring, and harnessing the rewards of collective thinking for improving the workplace.’

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Taking stock of retail

2007-10-23T13:20:00.000+05:30

Mr Vivek looked at the four solemn faces opposite him. The faces showed various degrees of fear, trepidation and anticipation. Vivek was General Manager (Marketing) at Sonya Retail, an upcoming Indian retail firm.

He was recruiting for his marketing team from one of the top B-schools in India. After numerous rounds of tests and interviews, he had short-listed four students for the final round. Surabhi, Nikhil, Ravi and Swati were the candidates vying for the dream job with Sonya Retail.

“Well, all of you have done remarkably well to have reached this far in our recruitment process. Congratulations,” Vivek said, grinning at them to make them more comfortable. Four nervous faces smiled at him nervously.

Meandering thru appreciation

2007-10-15T16:51:00.000+05:30

“And that takes care of your queen,” exulted 23-year-old Preeti, as she removed her opponents piece from the chessboard. Sridhar Rajesh, the 32-year-old exporter of textiles, looked on morosely. “What’s the problem?” asked Preeti. “You usually play so brilliantly. Export worries
Sridhar scowled, “The rupee has appreciated against the dollar again today. Eightyfive per cent of my exports are to the US. The rupee has appreciated by nearly 9 per cent against the US dollar in the past six months. Looks like I am going to have a bad quarter this time.” They were sitting in their favourite hangout at Brigade Road. They usually sat sipping cups of freshly brewed coffee while discussing various issues under the sun.

Suddenly Preeti waved her hands excitedly as she spotted her mom near the counter. Sharada Vishwanath came over, holding shopping bags.

Business, Twenty20-style

2007-10-09T15:35:00.000+05:30

Twenty-three-year old Neha walked into the living room to find her dad and brother watching a one-day match between India and Australia. “Guys! One-day matches are not so cool anymore,” she said, ruffling her dad’s hair as she went past him to sit in the sofa opposite. “Welcome to the Twenty20 world. Who has the time or the inclination to spend a whole day watching cricket?”

Avinash looked at his daughter over the rims of his spectacles. He was a successful businessman who had an electronics showroom. He shot back: “That is the problem with your generation; you want everything to happen quickly. What do you think, Rahul?” he asked his son.

When to exercise your options

2007-10-01T15:33:00.000+05:30

The following week, everybody was present well in advance except the MD. He walked in at the last moment apologizing profusely. “Sorry everyone! I am coming straight from the airport. Hope that I have not missed anything.”

“No Sir. We have been waiting for you,” said Goatee.

“What are you guys chatting about?” he asked the two new recruits. “You guys are always in animated discussions.”

“They are both Bengalis Sir,” said Ganguly. “And we love to talk.”

“I guess that is why you are called Chatterjees,” said Goatee.

Home loans: Fixed vs floating Racy Cases

2007-09-26T15:48:00.000+05:30

The real estate fiasco in the US has a lesson or two for prospective property buyers in India, and strategies for the lending institutions, too. Enthusiastic lenders could at times tend to be complacent and advance loans to buyers who may have a higher-than-average risk of defaulting.

A discussion at an institute on the economics of property finance:

Anindya: But sir the loan application forms are exhaustive. Probing details are sought to give a lender a good base to assess the borrower’s repayment capacity.

Buffett is known to be conservative in a speculative market and aggressive in a bearish market

2007-09-17T13:58:00.000+05:30

Wafers fell in love with a man old enough to be her grandfather. The immediate provocation: he, the world’s third richest man, had willed that 70 per cent of his estate would go to the Gates Foundation and not to his blood relatives.

There was just no parallel that she could think of. Warren Buffett was her man for all seasons. She decided to research Buffett. And what she found made her rush to China. “Hey did you know?” she asked. In her excitement she didn’t realise that he wouldn’t know that she was asking about Warren Buffett. “Know what?” asked an incredulous China. “Well, that Warren Buffett is only 76 and that he has a net-worth of $52 billion”.

Taking a call on options

2007-09-10T14:27:00.000+05:30

On Friday, the two new recruits, Vijay and Rajeev, were the first to enter the conference room. Their objective was to impress the MD and they appeared to have succeeded for he gave them an approving look as he entered.

“Morning gentlemen! Hope you have been enjoying the discussion,” said the MD.

“Very much Sir,” said Vijay. “We did not have a tutor who was qualified to teach derivatives at our business school and our finance faculty tried to do the best they could. Fortunately we had access to a good library and we managed to tool up by ourselves.”

