Potpourri of my MBA

Sometimes, we are the prisoners, other times, the leaders or workers cutting envelopes… Zimbardo must be so happy in his grave right now.

I've lived for 22-23 years and NOT analysed myself as much as I've done these past 15 months.
What does it anyway lead to? I'm sure this self-introspective MBA paradigm runs across the country and all first class MBA colleges churn out hundreds- if not thousands- of top-notch managers year after year.

How differently would they, probably, act had they not been, say told that they are ENTJ (sorry my non-MBA friends…if I sound French) and THAT is why they behave as they behave.

Again, as I write this, the only thing that my mind is processing right now is an experimental design using an experiment an control group.
How I wish I could, sometimes, un-MBA my mind and see how different my life could be.

so… which mask is your MBA making you wear?

I am not against these self-introspective tests and this kind of MBA paradigm. I love it, infact. Attributing your behaviour to a theory proposed by a gentleman in some other era donning a wavy-white wig like a lady's can be the easiest to get away with your unfavourable idiosyncrasies.

But somewhere, I feel this education, where on one hand, exposes a world of worldly theories and enlightening self-concepts to us, on the other hand blinds us from the existence and operationally of a world which awaits us right outside our B-School boundaries.

So… Do we have the education to un-MBA our minds??

Backing it up...

Life becomes pretty devastating when you, hoping against all hopes to have your data secured, get to know that one wrong download cost you all your work till date and that you were naïve enough not to believe in inventions called “hard disks” then.

In short, I, permanently and irrevocably, lost all my data.

And by “data”, I mean the photographs that I took immense pains to first click, then transfer and compile neatly into albums. 

It still hurts. Thinking of all those faces in the pictures, suddenly I miss my “data” even more.

One good thing I did, though, was upload a select few on FB (FYI, for tagging a zillion faces, FB has barred me from any further tagging).

So this one day I was sulking over my devastated sans-pics life, staring at my cruel laptop’s heartless default desktop background. When I realized I could stand the background no more, I downloaded one of my uploaded pics on FB and set it as my wallpaper.

("THE" wallpaper)

Before I could breathe a sigh of relief seeing the beauty, a revelation occurred.

The faces in the pic seemed happier, including mine, than we actually were at that time, if I remember the moment correctly.

Doesn't it so happen, while you are in that moment, u do not realize how happy it is until it passes. After 6 months, when one fine day you sit defeated and helpless and suddenly set this pic as your laptop’s wallpaper, you say to yourself “You lucky girl! What more do you want from life? Aren’t you lucky enough that you are one of the faces in this happy pic?”

I, once more, understood the importance of these three people in my life.

This one pic is enough for me to forget lamenting over the rest 100000000 lost.

I love you guys more than you can ever come to think.

Once a mother, always a teacher.

Things change. In almost 20 years, things definitely change.

My mother has taught me, one way or the other, throughout my educational life. While in school, she helped me develop interest in mathematics (the subject I still love) and accountancy (without any success).

She would sit both of us, I and my little brother, down and start our daily lessons. We used to be pretty little things then; timid and meek in front of our “seldom-strict-mummy”.

Its been 19 years now that she taught me my first math counting, first English alphabet and hindi alphabet in varna-mala.

As I sit in my room trying to make sense of an HBR article on “Talent Management” now, while inadvertently ending up listening to whats going on in the living room outside, I cant be more nostalgic.

Now instead of us 2, she has 5 kids to teach. Kids as small as a 4-year-old to a 14-year-old.

Our domestic helps must be happy souls now, seeing their children tutored.

And unlike the rich brats (a true generalisation), they are very eager to learn.

Only a deprived knows the feeling of getting.

(My mother with the kids... unawares)

I hear my mother, I hear the same voice I can now recognize from any corner instructing- Shruti, aaj maths aur hindi karna hai. Rahul, Eleven aur seven ki spelling yaad karke sunao. Shivani, ye ghar se karke lana hai.

Listening it over the phone is a different thing than seeing it with my own eyes. Still, when she told me, a month back that she’ll be teaching our helps’ kids, I was inspired.

I reflect back and realize that one thing she has accomplished in her entire life till now is being a Superlative. My mother is a Super-Mummy.

So… things don’t really change in 19 years, do they??

The first 13th.

It so happened when I was at my doc's for the usual refill of my never-ending dosages, while i was home for winter break.
When after consulting with the doc and on being assured that everything was as it had been the last time I saw him- for good or otherwise- I headed to the hospital's apothecary to mix me the medicine as the prescription said.

As the guileless guy on the other side of the counter took my prescription- which has now developed into a mini-diary of sorts- humbly nodding at the seemingly illegible words, as if those words could talk to him, he read out my name like a teacher who wouldn't probably even raise his head on making-out who did a proxy, and turned and opened an almirah which more resembled the mysterious almirah from Narnia, and I saw in it a number of bottles; symmetrical in size and shape, some half-filled, others half-empty, dressed up in different undecipherable codes and what once would have been bright and fresh colored chits.

It was then that this thought cropped up in my mind. Like those small bottles had the huge capacity to be an elixir or poison, concocted accordingly; even the humans are same. We get along with the right mix, and t is an elixir. We meet the wrong ones, and we are doomed, only we never realize and usually cant tell good from bad, sticking to our decisions more adamantly as we progress on our life's graph.

So on this new year, i suddenly have a wish to make.
We must have done a zillion mistakes last year, we are only human. This new year, lets not repeat any of those. Lets make a zillion NEW mistakes.
Lets fall in love again, feel the thrill once more.

Lets be 16 again and this time.... forever.
Happy New Year to all my Loved ones...