If you really think about it, I don’t exactly live in NYC (I live on the Jersey City waterfront) but I work in the city, hang out in the city and absolutely love the city 
By that qualification, I am now officially a New Yorker so you really shouldn’t arguing. My address? 750 Seventh Avenue, New York NY 10019.
Unlike my brother, Rahul, I seem to find absolutely no patterns in my postings and although this entry comes after a really, really long time, it does fit in with my general behavioural pattern. For those of you who revel in this kind of information, it seems that everytime I go on an India trip, I usually go on this long hiatus before returning to any kind of regular posting. This time is no different and thanks to all the upheaval associated with uprooting oneself and moving to another city altogether, I took even longer than the last time. So there you go.
Since I have a lot of things to write about, I am going to resort to dividing my entry into various sections for those of you who want to read only those bits that interest you.
India Trip
My trip to India was uneventful and smooth. Lufthansa continues to be the best airline I have ever flown and I would recommend it highly to everybody. They are a little pricey but not much more expensive than other airlines and boy, do they take the cake when it comes to efficiency. Every single takeoff and landing was bang on time – down to the last minute. For instance, if the captain announced at takeoff in Frankfurt that we were likely to touchdown in Chennai at 11:50 pm, it would be exactly 11:50 pm when the wheels touched down. And this happened everytime on all my flights! They don’t call it German efficiency for nothing. Of course, the only small hitch in the rosy picture that I paint of Lufthansa is that they did manage to misplace one of my bags on my way to Chennai (it arrived 2 days later)
I had a lovely time in India as always. Madras’ traffic has gotten worse and it beats me how the city is going to cope with all the growth that seems to be coming its way in terms of jobs, population, vehicles, etc. Clearly, there are lots of exciting things happening but it suffers from a problem that all Indian cities have – of their infrastructure struggling to cope with the high demand/growth. It is a very hard problem to solve, I admit, and isn’t as simple as some of the people I talk to about this, seem to think – that of finances. What particularly frustrated me about Madras was that if I ever wanted to drive anywhere in the evenings, I had to allot close to 45 minutes to just get to that place – even if it was only a few km away!
Hyderabad was significantly more tolerable in this regard although it could be argued that the number of vehicles on Hyderabad’s roads are nowhere near those on Madras’ But even if you adjusted for the disparity, Hyderabad’s wide roads and the lack of dependence on a central backbone road such as Mount Road in Madras (which you have to take to get any place of importance) makes it much nicer. I enjoyed driving our Maruti 800 around – a 11 year old car with 88,000 km on it and still in great shape!
Rahul and I made a separate trip to Bombay for 2 days to meet Navin & co – it was fantastic as always in addition to being quite packed. Since one of my numerous second cousins also happened to be getting married at the same time, we also met a lot of extended family whom I haven’t seen in a long, long time. Two of my friends from IIT (one batchmate and one junior) now work in McKinsey & Co. in Bombay so I spent one evening catching up with them and thoroughly enjoyed it. Apart from discovering that I had actually made that junior (Prashant Ambekar) cry when I ragged him in his first year (!!), it was really interesting to talk to them and discuss perspectives on B-school and career options.
The surprise visit this time was to Vizag, a sleepy little coastal town in Andhra Pradesh but nevertheless, quite nice I remember spending quite a few summers there back when I was a kid. I would get up every morning at 6 am and go down to the skating rink by the beach. I learnt roller skating there and took it quite seriously too! I remember racing and learning all kinds of fancy tricks. Anyway, so I spent exactly one day in Vizag at my uncle’s place and made my way back to Madras to fly back to the US on the 29th of Jan.
Leaving India to return to the US leaves me with a vague kind of sadness in my heart. I wish I could live with my parents and brother in the same city and see them often. I wish I could do all that I wanted to and yet, not have to leave the people and the country that I love, behind. I always keep promising myself that a day will come when I will return for good. I hope I can keep that promise to myself. I know I want to but only time will tell if I will.
New York and Morgan Stanley
Although I planned to drive to New York in my car, I had to abandon the idea thanks to really bad weather along the route, especially in the Northeast. I flew into Newark instead and left my car in Vidya’s safe hands. At the time that I left, Vidya had my car, her own car and even Swapna’s car at her disposal
When I first moved into my apartment there was absolutely nothing in it, of course. I had put an ad for a roommate so while I interviewed potential roommates, I had the house (and all its bareness) to myself
I remember feeling a little out of place in the first few days. I was in a new city, starting out all over again after moving from a place I had grown to love over 2 years. I missed the familiar faces – Vidya, Chaks, Swapna. I missed Pershing Ave and my car. I missed the familiarity of Schnucks’ aisles and the St. Louis Bread Co. I realized that I was only being human in what I was feeling. We all dislike change at some fundamental level in our systems. Being young makes it easy to deal with change. But when one is old, how difficult must it be, I wonder.
It didn’t take me long to get back into my element. I spent the weekend doing quite a bit of shopping for the home and kitchen, in particular. My mother wrote in an email that familiar things in a new place make the transition much easier and she was right. I remember I was terribly happy the day all my stuff from St Louis was delivered at my home. My music system. My books. My clothes. My steam iron, even I started cooking my own yummy Indian food (when I had all the necessary ingredients) and I realized something that Renu Aunty once told me long ago. People cook their own food because they love it and because it reminds them of home – of good memories and the people that they love.
The first few weeks at Morgan Stanley have been most interesting. The first week was an orientation to the firm. Since the London guys are also training with us in NY, we are mostly having a blast. I am currently in training, which goes on until the 2nd week of June. Apart from all the technical training which is to make sure that we all have the same level of technical skills, we are also being given an intro to the financial services business which so far has been quite interesting to learn about. So we learned about markets and stocks, bonds, futures, options, equity research, investment banking, asset management, credit products, etc. etc. The nice thing about the program is that it is a gentle intro to corporate life at Morgan Stanley while giving you adequate time to choose what business unit you want to end up working with.
I have also been spending quite a bit of time on weekends setting up my bedroom – IKEA it was for me when I needed a bed and a bookshelf. The rest of the furniture in my house was supplied by my British roommate, Danny Peters And that includes a dining table, couches, TV, home theater system and the works! Danny is an interesting guy who works in the entertainment industry – specifically, a company that provides technology to the entertainment industry. And thanks to him, I am learning new things almost everyday!
It’s been a month or so since I moved here and already I love it. I haven’t really explored NYC much yet but I will get down to that soon enough. I know it is too early to say but something tells me I am going to live here in the NY area for a long time!