The long and short of short sales

2007-09-03T14:10:00.000+05:30

Sunil Parameswaran

The following Monday the conference room had two extra members.
“We have recently hired Vijay and Rajeev from a business school. Before deploying them in the finance department I thought they should be given an opportunity to partake in the discussions and polish their skill-sets,” said the MD.
Curd Rice looked extremely unhappy. MBAs and consultants were two categories of people he despised. Consultants in his opinion were people who charged astronomical amounts of money only to get all the information required from the employees of the firm and write a fancy report. And what was worse they inevitably found reasons to extend the duration of their engagement.

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Demystifying derivatives

2007-09-02T14:41:00.000+05:30

Sunil K. Parameswaran

The following Thursday everyone trooped into the conference room to take their respective places. Goatee walked over to the white board and switched on the LCD projector.
“Good afternoon everyone! We are here to continue our discussion of derivatives and hedging strategies.”
“Morning Ganguly,” said the MD. “Welcome back after your paternity leave. I must say that you have delayed having a child for a considerable period after marriage.”
“I guess they kept evading the issue,” said Goatee, not able to resist the pun. Everyone burst into laughter including Ganguly who turned beetroot red.

Going forward is one option

2007-09-02T14:39:00.000+05:30

The following Monday, the MD was the last to arrive in the conference room. Curd Rice was rapidly scribbling on a note pad and Goatee was adjusting the overhead projector.
“Good afternoon everyone,” said the MD as he entered the room. “We will continue with our discussion on foreign exchange risk management strategies. Rahul, last week you had expounded on the differences between forward contracts and futures contracts. I would now like to continue the discussion from where we left off.”

Overcome the fear of selling

2007-09-02T14:36:00.000+05:30

Pradeep Chandrasekaran

Bholu the black bear was back! And how ferocious he was turning out to be! He was clawing at everybody in sight. The pigs were being mercilessly slaughtered while the sheep and the lambs huddled together in fear. The lone creature in the circus who seemed unfazed by everything was Rita the crow. She was happily flapping her wings without a care in the world.
And why not? When all about were licking their wounds, she had managed yet again to fly away with her riches before the bears raised hell. A few lambs which had escaped slaughter mustered the courage to approach her to seek enlightenment on how she did it.
The leader of the group started, “Rita, we barely managed to escape annihilation and all the prey we thought would be ours is gone. We are now living in fear of tomorrow.”

Taking hedging forward

2007-09-02T14:35:00.000+05:30

“Gentlemen,” began the MD as they assembled in the conference room the following Friday. “As you are aware we had a discussion last week as to whether our company needs to implement a hedging strategy, given the fact that the rupee has been appreciating steadily against the dollar, as a consequence of which our export-related revenues in rupees are way below what we had anticipated at the beginning of the financial year.
“A number of issues were raised. Rahul mentioned the possibility of using derivatives such as forward contracts and options as hedging tools. Sunder was uncomfortable with the fact that the outcome of a hedging strategy may not always be superior to that of an un-hedged position. Given the fact that most of us are not very familiar with hedging as a risk-mitigation strategy and are not well-versed with the use of derivatives, I have asked Rahul to give a brief presentation on what hedging is, and the role played by derivatives in a hedging strategy.”

To hedge or not to hedge

2007-09-02T14:33:00.000+05:30

Wilma Ribeiro fiddled with her note pad as she waited for the group to assemble in the conference room. Being the MD’s secretary she had to arrive in advance to ensure that everything was in order. The boss was a stickler for perfection and had no tolerance for sloppiness.
“Morning Wilma”, said Goatee as he walked in. Goatee was the new Vice-President Treasury. His real name was Rahul but he was known as Goatee since high school because of his trademark French beard.
Following Goatee was Sundararajan, the Vice-President Finance. Wilma had nicknamed him Curd Rice because that was what he invariably brought for lunch everyday. Curd Rice was followed by Ganguly who was the Vice-President Operations and Balaji the Chief Accountant. The last to arrive was the MD himself.

First lessons from a B-School Racy Cases

2007-09-02T14:31:00.000+05:30

It was a Friday evening. The clock chimed 9. Potato (because she was fat; the Hindi crowd had called her aaloo andt someone had Anglicised along the way), Brains (because he was all style and no substance), and Tucks (he would always wear his T-shirt in) were walking on the Chennai’s pride, the Marina beach. It was a year since they had graduated from the same B-School.
Brains’ loud voice cracked the silence. “ really miss B-School. They were the most colourful, most adventurous and most fun-filled days of my life.” Potato cut in, “Yeah; they couldn’t have been different. After all, you never studied anything.” Brains smiled ignoring the jibe. Tucks, in his trade mark clipped accent, said, “The place as such meant little to me. The people, each holding a special relevance in my heart, did.”
Potato decided to sit on the sand and let her mind slip, back to the days when her journey had begun.

