An unfortunate day in life

I have blue prints of quite a few posts in my mind, I have written content for few but somehow I keep delaying them but events of past 2 days have forced me to come out of both my writer’s block and procrastination and write about how unfortunate past few hours have been for me and after the usual stirred up frustration and annoyance, when everything finally settled, I was able to find the bliss we live in daily and we never appreciate.

The weekend was quite happening. We hired a Ford Eco Sport and enjoyed the Mumbai Monsoons at its best. From driving in the slow drizzle to fighting the heavy rains and winds and feel the life at its full intensity hidden in the crowd rushing for their destination or a person enjoying a ‘cut chai’ in complete leisure, all the colors of Mumbai were out there. There were failed experiments at ‘Pizza by the bay’, experiencing the Mumbai Metro Crowd at ‘Prithvi Café’, not getting entry at an expensive club because I was in slippers (pretty much felt how Gandhi ji must have felt when he was kicked out of train in South Africa), watching people let go of themselves and dance like crazy on Punjabi songs in a Brewery (although I was probably the most bored person out there completely disengaged from what was happening around).

This was pretty much what one will call a perfect beginning for the weekend. And then the chain of unfortunate events began. The triggering event was my default number which I am using for last 7 years without any trouble and consequently which features as a registered number everywhere stopped working for no reasons. I enquired with customer care representative who said that the number is active thus the possible damage resides in SIM card only. Then I put the same SIM card in another of my phone which I am using for last 5 years and which has served me well as a faithful alarm clock. The SIM carried its misfortune in the phone and after a while it also stopped working. In between, Federer won 19^th grand slam and increased his lead over Nadal significantly.

I made a mental plan of how to deal with these problems which basically included buying a new phone and getting a new SIM card of same number and slept peacefully not letting the misfortunes of the day become any hindrance in my sleep. I reached my next destination at 6 AM in Vashi from where I have to pick a bus which will take me back to my office in Nagothane, a remote location which is quite tough to access conveniently. The same spot where I waited for 2 hours just a week back during the evening time and got to know only later that the bus doesn’t come there during evening. I waited peacefully and patiently for the bus in heavy rains watching the activities nearby confident enough now that the bus will come as I had already picked it once from the same spot last week during the morning hours. 5 minutes passed, some anxiety, 10 minutes passed, a lot of anxiety, 15 minutes passed, panic level to the level of extreme frustration and ambiguity.

I assumed I had missed the bus somehow in the low visibility of heavy rains and the driver as usual never bothered to pick me from the stop. I made a few fruitless call to get help from anyone who is commuting by a car that may give me a lift but I was quite late. Due thanks to technology and the respected people who have created many wonderful applications, I get to know that I can board a train from Panvel around 9:50 and reach Nagothane around 11:30. I went from Vashi to Panvel and got myself a ticket. So far so good, coming office late by 3 hours is not a big deal. I have never travelled alone in a passenger train is also not a big deal. I am quite frustrated by my helplessness to get things in control and plan everything out well is also not a big deal. The big deal is to reach the office somehow without any further obstacle.

I boarded the train, didn’t get a seat as expected in such massive crowd, found a spot, stood up quite frustrated like a rich spoiled brat ( How I wish I was)  experiencing the real India for the first time trying to avoid any eye contact with anyone submersing myself in my headphones. The journey was smooth and quite scenic, saw a lot of greenery, rivers and multiple waterfalls which calmed my mood. Reached the destination smoothly and got a company bus to get back to office before the conductor said that I didn’t have a particular card ( I had no idea about this card) and I can’t board the bus. I am not the kind of person who generally gets aggressive, but I poured all my frustration on the poor conductor who then let me sit without any further trouble.

I asked the person sitting next to me whether the bus will go to office or not and he said it will (guess what, it didn’t). So I reached back to my room in the plant township with whole the frustration getting converted into a troubling migraine which left me with no will power and mental state to go to office. I took a leave, slept for few hours, woke up quite refreshed and happy and turned on my laptop to watch GOT Season 7 and guess what, it also crashed. This time I was beyond getting angry or frustrated. I laughed for quite few minutes like Arya Stark laughed hysterically when she got to know her aunt is dad. I was at the stage of self realisation, self actualisation, nirvana, complete detachment and whatever highest form of spirituality one can get into. I realised that god is playing with me, I am just a puppet today providing him entertainment.

