Appy Fizz time :)

Every damn day was difficult with a daunting task ahead of me. The whole world who knew what I was after, called me a fool, lunatic and an insanely crazy person. I was in a very nice position with a fat pay-package is an MNC, when I thought that enough was enough. I called it a day after two years of hard-work and abruptly stopped my ascendency. What I set out next was a crazy idea if you are an Indian and know about the way it works here. The only best thing about India is that, when you go out in the battlefield, fighting for your most prized possession, with nothing in hand, you find yourself in a corner, with millions of better people in the same battlefield, eyeing the same prized possession.

Day in and Day out, I assiduously prepared for the D-day. One of my successful brothers once told me that the one who has never failed, can never taste success. On January 12^th, I failed. I failed because of Statistical errors or whatever reasons they were. My preparations were good, I gave my best and yet I failed. I failed miserably in the section which was my percentile booster in the previous editions. It was as if the world was mocking at me. I didn’t sleep for many subsequent days. May be I slept because of fatigue. Again, it was one of the toughest periods of my life. I pushed myself to the extent that I convinced myself saying that the worst was yet to come and with this in mind, I kept pushing myself forward.

Hard-work pays, but, only in instalments and never can you have all at once. The subsequent exams were disasters followed by calamities. For the first time in my life, I was unsure about myself. To the outside world and the social media I was known as the adventure-man, travelling far-off places with no intentions in mind. But, deep down inside, I was coming to terms with my failures, with a huge question of “What’s next?”

By God’s grace and I must say that by God’s grace, I cleared a couple of exams. Though not convincingly, I was ready to take up anything that I can lay my hands upon. On a beautiful Friday, SJMSoM gave me a call. I knew that it was my only chance to make it up for the lost ground and I told my dear one that I will make it, if they just gave me a call. Just one call and I will cover up my shoddy performances. To gain practice, I gave 6 real-time interviews before my panacea. I used up all my experience of bad interviews in the one that mattered the most. I gave it, and once I came outside the interview hall, I knew for myself that I nailed it. Exactly a month later, the results came on 27^th April and the final verdict was not different from what was expected. I stand to face the world of achieved something, but, a lot of hard-work was done by my family (mom, Subha, Sharanya) and friends (Sangeet, Abir, Alok, PPK, Adi, Shweta, Monica, Praveen sir) to keep me standing against a strong current across my face.

My IQ increased by 3 points, I learnt to smile a lot, I learnt to be serious in life, I became mentally stronger and most importantly, I learnt to deal with failures and not to accept defeat until I finally lost out and invariably, I learnt to celebrate life…….

Appreciate the journey, because it is always better than the destination.

Sutta..

The cigarette was in my mouth. The urge to light it in front of her near the Prof. Canteen made me realize the importance that the cigarette gained over her. The cotton bud was tasteless, yet so soft. It took me back to the “Heat Transfer” class when my professor gave a problem to calculate the time taken for a cigarette to extinguish, while the tip is 810ºC with pre-determined values of latent heat of tobacco and length of the cigarette. The question carried on the onus of plotting the graph with MATLAB on varying lengths as well. Nevertheless, the one in my hand was the first one, out of my money. Two and a half bucks for a Navy Cut and the clear-cut path to cancer was sitting tightly between my lips. I lighted the match stick. It went out in a flash with the help of a strong breeze. I didn’t know the art of lighting a cigarette and I already was in my pre-final year. Struggling again, I tried, but, in vain. With ample shame, I asked the guy of the couple-next-bush to light it for me. He happily agreed and there went my first sutta into the bush and never came back - My first and the last cigarette.   

Moral of the story: Never share three things in life: Underwear, girlfriend and first sutta.

A night-out at IIM-Lucknow..

The bus from Kanpur dragged its bit out. The place I had to get down was Aal-Baal. Or that is what I got of the name, Alambagh. Lucknow was just 84 km from Kanpur and yet it takes two hours to reach the place. It was a bumpy ride and I could reason out why Uttar Pradesh is still in the BIMARU list. The rail connectivity between two important cities of the state was good, but the trains are never on time. Road connectivity was haywire. I saw railways crossings, like the ones in Bhurkhamunda village in Orissa, in NH25 connecting Kanpur and Lucknow. Construction of flyovers was on, but Gammon India would need their time to construct, maintain and collect their toll taxes.