The yawning gaps of development

2007-09-02T14:29:00.000+05:30

Jean was all excitement. She was sporting a brand new attire. It was a very special day; in fact, she was looking forward to this day these last many months. Actually it was the school reunion party. They called it the old boys meet. She hated the phrase for not being gender neutral. It now didn’t matter. For, she was on a lark. The thought of meeting her old friends thrilled her no end.
Her mobile crackled to life. “Oops,” she sulked. “I am late.” Her friend of many years, Nickle, was trying to reach her for the nth time. He had told her that he would wait for her at the school’s lobby. Yeah, her school had fancy names for various meeting points. She drove her Zen into the parking slot and trotted in with her trademark ponytail bobbing as excitedly.

Playing a winning game

2007-09-02T14:28:00.000+05:30

Wafers wasn’t a chiselled beauty. But when you got to know her well three things — her native innocence, her unabashed humility and her perennial hunger for knowledge — would hit you like a breath of fresh air. Little wonder many people liked to make friends with Wafers.
While she wasn’t exactly choosy about friends there were only a few with who she would be at her disarming best. The encyclopaedic China was one of them.
“Hey, tell me a way to make some large, quick money,” she told China as the two sipped cappuccino at an upmarket coffee shop. The comment was very unlike Wafers, but China decided to bite the bullet. “How much do you want to make and how fast?” he asked. “Hmmm… Rs 5 lakh for no effort and I must get it in the next 6 months,” she said with rare belligerence.

Auctions, with twists in the tail

2007-09-02T14:26:00.000+05:30

Sothebys, the auction major, was in town. This time around it was auctioning things other than art objects. Among others, there would be fiction and non-fiction books as well. Wafers, the young CA, loved books more than she loved movies and the myriad things that women of her age desired. She decided to go for the auction but was not sure how to bid. And so she called on the encyclopaedic China to gather some inputs.
“The strategy would depend on what kind of auction Sotheby is making,” said China. “Now what would that mean?” asked Wafers, clearly stumped. “After all, an auction is an auction. The highest bidder takes home the product.”

Why people betray in deals

2007-09-02T14:24:00.000+05:30

China was chatting with Wafers. She was a few years younger to him but they were great friends. He always took it upon himself to give her some gyan. She was talking about how people tend to play games of oneupmanship at the cost of good relationship. And China was trying hard to explain why this was normal. Especially if the parties were rational!
"Irrational; you mean," said a surprised Wafers.
"Rational," corrected China. And went on to illustrate it. "Suppose two of you are playing a game. Let's say the game runs like this: If your opponent plays mean, you get one point if you also play mean and zero points if you play nice. If your opponent plays nice you get three points if you play mean and two points if you play nice. Remember, you have no idea whether your opponent will play nice or play mean. Understood? So what would you do?"

Importance of competing on quality, not price

2007-09-02T14:23:00.001+05:30

The encyclopaedic China, the knowledge-hungry Wafers and a guest were having dinner. China, playing host, asked the guest, "Will you have Coke or Pepsi?"
The guest was shocked. "Pepsi, of course," he said.
"What's the of-course to it?" asked Wafers.
"I work for Pepsi. At Pepsi anything is pardonable but not sipping Coke. A Pepsi employee seen having Coke, whatever his position in the company, is instantly given the pink slip."
As Wafers heard that with apparent disbelief, the guest added, "the same is the story at Coke. If a Coke employee is seen having Pepsi, whatever his position in the company, he is sacked pronto."

Flyer points, restaurant bills and helmets

2007-09-02T14:21:00.000+05:30

"Airline companies offer frequent flyer miles points. That's a smart way of bribing a corporate executive to fly with you," said China opening up a discussion that was sure to hot up. "Crap," said Wafers. "By no stretch of imagination is that offer a bribe."
"Ha, madam; one year in the corporate sector and you have still not lost your innocence," remarked China. "Prove the bribe," charged Wafers.
China was unfazed. "Let me explain with an example. Let us say that the airfare from Destination X to Destination Y is Rs 10,000 by J Airways and Rs 8,000 by A Airlines. J Airways offers you frequent flyer points; A Airlines does not. Your air ticket is paid for by your company but the airline companies make it a point to credit the frequent flyer miles points to you. Now given a choice, tell me, which airlines will you prefer?"

Cooks, cleaners and free trade

2007-09-02T14:19:00.000+05:30

It was almost a year since Wafers had qualified. The hustle bustle at the KPO where she worked had often made her wonder whether life as an intern hadn't been far better. But she didn't complain. For, the opportunity to learn at work was immense.
She was in Chennai for the weekend and looked forward to the following week when she would work on an assignment that had David Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage as its basis.
Yes, she had read about the theory in her PE-1 but all she now remembered of that was what her professor had told the class: "If India produced rice at a lower cost than Pakistan and if Pakistan produced wheat at a lower cost than India, India should import wheat from Pakistan and Pakistan should import rice from India."

