ONE MORE DOWN

He stared at the board.

Numbers swam through his mind.

Signs flew past him.

Complex simplexes followed.

Gravity seemed to work overtime on his eyelids.

"Government spending plan stimulates market" peered hazily back at him.

His sense of hearing was dimming.

Like a cotton dipped in fluid and dragged across the surface leaving behind a diminishing trail of un-understandinding.

The walls seemed to move and the air seemed still.

He wondered why in the name of God was he there. The Gods must be crazy.

Because he was one of the 276000 idiots who attempted to bell the CAT 2008 hoping against hope.

For the ticket to the good life - IIMs

Clearly as you suspected, that was not to be.

All he managed to do was what others managed better - screwing up.

In fact screwing up came naturally to him.

Life was going to hell.

And Delhi was on the way.

Somehow he managed to end up in a very nondescript place in a very descriptive course.

PGDM Finance

Sounds snazzy eh?

Well, all he was taught to there was what to do with others money.

All their advice boiling down to just four crucial words.

MAXIMIZE PROFITS. MINIMIZE LOSS.

As if other people or he, did not know that in the first place.

Finance guys know less about finance than you. But they get great pay packages.

Face the facts guys.

The world does need sophisticated, refined and polished con men (and con women) mouthing corporate finance jargon.

Pardon the apparent lack of modesty, but we fulfill the criteria handsomely.

Here he noticed that engineering colleges had less engineering students than in an MBA college.

All engineers want to become management professionals.

So do the other commerce, science and art grads.

I wonder why did they, then, opt for the that crap in the first place?

But then he and others were Poets in the college.

Because more often than not, he and others like him, entered MBA colleges almost forcefully thanks to thier over hyped, above average Verbal Skills in the over hyped, above average CAT.

His friend Chirag. As u suspected, yes, an engineer. And an obnoxious one at that.

Understood stuff marginally better and faster than people but went around gleefully calling them - slow.

His friend Akash. Engineer, yes.

He will probably be awarded the Nobel for his work in SPSS and math.

That's because only he knows how to do it.

Anand "moneybags" Wardhan. Sadly, an engineer again.

The only guy who actually should be pursuing Finance.

That's because he has a lotta money.

And finally him. A non engineer or Slow as Chirag says.

Struggling with himself and the course.

Answering questions he never thought he would know of.

Asking questions he never thought he would have.

Thinking things he was not designed to think.

Calculating crap which would remain just that - crap.

However 6 months of MBA taught him, his friends and others somethings.

It taught him to understand what other people don't understand.

It taught him to have tea with his friends while the teacher was waiting.

It taught him that he could even sell crap if he had good speaking skills (a.k.a 999 plan)

It taught him how to present a PPT that he has not made nor even studied by him.

It taught him to fight to make a point in his own group.

It taught him that groups are meant to be made and broken only to be made up again. No hard feelings.

It taught him that marks are not make-or-break (however it also taught him that the placement is make-or-break. Amusing.)

All this and more. Albeit in a more sophisticated manner.

But the most important things.

That salaries, ranks and internships are not the only things that matter.

There is something called knowledge that you should be prepared to have.

That, I believe, is the general feeling.

However, he found there, one of the prime learnings he and his friends would take.

That its the journey that matters more than the destination.

Tomorrow Chirag, Akash, Anand, he and many others of this class will move on.

Have great jobs. Pay packages. Families. A great life hopefully. But they will remember the lawns, canteen, Shastri chowk, K.D, rolls at Venky, the night outs (for so called studying) and the time of the lives that they had.

They may move on.

But still down the years there will always be a Puri's, a Goyal's, a Wardhan's or his ( and many others') echoing voice that will be heard shouting in the Lecture Room 8, the corridors, the steps heard saying, "Chai pine chale?"

That is what he believed he would take from the institute.

Not rankings. Not companies. Not packages.

But Life.

And isn't that, my friends, what we are supposed to do - To Live Life

And that, I hope, is what all of us will do.

DEDICATED TO:

LBSIM CLASS OF 2011