Hanging On

Another two days and it will all be over. Some call it a dream fulfilled. I had called it so two years back at around the same time when I got the letter for admission into this well known institute of management in Western India. But I didn’t have the time to revel in the glory of being the only other person from my university to clear the admission process that year. I, along with my classmates from the same department was lodged in a Godforsaken research farm somewhere close to Bardhamaan in West Bengal. And having secured the admission meant that I had to work doubly hard on my thesis so that I would be able to complete it in time before leaving for here.
The first day in class here was not exactly what dreams are made of. Though, I got a seat somewhere in the back (you are supposed to sit according to your roll numbers in the first year), I could not in any way dream of doing any thing other than listening to the teacher, forget passing chits and talking. The classrooms are round in shape and my row would be in the direct line of sight of the teacher.
First day, second period (lecture if you prefer). The course was something called MAC. An acronym (probably) for Managerial Analysis and Communication. There were lots of cases from different sources and each lecture (they call it session here) would consist of discussing the case among the classmates, with the teacher assuming the role of a facilitator. Till this day, however, I don’t know what does a facilitator facilitate? It is probably, a fish market situation by adding a new dimension to the case discussions and revel in the mayhem which follows, as students pounce on the new point and start “participating” in the discussions again. The case discussions were to be initiated by someone, the teacher would select at random and I happened to be that someone that day. Needless to say, not knowing the ways and having being dumb enough, not to have consulted the seniors regarding the discussions I was in direct line of fire of the teacher. The next lecture began with a surprise quiz, based on the readings for that lecture, which I had taken pains to go through. I won’t say that I aced the quiz but surely gave a performance which was better than many others’. That was how the first day in class in was.
As we moved on, slogs and late night binges became the order of the day. And all we hoped for, was the end of it all. Field Work, two traineeship segments all passed by in a jiffy, cribbing, complaining; even crying (I did lose control over my emotions one day when I had to type three assignments all scheduled to be submitted the next day).
The end of it all was all were waiting for, with baited breath, and frankly speaking, it did not seem really far off. Days seemed to turn into weeks and weeks into months in almost no time. Therefore as we began the classes for the fifth and the final term, most of us were not really surprised at the pace at which it all went by. Then came the day which we were desperately waiting for. The 22nd of March 2010. The last day in class. The last day, for many as full time students. The last day of the “class participation”, which we have been so intent on doing. The last day of the sutta break between the lectures. The last day of passing chits. The last day of chatting with the guy on the next seat. But for me, that last day held much more importance. I had two presentations scheduled for the day and one of them was in a course offered by the professor who had offered MAC in the first term. And that incidentally was supposed to be my last presentation here in this institute. Honestly speaking, I was having butterflies in my stomach. He was the first person, whose ire I was at the receiving end of, here, and I certainly did not want him to be last person too. Thankfully it all went off peacefully and he, in fact seemed happy at my defence of one of his questions. Post lunch, I had a lecture at 3:40 for which I woke up at 4:10. Still, I gave it a chance and call it providence or call it the magic of the last moment, the teacher marked me present. I normally do not question miracles, and it wasn’t much different this time around, either. And thus came that moment which almost all of us had been desperately waiting for, since the time we were into the second week of the programme. The end of it all. “No more ppts, no more assignments”, says a G talk status message somewhere. Which probably reflects the sentiments of the whole batch.
Here and there you can come across desperate attempts to hang on to it all. Sitting outside the mess for tea. Gathering at the Sutta wala’s place. All attempts to take back more and more memories, as all of begin a new journey from here. Because, as one of my seniors always said, “In the end you always remember the beginning”.

