Looks like mine is a 'Gone Case'

Our level of activity last week was so slow that except for eating and sleeping, the only other thing that we had on our “plate” was to take care of our physical and mental faculties and make sure that we were in tip-top shape to handle the famed IIMA rigor. And thankfully we were able to accomplish this by engaging in some co-curricular activities that the institute had arranged for us, like weightlifting (carrying all the study material from PGPX office to the room), aerobic exercises (washing clothes) and puzzle solving (configuring our network connections) etc. We were also blessed with “unlimited talk time” on our new mobile connections, when our inter-group talks to finalize our mobile connection plans continued “unlimited” with no end in sight. What can I say? Whoever said paradise lost hasn’t been on the IIMA new campus in the last week of March where camaraderie elevates to such giddy heights that junta even starts hitting up on random strangers in neighborhood grocery stores, to make sure that they don’t loose an opportunity to “get-to-know” a fellow PGPX participant.

But unexpectedly, the April fool’s day arrived as a rude shock and threw all that camaraderie right out the window. All it took for the faculty to do us in was to toss some biscuits in our general direction and I could see with my naked eyes how my esteemed fellow participants with substantial experience were transformed into canines fighting tooth and nail over how biscuit companies should be run. The IIMA world class infrastructure made sure that these big fights were arranged in air conditioned syndicate rooms where the participants could come out swinging on the “biscuit case study”.

I personally couldn’t contribute a lot to these fights as my own individual preparation had taken some unexpectedly tragic downturns the previous night. It was late at night when I finally picked up the case and as my ill-luck would have it, this case study had some extremely graphic and unwanted details about how biscuits are baked from flour, vanaspathi, sugar etc. To cut a long story short, with each reading attempt, I started raiding my fridge and ended up finishing my whole month’s supply of biscuits, not to mention anything else that was around with sugar or flour in it. The realization that some of the questions at the end of the case were googlies like “What would they like to give their sons when they grew up?” also didn’t make matters any easier. How about giving some biscuits.., maybe? I don’t know. I for one, don’t even know what I would like to give my children when they grow up, forget Alok and Co. It didn’t take long to realize that it was a “gone case” and I hit the sack with vengeance, leaving Alok gupta and his little brothers to wrestle with their biscuit case on their own.

Anyways, I am rest assured that biscuit-king Alok Kumar Gupta will be all right because if not for me there will be hundreds of aspiring consultants ready to look out for him and his troubled biscuit empire. Good for him. But I am not so sure about my case though. Especially when I think about the eventualities that might arise, if God forbid, one of my future cases to analyze happens to be on ‘Kingfisher’ airlines or something. I may end up running to get my “case” in the middle of the night. Considering the current dry state that I am in, I understand the preparation that may needed to tackle this “case method”, and hence I have decided to start working on it right away before it is too late.

And this case I need delivered @ my doorstep. :)