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...

Rhythm Divine

Writing a post from the hostel of an IIM was only a dream for me. I had got into an IIM precisely 5 months back but still writing a post could not happen. Largely because I had started believing that my mind and heart had stopped reading between the lines.

Now, blessed with a broken foot and a week-long-complete-bedrest, I have what seems like an entire lifetime to myself. And surprisingly, my judgment of myself was wrong. I can still read between the lines.

Our college is a good 25 mins away from our hostel. And that day, as always we were in a rush to make it to the college bus, only to see that the last bus to leave was more than full. So we got the college van instead. It was one of those rare days for me when I travelled in van, having missed all the buses. And I had hardly interacted with many of the people with whom I was commuting.

As we started, first thing was to turn the music on. “Beete lamhe…” was the song that played. Expecting some local songs, we were happily surprised to find regular “our” songs playing and what ensued was a magical trance. Many of us sang along, while some chose to hum and the rest stared out the window.

It was then that I realized something. All of us came from different parts of the country, and so belonged to different cultures, had different childhood (and some adult too) experiences, motivations and yet aspired to achieve a common goal.

The music, on the outside, was the same to everyone. But to each one of us, it meant an entirely different world. However, the underlying emotion was same- love, belonging, passion.

I assumed, knowing whatever little I knew of them, that while one of them thought of their CAT scores and getting a better college, another one might probably be thinking of her ailing pet back home and how she won’t be able to see it anymore. While one thought of a handsome summer placement and the life ahead of him, another one relived the song thinking of his love.

And what was I thinking? I was only too mesmerized and occupied with this thought to think of anything else.

It is amazing how one simple thing as music means so differently to different people. And because of this, it stops being simple.

All that Matters

All the time, we call life “queer”. Actually, its us who make life and so, WE are queer.
Just the other day, yet another incident (actually a couple of them) opened my eyes to a new kind of queerness of life.

To give a quick background, the home that I lived in for the first 13 years of my existence is in the vicinity of the grad college that I would attend much later. also, from my home, across the road, was the kindergarten school I went to.
I happened to visit my college to collect some documents from a friend who once used to be my closest. Everybody thought we were going out because we were so inseparable.
I can not recognize this friend now. After trying to get through on phone for 15 mins, I got to hear a simple “ok”. Still I wasn’t perturbed. Everybody has a bad day. The final blow came when he, on seeing me, handed over the things and without even looking straight at me once, let his “”new BFFs”” do the talking. I felt so suffocated that I left without any more ceremonies.

On my way back I stopped at a store very near to my old house. From across the road, I saw an old lady (really old), carrying 2 kids’ bags on her shoulders with 2 children holding each hand of hers. Even today she looked just the same. The last time I saw her, probably 15 years back, was on her grand-daughter’s wedding. The sight brought back so many fond memories and I invariably drifted back to when I was a small girl, in KG. She, my “maasi” (mother-like) would fetch me from home, walk me to school, feed me the lunch and got me back home. Sometimes when I was tired or sleepy from the day’s activities, she would carry me in her arms. And here she was today, walking yet another KG kid. As she crossed the road and came to my side, I walked towards her, apprehensive whether she’d recognize me (at her age, I know I wouldn’t be able to). But I only needed to remind her my name and the house I lived in and she knew me. I really had difficulty talking with choked throat and her voice broke me down.

In that instant, I wanted everything best to happen to her. I wanted to do something for her.
She asked me about my family and bhaai. I was so happy that she remembered them.

And when the children beside her started wailing, I knew it was time to go.
She blessed me with all the success and happiness in the world.

And I… I took home a very big lesson.

In Bits and "Peace"s

I stood there, facing the horizon.
The waves... large and small, came in a fixed pattern.

A pattern that God has set, a perfect paradigm.
The grandeur of Yan, the silent and never-ending depth of Yin.

I felt i was a part of this paradigm. I, in a way, felt complete.
Here was a thing of beauty, truly a Joy forever, that'd never deplete.

Nature, sure, has its own way of teaching mankind a lesson.
We've "progressed" from apes to humans to giants, the callousness just doesn't seem to lessen.

BUT

Miles and ages away, I stood there. Facing the horizon.
I was at peace with myself. My soul had sought satisfaction.

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