Living out of a suitcase

The end of my stint as a student will also bring to an end, another aspect of my life, which, I must confess has become quite close to my heart. Life in a hostel. It is close to nine years that I have been living in hostels. Various hostels. Different states. But somehow the vibrancy does not seem to change. It looks almost the same everywhere. Except may be the walls which stare back at you as you wonder, every morning, how much more you can sleep till its too late. Except may be the shit pot which awaits you as you bang on the toilet door cursing under your breath. The food is bad everywhere. The toilets are dirty everywhere. The water supply is always exhausted after 1 in the night. And yes, no hostel ever sleeps. Any time of the night there will be at least one room in which the lights will be on.
I still remember the day, when I began living out of a suitcase (so to say). Though, I had desperately wanted to move out of home before that, the hostel, more so, the residential nature of the course I had enrolled into, provided me a perfect alibi for the same. I did not miss the comforts of home. I did not mind the change in food either. Neither did I miss my study table or my bed. I was actually worried. How to get up so early in the morning? Hell, why did they have classes so early? That too in Gujarat where even the sun takes it own sweet time to rise. At home, it would always be my mother who would wake me up and I had never really conditioned myself to wake up to the ringing alarm. But, I must say, God had been kind to me. My roommate in college was an early riser and his religious ways would wake me up just in time for the 8:10 AM class. Having food in a hostel mess, surely has its own advantages. Especially for those whose motto in life is “I live to eat”. Have it for a week and the motto changes to “I eat to live”. Somehow, the cooks devise every possible way to make the food as inedible as possible. But as the saying goes in Hindi, ”bhukhe pet bhajan nahi hota”, one is forced to gulp it down. A good alibi for the fitness freaks to go on a diet, I must say.
But this life does have its fair share of fun too. You never seem to have a dull moment. More importantly, everyone seems to be having the same problems as you are. Exam time, everyone is tense about passing. Because, like you everyone has made studies take a back seat all through the semester or the trimester. A new movie in town? Almost the whole college (in various groups of course), throngs the theatre to watch the late night show. The entrance exams for M.Sc. just a few months away? Well, the hostel ceases to sleep. You feel hungry dead in the night and bang on a door randomly asking for some biscuits. Or better still smuggle them out and have them in the comforts of your room bribing your room mate to keep his mouth shut.

This life also provides you with a new found sense of freedom. A freedom to spend. Though, most parents never, as a rule, desist from asking you about the accounts and detailed expenditure statements, the phone bills on their side, do force them to stop probing you to the extent of your banging the phone down in exasperation. Quite justified. How can you account for the number of cigarettes you smoke everyday? Or the number of bottles of cold drinks and number of packets of potato chips you consume every month?
Another very good thing about staying in a hostel is the rousing welcome you get every time you come back home. It sometimes becomes unfathomable, as to how, the same house where you were looked upon as a pest, not very long ago and that very set of parents, who seemed to regret the day they conceived you, can throw the red carpet in welcoming you. Probably, for the first time in many years, you are asked, what would you like to eat. For the first time in your life, your father will not make faces as you ask for an extra helping of the pickle. And may be the only time in your life (especially the first homecoming), when your mother will fret at your losing weight, despite the extra inches clearly visible on your waistline.
Few months from now, I will start living in a “house”, still sharing it with others unless all of them decide to move out or one of them decides to tie the knot and continue living in the same “house”. But that will never give me the fun I had in the last nine years, come what may.

