Wednesday, August 29, 2012

INDIA (Chuck-De-Phatte)


INDIA (Chuck-De-Phatte)
Travelling to India, for me, has always been like a time travelling experience. We lose a day when we go from USA to India. This travel we lost Saturday, as we started our journey on Friday and reached Chennai on Sunday Morning. Few of us tried to make up for lost Saturday by consuming few bottles of Kingfishers (white cap only) over breakfast, before retiring to our rooms after 20 hours of travelling.
I love going to India every year to visit my parents and friends, but travelling to India this time was a different experience for me, mainly because I was traveling with a group and plus I did not have to worry about any travelling details or plan. Everything was very well planned and organized by our Weekend MBA program team and its partners NMS folks. India, as a country was not a new experience but the activities we did was really interesting. We all went to different site visits and got a first-hand view of how companies do their business. It is quite amazing to see that in spite of various hurdles like traffic, multiple power outages and over population, India has grown so much in terms of economy.
We had a chance of visiting five different companies to learn and experience how business in India works. Of all the company visits, I enjoyed Airtel and Shankar Netralaya, Airtel for its youthfulness and innovation, Shankar Natralaya for its social cause.

We also went to various offsite spots. We went to a general shopping store (T-Nagar market) in Chennai, it was so crowded that it made me think that my friends from USA would not take it well, but to my surprise they seemed to have enjoyed it. Funny thing was Tom got a tie for himself at this store and by the time he got out of this store he had already lost the tie. We also had a chance to see some good dance numbers from NMS student, plus our own white boy was not far behind in teaching his “Gangnam style” moves. Type “PSY-Gangnam style” in YouTube to see how those moves have made it to limelight. Our trip to Taj Mahal in Agra and Akshardham in Delhi was also an amazing experience.
One thing I have come to realize when I visit India is that I miss “Burgers”. Knowing this, few of us ate Bobby Vans Juicy burgers at JFK before we started our India trip and ended the trip with more burgers at a rest stop on our way back to Albany.

Overall it was a great trip and an amazing experience. Still trying to master the art of “three in a box”.

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