Date: December 15, 2024, Time: 0142 Hours, IST (GMT +5:30),
Location: XLRI, Gazebo outside Chitto’s, Marine Drive entrance
What started as an innocuous, rightly timed, after-party Maggi, sutta and bread omelet sit down by the Class of 99, transformed into a moment to be recorded in this esteemed journal for posterity.
There are conversations and then there are conversations. The former are lost in time as ACP, DCP, CP while the latter trigger thoughts and revelations that unravel truths in plain sight and change how we see the world forever. Like, the moment Newton was chatting with his buddies and he saw the apple drop, or when Einstein sipped boiling hot coffee at an adda and said MC (twice), and the rest was history. The above mentioned venue produced another such historic moment.
As random conversations were flowing over chai and Maggi, they went down the familiar path of how things have changed, batch sizes have ballooned, how can the culture hold? and that the placements stress (due the batch size) was palpable. The question of placing 400+ was front and center when at 0142 hours, the penny dropped.
Dressed in a bright-yellow shirt, appeared a scholar from the class of 2025 (or maybe 2026). In a casual, nonchalant way, about 80 meters from the Chitto stand, he called out to the owner of the respectable nourishment waterhole. The class of 99, seated in the gazebo between the 2 subjects, was caught in the crossfire.
The class of 99 was in the midst of devouring steaming hot chicken rolls and chai when they were collectively stunned by what was uttered by the potential future corporate leader at that respectable hour “Chitto, lebu jol, Asshbe?” and Chitto, without blinking and eyelid, promised to get the vitamin C laden liquid delivered to the subject’s room.
Time stood still. We could not proceed what had just happened. An XLER, at 1:42 am had ordered Nibu Paani?!? What was going on. The next 20 minutes the matter of the beverage order, the casual way it transpired, and color of the garment worn by the scholar (and other seemingly unrelated facts) became the subject of an in-depth on-the-spot debate and research.
The shock and awe of the moment led to scholarly inputs from all present. While some XL99er found humor in the moment, others took on the leadership role of getting the discovery to conclusion.
Cutting out the finer details of the long discussion that followed, a hypothesis was developed, validated and a universal campus placements theory was revealed to the world.
It was concluded that 25 years after our placements the world has indeed turned more complicated, however, the fundamental points-of-failure for placements are unchanged:
Successful placements for any batch are held precipitously by 2 independent events and 1 timing dependent variable which collectively are points of failure:
1. Ordering Lime Juice, publicly, after 1 am, during Jampot winter days
2. Wearing a bright yellow t-shirt
3. Doing the above 2 on the night before placements.
The above 3, happening together, the class of 99 concluded, are a recipe for disaster. Such behavior, if prevalent across the cohort, is the prime reason why the class of 2025 were sitting in their rooms and getting stressed out about placements and not chilling in the JLT or taking DMC walks.
While we know that this topic will be picked for further PHD/FPM study, maybe a mandatory training for during the campus week and potentially banning nibu paani and yellow t-shirts, the Class of 99 shall take the credit for this seminal work and I can forever claim (on Linked In) to be humbled, honored and privileged to be present when the this undisputable campus law was discovered.
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