War is Born

By Sowmya N and Gaurav Parab

On a cold dreary day, in a dingy little room (which has now been refurbished into a colder dingier room), there met a band of eclectic individuals, who had no idea what eclectic means.

They met to start a new mission, to embark on a new journey - NEEV 09, one of India’s largest B school events. The meeting starting with a brisk agenda setting session.

Senior Neev Member # 1: I set the agenda.

Senior Neev Member #2: You are ugly.

Senior Neev Member #3: I second that motion.

Junior Neev Member #1: Should I be taking the minutes of this meeting? I really want to impress you guys.

The team then decided to brainstorm on the theme for NEEV 09. There were many creative suggestions for the theme, including recession, taking on recession, recession of our times, recession no more and we will talk about recession till recession throws up .

"Advaita" (a word that means singularity, as opposed to duality that was the theme last year) was a favorite of the pseudo intellectual Bengali co-ordinator.

“I think it is Indian sounding and abstract enough at the same time. I can so imagine the Maidan going wild”

The senior team then came up a lot of culturally-correct, delicious-sounding Hindi names, like Chakravyu and Wada Pav.

Pop-psychology appeared with ideas like "Noise". We acknowledged how delusional MBA is through "Maya". Philosophy then raised its doped out head with the idea of embarking on a "Journey" - be it the journey of life, of experience, of a dream, or of a Neeta Volvo from Pune to Mumbai.

We looked back at the history of Neev, and acknowledged that the astounding success of the past few editions, which peaked with Neev becoming the second largest B school event last year has a lot to do with our director’s contribution. We then flirted with the idea of calling it Subbu’s Child, or Subbu ki aaulad.

But the one theme, that kept recurring throughout the session in numerous forms, be it "Yudh" or "Rann Niti" or "Sangram", was an idea that we could all very easily identify with; that we launch into, in our own little ways, every single day. It is something that scares us silly and at the same time, fascinates us with its innate power. It is something completely elemental - implanted in our soul. The theme that we kept coming back to was the idea of WAR.

War is a concept that is primitive enough that we can all connect with it instantly. War has a vitality that echoes with a healthy state of mind. War has the energy to power nations. War has the brutality to maim thousands. It is war against circumstance when a child battles all odds to reach a school twenty kilometers away from home. It is war against mediocrity when a corporate executive reworks a presentation for the nth time, because it seemed "just-not-good-enough". It is war against the mind when science wrestles with blind faith. It is war against shortcuts when a conscientious government employee refuses to yield to bribes. It is war against indecision, when we decide to follow our intuition and "Just Do It". It is war against indifference when a nation decides to endow the most effective people with the mandate to rule. It is war against nature, when an ugly Neev team senior tries to hit on the hottest junior in the batch.

Yeah, and War that features good looking Israeli women soldiers is visually appealing.

It is war that we launch into, every single day, every hour, every minute.
And so we decided, that war it will be, on all fronts. NEEV 09 was born. Born to go to War.