One week till the end..

Prologue:

With utmost effort required to move my fingers and mind in a synchronised manner in order to write something meaningful, I am turning to some faint music in the background and the yearbook to fetch the required memories to pen down something good about my two years here at SIBM. It is perhaps the nature of the situation( joblessness after getting a job) that induces random distractions in my life, right from a season of Friends to a half completed novel by JK Rowling. Here is a piece, that describes the two wonderful years that I spent in the college.

Chapter 1

Into the last week on campus, disregarding the fact that this is the most used and abused line during all kinds of farewells, all I’m left to wonder is how did the time fly so fast! Two years gone in a jiffy! There I was, chilling at my home, after freshly joining the Telegram group created for the batch of 15-17, quietly judging my ‘to be batch mates’ based on their DPs and the manner in which they typed. Some seemed nice, some excited for good, some cringe worthy while some seemed overtly desperate trying their luck through random punch lines.

Fast forwarding a month, the college seemed like a carnival and as the schedules of an MBA life set in, the feeling of Vasudhaiva Kutumbhkam that was there in the Telegram group metaporphed to give rise to smaller, often changing groups. The grind then took over and before we could even realise, everything that started to revolve around summer placements. In retrospective, everything works out, and I’m sure that having sleepless nights over placements would never do any good. Be sure to have your technical and HR skills polished, a few GDs practiced.

All this while, there were precious moments scattered throughout. Watching Mansi ma’am in her childlike frenzy rush towards the window on hearing the sound of a peacock, after an equally wonderful lecture on microeconomics, laughing frantically at the ‘jugglery’ of FM class and the futility of sitting there, JHJM signalling the end of a neck stifling session and many more. But the classes did eventually become less hectic over the next three semesters.

Chapter 2

I’m glad to have met such amazing bunch of people at different times in these two years, both on and off campus. Looking back, all of us can agree that we have changed in terms of the people we hang out with, those we admire and those that are North Korea to us. We do miss people and the situations that we’ve been with them in no matter how bitter-sweet those situations are.

When a few days from now, Facebook timelines of my batch would see pictures and posts about missing college, they would probably be referring to those few people that mean so much that an entire duration of over 700 days gets identified by those select few close ones. I’ve been fortunate to find my birds of feather and am hopeful that I will find quite a few of them at my retirement party as well.

Chapter 3

Describing my two years here would be incomplete if I don’t write about ART. Probably the most important lessons about management and about people in general have unfolded in front of me while working here. Deadlines, stretching the day till late in the night, the beautiful serenity of the team room and the academic block at 4 in the morning, the comfort of belonging to something bigger than, where my actions reflect directly to thousands of aspirants through different forms and above all the pleasure of exemptions.

In just an year, we had turned from seeking approvals from our seniors to giving them. And looking the Admissions of 2017, I feel we have done some justice to our job. There is no greater joy than knowing that an amazing set of people now hold that legacy in their hands. I’m sure both the things are true for each council team that SIBM Pune drives it’s USP from.

Chapter 4

After seeing one of my roommates sounding like a disciple of Kafka, mulling on the futility of life when he got a PPO, I was sure that I will find something productive to do and not lament about supposedly a mass “existential crisis” that the entire batch faced. I was wrong. A thousand plans were made, accounting for each free day that we had. A hundred were taken seriously and a ten or so we’re accomplished. What was left, as a result was a gaping hole of nothingness in the schedule. The bed became the most loved companion instead of the tent that I had just bought as the day started at 1 in the afternoon and ended at 3 in the morning.

The imminence of a dark, gloomy technology driven future was pondered upon through ‘Black Mirror’, the twisted plot of ‘Westworld’ dissected, countless nights of paranoia after watching ‘Walking Dead’, random movies at the most empty theatre in the world – Cinnepolis, exhilarating travels and what not.

Yet, the tantalising compulsion of a good sleep on the cosy bed due to absence of anything else did not wear off! A piece of advice for the juniors – make sure you have a realistic bucket list handy ( in terms of money and time and legality) before you reach your fourth semester or you’ll end up with an existential crisis and a psychological/ philosophical itch of your own! Epilogue Due to the conditions described above, i am listening to random Tamil songs at this time of the night, having almost finished writing. I hope I will now be met with less intimidating looks, on a lighter note.

I’m glad that there is now a student blog and that reading me blabber or about the experience of others here might help my batch mates reminisce about some memorable incidents from their time here or my juniors in their times ahead.

On this note, here’s a few lines by Omar Khayyam that I’ll end with.

The moving finger writes;
and, having written, moves on:
nor all thy piety nor wit
shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.
-Sahil Chatta