Mumbai Marathon - Day2 (NMIMS)

16th November - 9.00 am, NMIMS. I reached there at 8.30 and interacted with other candidates.
By 9.30 we were all packed in a room having done the document verification and waiting for Vice Chancellor to come and address us.
So here walks in Mr VC a short guys half bald guy. He congratulates us all for this great feat (Oh YES you read it right - great) of getting through to the second round.
And then he started with something that i would least expect from the person of his stature and at this occassion. He started prasing NMIMS and the new plans, the new campuses, the new ideologies, the new format of selection the new everything ............
Well finally he decided to leave us and get us started with the GDs.

So as we were divided into panels- may panel of 8 left for our designated room.

We reached there and get rechristened as No1, No2, No3.. myself No8. well interestingly at all the 3 interviews i.e. IIFT, IMT and NMIMS i was 8th. (this makes me believe in "coincidence do happen").

Two gentlemen enter the room and give us 2 topics
1) disaster management 2) gender equality and quality at the work place and ask us to decide among ourselves.

I address the group and say that lets go with Disaster management as we have seen of late a lot disasters striking the world and incompetent infrastructure. But to my surprise as i stopped the entire batch was on me saying that lets discuss the gender equality as we all work and is more relevant. Wow i didn't know that there was so much unity in the group. so I agreed to them and we proceeded to discuss the 2nd topic.

Everyone staring at each other's face, I don't remember who started the discussion -- probably I did.
The discussion was for 18 minutes and everyone was to get enough time to speak his mind.
I made quite a frequent entries-- with points quite diverse as:
-> education for women
-> labor intensive jobs better suited to men
-> awareness among them abt the opportunities
-> Diff sectors like Army etc where women are very few in number.
but yes most of us forgot that talking about the gender equality we need to talk about even Men -- which someone did eventually remind us . But anyways people had truck loads of points for betterment of the fairer sex so we continued on that. Probably presence of a female candidate in our panel could have brought some fresh and different perspective about the topic.
But anyways it ended and i was satisfied with the way the discussion went for me.

We moved to the waiting area ....

I was again 8th to be interviewed (though i tried to get my interview shifted earlier - but no luck :-( ) .

the interview panel was different from the GD panel.
It was an old lady Ms O, and an old man Mr O.

i knocked on the door and asked to be permitted inside the room.

Mr O) yes please, take a seat
Me) take seat, greet
Mr O) if you were ankit's friend what would you tell about him
Me) ( Oh a nice way to ask a Q) I praised myself ;-)
Mr O) You with Satyam .. how long
Me) Explained well (rehearsed it often)
Mr O) what do u do apart from professional
Me) play cricket ..
and b4 i can speak anything else
Mr O) So what do you do in cricket
Me) Fast Bowler
Mr O and Ms O) looks at me -- as if they wanted me to define fasst bowling
Me) (what to say) yeah i like fast bowling because pacers can dominate the game
(Well dominate a wrong word to utter -- i had realized that )
Ms O) So u like to dominate
Me) (reargaurd action) I meant pacers have a capability to test the mental strenght of the opponent.. and the need to be strong mental at international level, importance of aggression, stuff like that
Mr O) so what Anil kumble -- can he be a good captain
Me) I say yes .. motivator, iconic star,
Mr O) Is he aggressive
Me) yes in a matured way(i don't know what i meant by that or if that term existed, but went on to explain anyways ) he is not aggressive physically but mentally ......
Mr O) Ok, what about MNS and things going on in Mumbai
Me) told how violence was incorrect to prove is ideology, need to look into the core of the problem, Center has a role to play in this .. why people need to migrate to other states for employment.
Ms O) difficult situation at work
Me) (thinking -- what to say-- usually i have been creating difficult situations) said something - not sure if completely relevant
Ms O) ok, biggest mistake in ur life
Me) (again thinking -- mistake and me -- u must be kidding Mam)
just then she interrupts --
Ms O)its ok -- this means u dont regret anything much in ur life ..
Me) probably

Ok the interview is done -- got up and got out...
Was disappointed with the end of the interview-- but the panel will know better..

Came out of NMIMS -- took a stroll on Juhu beach and prepared myself to travel to Bangalore for IIM-Lucknow agri business the next day.