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Well, it’s well past December 7 and I’m no more bound by the agreement pertaining to the non-disclosure of anything and everything related to CAT 2009 till Dec 7, the last day of the ten-day window for the first online CAT ever. One of the weirdest ideas certainly and that too from none other than the Indian Institutes of Management, the institutes regarded as the best for management studies in India. How on earth did they ensure that the agreement was adhered to by all the 240,000 candidates who appeared for the first online CAT ever? Ludicrous, isn’t it? Online portals and communities discussing the paper certainly provided an edge to the candidates who chose to appear in the last few days. Well, it’s only the tip of the iceberg as the online CAT had been in news for all the wrong reasons since day 1 of its inception. Computers crashed all around the country as candidates reached the examination centers to get a feel of the first online CAT. While some candidates who could appear f

Very much in conformance with its capricious nature, the CAT this year has thrown in yet another surprise, only this time the googly’s been bowled few months prior to the actual contest. The common admissions test that is a gateway to India’s most prestigious of all B-schools, the Indian institutes of management (6 of them including IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Kolkatta, IIM Indore, IIM Lucknow, IIM Kozhikode and IIM Shillong), is slated to go online from this year thus putting an end to the paper-pencil format that the Institutes have been following for the last 33 years. The CAT scores not only determine admission into the IIM, but also to several other reputed management institutes in the country. According to the IIM the computer based CAT will supposedly be candidate friendly (probably like the GRE and the GMAT), flexible when it comes to selection of test dates and ease registration process (as many as 3 lac students appeared for CAT 2008 thus complicating the registration p

Hey guys….impressed, aren’t you by the latest Vodafone advertisements (the commercial breaks during the IPL are bombarding one and all with these latest commercials) that feature white, egg-headed yet cute creatures symbolizing all the latest stuff that vodafone plans to offer to its consumers ? And yet there’s something in these advertisements you guys might never have figured out. The zoozoos (the name given to the white little creatures) are not animated as we all believed them to be but rather real people in costume. Rajiv Rao, executive creative director (South Asia) of Ogilvy & Mather the agency that handles Vodafone advertisements in his statement to the Hindustan Times asserted that the intention was to make real people look as animated as possible. The advertisements were shot by Bangalore-based Nirman films at Cape Town, South Africa just in time for the IPL. Prakash Verma, Nirvana’s owner and director of the Zoozoo campaign stated when speaking to the Hindustan Times tha

It all begins in the month of November as lacs of enthusiastic students with a common goal of seeking entry into the most prestigious of all B-schools, the Indian Institutes of management (a brand name that needs no mention) appear for the most intimidating of all entrance tests, the CAT usually held on the second or the third Sunday of the month every year. One of the toughest exams to crack, the CAT year after year continues to bewilder one and all with its unpredictable nature. With 2000 seats available at these leading institutes (IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Lucknow, IIM Indore, IIM Kozhikode and IIM Shillong) and approximately 3 lac students (a number that keeps on increasing every year and frightfully so) in the fray, gaining entry into the IIM is certainly not a child’s play. It certainly requires a great acumen, tremendous mental fortitude and a little bit of luck to crack the CAT (in fact it’s true of almost all the entrance exams in India), your first step towards a g

Slumdog millionaire loosely based on Vikas Swarup’s Q & A and directed by Englishman Danny Boyle managed to create a lot of hype after its release last month here in India. The movie is about a boy from the Indian slums who ends up becoming a millionaire as he answers all the questions put forth to him during a quiz-show (The Indian version of ‘who wants to be a millionaire?’). And what a coincidence that all these questions are somehow related to his past life which takes the movie into flashback intermittently. Even if we consider this absurd coincidence as a cinematic liberty, I’m still unsure if the movie really deserved all the kudos that it received from around the world. So imagine my surprise when this movie has now ended up bagging the supposedly prestigious Oscars in more than one category (eight to be precise). Apart from the fact that the movie is based in India and has an Indian cast at the helm, there is another Indian tinge to it. A.R.Rehman one of the most revered I

written by: Jeffrey Archer The story of a man who missed the record books because he died leaving behind no evidence of his achievement. Just when the readers thought he’s lost his steam as his last novel ‘a prisoner of birth’ failed to meet the expectations, Jeffrey Archer, the writer who’s enthralled his readers for the last few decades with works like Kane and Abel, Four among equals and Not a penny More, Not a penny less, is back with his latest novel based on mountaineering expeditions. It’s really intriguing as to how this guy so consistently and so unfailingly manages to create real heroes out of his lead protagonists in all his works. Based on actual events as the writer himself claims, the story is about a guy named George Mallory who scales great heights with his mountaineering and Rock climbing skills and about his desire to climb the Everest that has been left unscaled till date (mind you the story takes you back to early 1900s when Edmund Hillary hadn’t yet conquered the a