Skip to main content

Time-bound


The worst thing that can happen to you in an exam hall is the sudden realisation that you have forgotten to get your watch. And it is more than dreadful because you must force your already occupied little brain with another vital decision. You should get up from the seat and fetch that watch from your dorm. As you run through the daunting logistics of the process, you slowly give in to the laziness borrowed from the intense session of fast study and the sleepless previous night. That may be your biggest mistake.

Even though you easily convince yourself that there are always other instruments that will keep a check on the time you have in hand, nothing indeed does so. You can only ask the invigilator once, owing to the public nuisance you could become. Although if you are "the extroverted" who does not care much about the issue, you realise that there is only a certain number of times you can ask someone time. If the odds are in your favour, the sweet person sitting beside you might offer to keep hers on the desk, allowing you to steal a glance whenever you need to. But in that case, you owe them a huge treat.

The final part of this herculean adventure is the last ten minutes of the paper when you have to struggle through another critical decision. When do you stop thinking about the question you are stuck at and start scribbling all the rubbish you know? And this is when you have an impulse every second to peep at the watch because your mind promises you it will slow down as you look at it. And without the watch, you cant certainly ever be happy about what you have done; you are always a bit too early or too late.

Watch this next time.

Popular posts from this blog

Birth of a flood

The sky is almost dark, saving for those last golden tinges that would fade in no time. As palm trees mark the oblivion, a muddy reflection forms the ground. Last few days were mostly rainy. So profound is our love for rain. And why would not we? Unlike most other seasons, rain are so tender. A drop of patience which is about to reach its final destiny. Every time I look at rain drops they remind me of a struggle. A journey that begins with summer in an aura of dry and burning heat. And in no time the drop loses its sources. The long carried identity of its mother. With the loss of identity a awakening awaits. The pleasure to reach out and bond. As our drop moves up and up the end less skies, it realises the futility of pride and the necessity to bond. This comes with age. Not until it is near to earth it agrees to meet with other wanderers of the new world. And finally all our drops reach the cold atmosphere. The coldness makes life dreary and lonely. As the youthfulness dies out,...
dive in...

Election afterthoughts

The unfolding of the Indian election might have come as a surprise to many, for one is the BJP who steamrolled the campaign seasons with slogans of "400 par". While it remains 240 seats popular in a house of 520 members, a few stories should not go unnoticed. First, the BJP's popularity and the win for a third term is no ordinary feat. Only a few leaders of the past have managed such an elusive feat. This, indeed, is the trust that the brand Modi has built over the years. In politics, we often get acclimatized to the situations, in certain aspects too critical of it. When the young generation looked at Indira Gandhi's cabinet, they vowed never to again let such a solid mandate to a single party that its chief could declare an emergency, and no structures would be able to prevent that. This, however, ended up in fragmented colours in the Lok Sabha, the era of coalitions and surprise prime ministers. Needless to say, the horse-trading of MPs and the mindless corruption ...
dive in...

Turning back from pull to push

Two recent campaigns deserve attention from marketing enthusiasts, one of Campa Cola (reenergised by the Reliance Group) and of Tata Sampann's species. The challenges these two brands face are too distinct from one another. Campa, on the one hand, aims to fight the global brands like Pepsi and Coca-Cola, whereas Sampann looks to create a market in indian spices that has been dominated by local players like MDH and Everest. However, their strategies have something in common: getting the distributors to stock more of their products on the shelves. Campa is offering the distributors twice the margins, while Sampann is leveraging its vast portfolio to make stocking only Tata products a win for the distributors. Image credit: Economic Times To understand why this is happening, and what makes this interesting, one has to look back on the history of marketing, more specifically the shift from a push to a pull-based marketing, where the focus of the brands shifted from pushing their produc...
dive in...