So after battling against all odds, we are at IIM Calcutta. Ah, the shenanigans we have been fed with over the years – hallowed portals, the Day zeros and the nightouts. We are through all that and living it. Then isn’t this supposed to be the good life ? The one we fought with over a hundred thousand others to achieve ? So when the Marketing prof asks your value addition to the class when you arrive exactly 17 seconds late, you are bound to have a good hard look at your career path rather than running through the grind. The sab ‘moh maya hain’ phase sets in, quizzes where one fought over 0.5th of a mark becomes drudgery, the assignments become a chore to get done with.
With all due respect to an MBA degree from an IIM, it’s is none of the coats and suits and bells and whistles you read about, it’s more of insomniac filled brains and tired groggy eyes, trudging toward the 8:30 class like it’s the final conquest of Malli Mastan Babu, filling a zillion forms for the Con and party like there’s Armageddon tomorrow.
And then there’s the CV, the 8 page demon, which makes the 18 page SOPs filled during GRE app seasons look like upper kindergarten Numbers homework. The proof gathering, the begging and so many others, the trade-offs, it’s indeed between the proverbial rock and a really hard place. I wonder what prevents people from going ‘bonkers’ (pardon the colloquial British). Then, all of a sudden , sitting one afternoon in the class, I look at the golden sunlight filling in through the large Frenchies, as people fight it out inside over how a gentlemen called Freud could have had thoughts which could have an impact on 21st century corporates reeling under employee attrition and motivation. Then it strikes me, it’s the beauty of the place, the amazing peers, the professors, the seniors, the sink-or-swim togetherness. The panoramic view one gets from the glass windows from the proper side of the classrooms, puts one into a late afternoon stupor. He relives the days when he was slogging it out for CAT, the euphoria over his first placement, the jumping up at all the revered BLACKI calls (and some other alphabets to ruin the jumbled word), the procrastination of GDPI preps, the frayed nerves before the GD, the fight during, the interviews and finally the convert. And suddenly he realises, he’s sitting in a classroom at IIM Calcutta, the very place he’s aspired for all his life. What on earth can he complain about? So far, so fucking good.
NIT Trichy Inc. 