Life@IIMB Part-III

......Till I saw a man with no feet!!!!


I apologise for posting such maudlin thoughts in my last post!!! As I now realise, life couldn't have been more generous to me. Did I deserve all that was served to me on a platter..? I'm able and I'm competent..... yet I choose to crib and not fight it out....

If there is something that one never stops doing, in this wonderful siesta called 'life,' it's 'learning'. We learn as we trudge along and in course, perhaps, evolve as better human beings... And, at times, something extra-ordinary happens which goes on to shake the very beliefs and the values we stand for.

And learn I did when I volunteered for Vikasana's new endeavour this Sunday. A group of spastic children, full of a zeal for life, but daunted by the tyranny of their fate, arrived for a short visit to our campus. Each of them had ambitions... and they were fighting tooth and nail to reach the same... one of them, a fresh commerce graduate just like me, wanted to get into an IIM.... another, a small kid, wanted to be a scientist...
and many of them did succeed.... one of them was doing 3D-animation, which my engineer friend informs me that even fully able qualified engineers find difficult... another was an artist and his sketches could have put a professional artist to shame...

We had a wonderful time together... we wanted them to have a good time.... but it ended the other way round. We enjoyed ourselves more than we could have imagined...

When they were about to leave.. one of them said in his farewell speech..."After coming here, we realized, may what people sayoutsise the gates of IIMs, you guys also have a heart..."

So, what do I do now.... be thankful to God to have put me in such a privileged position. But does that mean that it is wrong to have ambitions and then feel bad when you fail in your efforts.. No, we can't stop trying to better ourselves for then we would stagnate...
But it is wrong to blame life and fate when they have been so kind to you... and you could not make the best out of the privileges bestowed on you...

Life@IIMB Part-II

Midterm-Phobia

In this world, there are three types of people (No, this is not that cliched bollywood-movie dialogue!!!). First, who slog day in and day out... and in the end, come out with flying colours; Second, who don't give a damn about grades, who make the best out of their time(i.e. enjoying life to the fullest) and don't even wince upon getting pathetic marks; Third, who know how to beat the system, who make the best out of their lives too... but who, miraculously, also get top grades.

Surprisingly enough, I don't fall in any of the above categories. I form part of that rare breed who slog day in and day out... but still end up getting pathetic grades.
This truth glared at me immediately after I had landed at this place. Having performed miserably in the first few quizzes... I realized that I, perhaps, will have to put serious fight to survive here among this bunch of engineers.

Hard work doesn't scare me, but fear of failure does....

It's something wonderful if you have never failed in your life, if you have always managed to stay ahead of the rest, if you have always been this demi-god figure among your peers.... but, unbroken success comes with an accompanying curse... it makes to used to being successful, used to being popular, used to being looked up to... and that is where the fun starts.

Never before had it happened that Yogesh Patwari was scared of sitting in an exam. But the very thought of taking the mid-term Quants paper was giving me goose-bumps. Somehow, since my childhood days, I always failed to appreciate the beauty of this animal called 'Mathematics'. It was always 'Me Vs Math'.... and just imagine my plight when I realized that in the next two years, I will have to grapple with Quants in virtually every course that I take.

Hey.... I am not the only one cribbing after getting in..

There's this girl on campus who topped her university and was awarded a gold-medal for her spectacular performance.... last heard, she was barely scoring above-average in the tests... there's this guy who, after quitting a high-paying job, realized that he's simply not good enough to survive at IIMB.....

IIMB may or may not bring the best out of you. But it is adept at doing something for sure. And that is dragging you out of your ivory-tower and making you face the real-world, the real-competition... real struggle for survival.
Not fair... but then, whoever said life was ever fair?