Of flares and fogs: the Mandevian stint

Here's a something I had written long back...on the day I quit my postgrad college. A journey to somewhere. A transformation to something. A diary summed up.

A messy, dirty room; a near-deserted hostel; a shut door separating the two...and a lazy yet thriving campus. This very moment, seems like a good time to recollect some of the best memories of my life from the past 20-something months. With just few hours at hand before I leave Gurgaoon for something bigger, I can't stop but think about how badly I'm going to miss this place, which had become the centre point of my life. 

It was 20th June, 2012 when I moved to MDI...an ambitious mind, a broken heart and ambiguous attitude defined my state then. The weather was scorching - the sun beamed as if showing off. My first encounter with the Mandevian students was during hostel registration with HnM committee (of which I too became a part later). The next few months passed by in a jiffy...we got to know each other, made some new friends, tried to demystify the kaamkaaj at MDI - both inside and outside the classroom. We witnessed alll the hullabaloo around premiere B-school getting decoded in front of our eyes. Meanwhile, the sun flares simply didn't seem to cease as we squeezed the life out of our air coolers.

Soon came the dreaded summer placement season. Not a very fruitful time this, my puraane paap ensured I enjoyed the process long enough to start hating it. The dry runs, however, were fun and created sights of village folklore who gathered at the banyan tree for gupshup. The chills were in the air and in the spine. Not to forget the Chandigarh-Shimla trip which was planned and executed at 1 am in night. That trip also served me my first encounter with the Haryanvi police. That and many other firsts made the trip a memorable one.

Then arrived the Dilli ki sardi, which lived upto its expectations well enough. What was otherwise a dull period turned out to be one of the better ones as I wore my foodie cap back on. I and my friends relished some of the best food Delhi can serve...again and again. And as the dense fogs lifted, the campus turned into a spring-special romance hotspot. We bid farewell to our seniors and geared up for the internship and flares.

As luck would have it, I had to survive the flares again, this time fiercer and prolonged. During those 2 months of internship in Gurgaon, guys staying on campus got closer...some of us used to meet up daily and cribbed about our work. I got to witness the tip of the corporate iceberg, and somehow managed to make the most of it. As thermometers touched 50, I rared to get out of this inertia and get back to the bustling B-school life.

The second year kicked off with a bang and the next five months turned out to be the busiest. Opsession, HnM, marketing electives, supply chain, competitions..it was the peak time! Friendships, attitude, will power, skills..everything was tested severely and scrutinized on various fronts. The flares could be felt in the air! This peripod was the buildup to the D-day, and it was super.

Finally arrived the time which everyone had been waiting for...the one thing that would make a difference. Personally, I was lucky enough to have gotten a job that I would consider a dream. In any case, the whole experience was the second most memorable in the 2 years at MDI. He who kept his calm and focus clear, made it through with flying colors (if Lady luck supported).

THE MOST memorable experience, however, has to be the one month after getting placed. For the first time in 2 years we were able to do whatever we wanted to, and had the most fun all around Delhi. Eating around the popular food joints, roaming at popular spots in Delhi, sleeping for most of the daytime and spending the nights wasting time, so on and so forth. The spring was beautiful, the atmosphere on campus even more. The trip to Vaishnodevi immediately after exams was the icing on the cake and ended MBA on a high note.

During these 2 years, many things have supported us to get through the whirlwind..and will be cherished for lifetime. CM hostel, mess, long walks around the campus, late night serenity and chaos, deadlines, bakar, birthday and placements GPL, nescafe coffee, maggi, Jhaji's sattu paratha, sharmaji, chhole kulcha, CC, MGF mall, Sahara, Sector-14 market, sharing auto, sector-29, CP, chandni chowk, Metro...and over and above that the friends that I made here..it will all remain.

These 2 years have taught me a lot...my mind is stronger than ever, attitude humbler, and ambitions very clear. Becoming a Mandevian has been the best thing to have happened to me so far. The fresher is finally ready to plunge into the corporate world.

The bags have been packed, the train waiting to take me back to Baroda. 

Thank you MDI, 12P090 signing off...

Tangential Crap

As confusing as it might be, the title is the only thing of this blog which will not be tangential to my point. I don’t know why I’m writing this, I don’t know why you’re reading this, I don’t know why this coffee isn’t relieving me from the clutches of sleepiness, I don’t know why they made “The Xpose”, I don’t know why you’re still reading this, and I definitely don’t know why this sentence is not ending. With one magnum opus of a sentence ending, let us move towards some more.

Simply putting forth the context, I’d say that ‘an empty mind is the residential address of a devil’ (two inappropriate examples here would be 10 Janpath). With nothing significant occupying my mind *post office hours* these days, I was inclined to write something for my dormant-personified blog. Par jab dimaag hi khaali hai, to gh**ta content milega linkhne ko. So I thought, why not take some random thoughts, add flavours of ‘attempted’ sarcasm and prepare khichdi enough to lure many minds and feed none.

Okay so here we go. For the past some time, I have been introspecting a lot…where am I today, where do I want to go, how do I reach there and such visionary/missionary stuff. In the end, I realized that ultimately what I actually want to do is what I should actually be doing and striving to do, but that thing which I actually want to do is actually not yet known to me. I tried to recall. O ya! While at B-school, I did make a million-dollar B-plan in an elective. “Entrepreneurship” as they call it (by ‘they’ I mean those who can pronounce it correctly, rest just call it enter-prerna-ship). Or I could just do what most of my contemporaries are doing. Ya, that seems convenient. So I started listing down my interests. I am decently good at making dirty jokes, which is indecent in itself. I can do gymming (here’s where I burst into laughter). I could go out and have some affairs (here’s where I burst into tears). I can daydream about stuff all the time (which others take as an excuse for laziness). After undergoing such revolutionary brainstorming for hours all by myself, I could only conclude one thing, actually two. First, “it depends” on a lot of things, as if it were a complex multi-variable mathematical function. And two, I was nauseating of shit overload. I thought, yaar life me na kuchh to original karna chahiye, something new and unique. So I shoved my earphones (into my ears of course, 1 in each) and played music with a strong desire to get motivated and generate new ideas. First song, Pritam…second, Anu Malik. Sigh. I went to sleep.

Now that this whole exercise turned out to be a waste of time, I decided to do something else. And BAM! Writing came to my mind. Angreji to decent hai meri…blog bhi ghar ka hi hai. Chalo kuchh likhte hain! By now, you might have realized that even this wasn’t a good idea (if not, you probably have an emptier mind). I’d probably do better making a PPT on this which would be equally loaded (with empty barrels). Yes, that’s what I can do! I’m an MBA, that’s what MBAs do – bluff the other person into something using fancy representation and big promises. Pretty much what sadhus and religious leaders do, I guess.

Phew! Now that I finally feel I have done enough justice to the title, I will get back to my day. Will be back soon.

P.S.: There’s another term for this tangential crap – Faff.

P.P.S.: “And this is how, kids, I became a marketer.”