The Beginning Of the End

The date is surprisingly near. The 27th of March 2010. The date which will mark, for most of us the end of our students’ lives. Of course before that, we have got our exams to tend to, but I have reasons to believe that the professors are considerate and lenient enough not to fail us.
Its close to two years in this well known institute of management in Western India and it seems as if it were just yesterday that I came here with my metal trunk in tow . One of my friends from grad college was accompanying me and I still remember being overawed at the lush green campus and the numerous trees that lined the pathways everywhere. Everything looked like a dream. A dream that I always had and was still finding it tough to believe that, it had finally come true.
The Darpan is out. My batchmates, as also some juniors, have told me what they think of me (shown me the mirror, that’s what darpan is-a mirror). The placement party has been thrown and the dates for the farewell party are being decided. That effectively means that the days are numbered.
They say, memories remain forever. I agree. And it is probably the memories which I take back from here, which will remain with me forever. I have another six of my batchmates joining the same organisation as I am. And till the time we are together, the days spent here will be all we talk of. Then slowly as we move on with our lives, it will be more memories. May be this laptop won’t be there. I will have changed the brand of my cigarette. I will have started taking a bath every morning before office (I seldom bathe before attending classes), I will have started shaving everyday (as against every week now), but every moment spent here will remain and remind me of the era gone by. And probably these memories will be my only companions when I lie in some goddamn hospital, down with cancer, waiting to die.
Its tough to fathom how time has flown by! May be the pressure, which we always found ourselves under, all through our stay here has a part to play. We didn’t really have the time to see the night turning into day. Getting up late in the evening after an exhaustive sleep, for once would give the feeling that one had missed his dinner. Till one looked at the clock which showed the time as 19:30. Never, by any standards, late to begin the readings for the next day’s lectures. It seems these two years just went by planning, which quiz to ignore and which assignment to take up first. And between all this we had our share of celebrations, fun and of course the parties.
For a moment, I suddenly feel elated at this grown up stage of my life. I feel happy that I can now have my own money to spend. Happy at not having to give a detailed account of the expenditures made (something which I have miserably failed at, all the time).
As I type, our stay here is lesser by another day. A G Talk status message somewhere shows that its only 14 days to go. Time surely flies by! And in the end you are left with memories and memories.

So What??

“In 68% of the households, the decision for buying milk is taken by the male member of the household”, went my presentation for the Organisational Traineeship Segment. Suddenly, a voice boomed somewhere, in the class. “So What?” I was stumped. It was the professor who was evaluating the presentation. I said, “This suggests that the advertisements of the pouched milk have to be directed at the male members of the households.” He seemed to be convinced, because he had given me a B- for the presentation, not, by any standards, bad.
Earlier, in the first term, of MBA, our professor of Quantitative Analysis, would always encourage us to ask the question “So What” after every statement we made. So in effect it would be,” the probability of the Indian cricket team defeating Pakistan is 1 on 100, So What?” Well, in this case, it would not be tough to answer, since everybody knows, that a few heads will roll, may be a few reams of paper will be wasted in lambasting the team and then the team would win an “overseas” test series, whitewashing Bangladesh 3-0, and again everything will get back to normal. But, if the statement goes as “The standard deviation from the mean of the number of customers going for repeat buying of the latest brand of snacks launched by Amul Dairy is 2.09”, So What will become really tough to answer. That is exactly what happened during the end term exams, for the first term, when we had a similar question. Anyways, I had suspected that question to make its presence felt in the question paper and had prepared for the same and had in fact scored a B+ in the end term examination.
But finding an answer to such a weird question often becomes difficult. Especially when it comes bang in the middle of a presentation or a case discussion. One tends to lose focus searching for the answer. But another and more important reason for the loss of focus is the sadist smile that plays on the lips of the teacher or the evaluator, lurking somewhere in the background. Classmates, especially those who are intent on screwing you, too often take recourse to this question, more often than not catching you on the wrong foot.
Another reason, why I find this question all the more disgusting is the fact that, this question often opens the gates for a flood of another set of weird questions. Continuing with the incident, in the beginning, just after I said what I said, the teacher asked “and how exactly do you think, you can direct the advertisements at the male members?” “By slotting the ads during prime time news”. “But do you have any data about the television viewing habits of the males in India?” “Yes, Sir, A national survey has quoted this data…..”. “But how can you generalise that to the people of the city, you have surveyed?” “Well that was a question in the questionnaire, sir”. But do you think………..and the saga continued, till the teacher brought me to the subject domain of research methodology, something which I have always found not to be my cup of tea. And the saga continued till the teacher said, “pass kaise karte ho tumlog”.
I had the answer ready. I wanted to say, “sir, its management school, and we are made jack of all trades here, rather than master of one.” But I refrained from speaking out. Because I would have found myself speechless, had he asked, “So What”.