Integrity will win, in the end

2007-09-02T14:18:00.000+05:30

V. Pattabhi Ram

For the first time in many months Wafers realised the import of what her professor had once told the class. He had said: "In life you will almost always be let down by the very people whom you have trusted the most." At that time she had smiled. How could someone close to you let you down, she had wondered. Her friend had pointed out to the Greg-Ganguly spat, but Wafers let it sail, as she wasn't sure who had let down whom.
The professor had gone on to add, "When you do a person a favour, howsoever significant it might be, never expect a return favour. Remember, life is about free lunches." The events of the last few weeks were proving him right. Her best friend of many years was behaving strangely. Her highly respectable colleague at office had shocked her.

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Gold or gold-backed securities?

2007-09-02T14:13:00.000+05:30

Pradeep Chandrasekaran

The Sage was bemused as he picked up the newspaper. A new record had been established for the amount of money that the gold industry had been able to raise in two days on the hype of Akshaya (never diminishing) Tritiya. The sustained savvy marketing campaign had paid off. Cricket, films, real-estate, gold

— the Akshaya list of things packaged and sold was growing longer.

Gold dream sellers and hunters of a bygone era would be rolling in their graves seeing the aggressiveness of the current generation.
As he flipped through some of the advertisements which preceded the AT Day, the Sage's eyes fell on a page full of pictures of tinsel world stars.
"So, what are your plans for AT?," was the question posed to the stars.

Another look at takeover

2007-09-02T14:10:00.000+05:30

The grit shown by the Tata group at the recent battle at the hammer has been hailed by the media as India's victory, and a leap by the developing nation into the league of nations that nurture multinationals. The ball of acquisition, set rolling by the Lakshmi Mittal group after it grabbed Arcelor last year, was given a sharp shove by Ratan Tata who outbid Brazil's CSN (a tongue-twisting Companhia Siderurgica Nacional) by five pence a share to pocket Corus. Soon after, the Birla group's Hindalco bought the Canadian aluminium maker, Novelis, for $5.95 billions. Three balls pocketed in quick succession by firms of Indian origin.
(At a business management institute in India.)
Professor: I need your views on the acquisition. Do you think it was wise?

Rendezvous with retail

2007-09-02T14:08:00.000+05:30

V. Pattabhi Ram and Mithun D'Souza

Loud music beating the ear drum, air-conditioners running, a mixture of perfumes - of flowers, of hot cookies, Kolkatta chaat and chocolate - in the air; super fast escalators and speedy glass elevators. Well, Wafers, China and Muskan had stumbled on to the latest hangout in Chennai. A monolithic 2,00,000 square foot of architecture built in the heart of the metropolis. Not to forget the hundreds of cars that it can accommodate at one time.
Except Wafers, nobody really knew how much this massive project costs. Wafers' CA firm was the consultant to the corporation that promoted the venture. Being on `Team Retail' gave Wafers a ground level understanding of the nuts and bolts of the retailing industry. A perfect opportunity was on hand for her to flaunt her practical knowledge before China and Muskan.

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Game, set and match GMCS

2007-09-02T14:06:00.000+05:30

Mithun D'Souza

Wafers finished her packing. She was to board the Mail; the train that would take her to Bangalore to attend the course on General Management and Communication Skills (GMCS). This was ICAI's mandatory 15-day finishing school programme. Now why the lady should hop to Bangalore when the programme was also available in Chennai was a little secret that she would share with no one.
"Mom, hurry up with the cucumbers," screamed Wafers. Of course mom wasn't packing cucumbers for dinner. The cucumbers were to be placed on and around Wafers's eyes. No, Wafers was not one of the Miss India wannabes; but anyone who had cracked CA Final would certainly have a fair share of blackening of eyes caused by endless sleepless nights. And remember Wafers had gotten into the rank list for good measure.

Source of all catastrophe

2007-09-02T14:04:00.000+05:30

Though Ishwar Swaran Mohanty, head of his firm's human resources department, should flap his lips open and shut faster than fish gulping surface water for air, he is taciturn.
One of the two places where people can find him part his lips is the canteen — to push tiny balls of food in or to chat with his "all entries barred" circle of friends. The other is rare — when he explains something to an employee in the sound proof confines of his room.
So curiosity spurs many to watch Mohanty and his friends chatting and eating, but never chatting while eating.
More than petty pilferage, padded reimbursement claims, and straight dodging of work, Mohanty has been disturbed by the trend in medicare provided to employees and their families. There has been, he noted with alarm, a marked increase in vascular diseases, cardiac ailments and cancer.

Shelter: Better to buy than pay rent

2007-09-02T14:02:00.000+05:30