Nevertheless, Aal-Baal came. Oops, Alambagh. It was a crowded market place and reminded me of Chandi Chowk, Delhi. Fighting all odds against the traffic, my friend Pratap finally got there to spot me. Vroom as we went and he showed me the railway station upfront. Trust me; it was one of the most beautiful Mughal architectures. It took my breath away, though my fellow Lucknow-ites where just whizzing past me, oblivious to the marvel, embellishing the place with pan flavoured red juice. As a part of the ritual, I had to pay my visit to Tunday Kababi at Aminabad. I never knew that, kebabs could actually melt. These Tunday kebabs, they did. Before we knew that it was 2000 hrs, 3 plates of kebabs vanished down our throats.

Pratap, then, told me of his plans of visiting the Janpath of Lucknow. On our way to the Janpath, one thing I noticed about Lucknow, reiterated by Pratap, was that the traffic signals at Lucknow do not work. Except the one I found in a busy market area. The signal near Vidhan Sabha did not work and so did the one near the Janpath of Lucknow. When I entered the Dr. Bhimarao Ambedkar Smarak in Gomati Nagar, I realized that it was not Janpath. It was Jannat. Elephant statues adorned the place; the haathi-senas were sculpted with red stone. Not only were there statues, but also bridges, structures, arches and various other portraits. It looked like Central Park of New York, although, my knowledge of the international hangout spot is only through hear-say. But, I felt that was the most justified way of describing Gomati Nagar’s flourished art work display - roads were wider; bridges over River Gomati and at fantastic speed on a motorcycle, the place didn’t look like the clichéd Uttar Pradesh.

We zoomed towards the prestigious Indian Institute of Management. A 15 km ride took us to the magnanimous school of management gurus, the fact being that it never seemed to come, until it really did. Carved out inside a dense forest, a passerby wouldn’t have an iota of knowledge of an IIM in that vicinity. We went in, and just like any other government institute the guards didn’t bother to awaken from their deep slumber. A peek into the ‘evergreen’ campus and I came to know that they do grow Grass which by popular thought was considered relaxing. Not to mention the inmates’ favorite code-word – “3.4” which translates to the 24 hours BSE (Booze Sutta Exchange) that is at 3.4 km from the main gate.  Thanks to constant pestering, Pratap took me to Himanshu Rai’s residence. I wanted to break a glass or two, but there were other serious issues, like the Indian cricket team being slaughtered by chokers, to watch out for.

As we reached Pratap’s hostel room I headed straight for the common room, greeted by just 5 guys watching the high tension match. My question was “Are you nerds kidding me? Five is all the number that you could muster for this livewire drama?” Yet, one cord of similarity between an ordinary Indian and an IIM guy was “Why did Dhoni give that last over to Nehra?” Reasoning with the former question, my logical thought was to believe that these guys weren’t watching the match for obvious reasons: because of their everlasting assignments and quizzes. On the contrary, the real reason was that that it was a Saturday night and thus there was no better thing to do than to attain Moksha.

Every wing had a party zone and every party zone was filled with guys directing gaalis at girls (they had a better word starting with the alphabet “b”), professors, the nine-pointers (euphemism for c**k-suckers) and obviously their untalented friends who made it to IIM-A. The generic widespread frustration among the lot was how close they were to IIM-A, but on the note of grapes being sour, they boasted of a better placement statistics than their considered rival school. I had an awesome night-out and never felt out of place. I never had to introspect on the fact that I could not make it there, despite which we all belonged to the group of souls enjoying similarities in rock music, grabbing pegs of soda and banging our heads.

It was four in the morning when I took an auto-rickshaw to the railway station as my train back to Delhi was at 0525 hrs. It was a journey to remember and quite obviously from my past experiences, the train was late. When the perpetrating train did arrive, I took my seat, with no fellow passengers for company; I settled down to sleep, until I was awakened by a co-passenger in Kanpur.