I calmed myself down, luckily whatever stupid videos I used to see during engineering days helped me out to start my laptop. I am able to start my mobile by some ‘jugaad’ but it keeps on shutting after working fine for few minutes, meanwhile I learned how to use my laptop as an alarm clock. My new phone will be delivered soon. I have to make a trip again to get a new SIM card. After so much chaos, I just hope everything will be back to usual again. The same peaceful life with everything in control and functioning. 

Thus the leanings in past few hours, we might not always get what we wanted or dreamed of but even a normal day is bliss. If we are not having any trouble, it’s a bliss. There are so many people fighting problems which didn’t have touch us yet. People failed to catch their trains or flights and not reaching their destinations to miss something really crucial. People who lost the only mobile they can afford, people who are commuting daily by public transport dealing with all the uncertainties it bring, people fighting the adverse weather and going out to make a living. Most of the problems we have are quite 1^st world problems, they need to be recognised and addressed as they are problems, but at times destiny put us out from our world of comfort and give us a taste of real world.  

I am not the best person to deal with ambiguity, I like detailed plans. I plan a lot to make life smoother and that in turns make me more prone to damage when things do not go as planned. I learned to be more flexible and open to accept alternative options which may not be the best but fulfils the bare minimum. To summarise, I had quite a happening weekend and I just hope the experience of past few hours will add a little to my maturity. Realising the meaning of something I had written few years back:

"Life may not be as good I could be, but life also ain't that bad as it could be" 

What a 3 year old child can teach us

Children are one of the most beautiful creation of nature. Their innocence, curiosity, beauty, naughtiness can melt any heart. Spending time with a child is the perfect stress buster, a child will take you in some other world and you will leave your notion of the real world, all your problem, issues that are bothering you behind when you are playing with a children. You are just a character in his play, a part of his imagination, a puppet in his hands, you follow what he orders and you enjoy obeying to him/her. I spent a lot of time with my nephew in past few days and he taught me some very valuable lessons.

Forgiving: Children never hold grudges against anyone. You might scold them, tease them, do not give them what they want and that will make them very angry. You may even make them cry but they will forgive you soon and forget everything in a moment. Children do not have any grudge against anyone. They will play with you in the same cheerful manner as they always do and there won’t be any impact of past next time when you engage with a children. They truly forget and forgive and thus they do not carry any negativity, if only we can put behind the complaints we have against people, we can also live a very happy life without carrying any baggage.

Being Curious: It’s but obvious that children are most curious being on the planet, not only human children but children of any species are always wondered by the amazing world around them and they want to experiment with it in any way they can. Once they learn to speak, children can really annoy you with all kinds of question and they will keep asking same questions again and again though you have replied countless time. But I guess that is the reason of their learning, as we grow up we just stop asking questions. We do not find anything incredible or wonderful, we just have a feeling of indifference. On many occasions, we just feel shy, inferior or extremely uncomfortable in asking anything. Our learning stops as soon as we stop being curious. I think children teach us to keep asking questions, to keep wondering about everything around the world, to keep expanding our knowledge and learning new things.

Optimum utilization of resources: As we grow up, we want specific tools for everything else we don’t start doing our work. But lack of resources is not something that bothers a child. In his world of imagination, rules are quite flexible, anything can become anything. A truck can become an ambulance, a garbage truck, a police truck, a boat and it may fly also sometimes. It can talk if it has too else it will just honk its horn. Animals can replace one another, they can talk if they have to else they are just statues. A simple cardboard box can become a palace, a truck, a boat or a UFO whatever purpose a child find fit for it. Steel glasses are building blocks for palaces and fortress, headphones can become stethoscope, and humans can become anything. You may be a friend of the child helping him in his mission or an enemy who is destined to get killed someplace. I think we should also be flexible and imaginative like child instead of being so rigid on our demands and that can help a lot when it comes to chase our dreams.

Make New friends: Children are great at making friends, they can make friends across ages and they do not hesitate in initiating for new relationships. Although many times they act quite selfish in terms of not sharing their toys or food but that is part of growing up. As time demands, they form bonds quite quickly and play like they are brothers/sisters forever. As we grow up, we feel safer in our established close friend circle and we stop giving chances to people and also we stop trying to many more friends.

Be Honest about your fears: Children do not try to act smart and conceal their fear. They are quite open about it as they are yet to get ‘wise’ enough to judge what an acceptable fear is and what is not. They may be afraid of the moon, the old guy next door, the loud aunty across the street, or the small insect that has no idea what he is doing on the wall. But children will express their fear openly and given some encouragement they also face their fear and get over it. As we grow up, we start hiding our fears be it failures to accomplish our goals, not able to approach our love, getting fat, being depressed and we never let anyone to encourage us to get over them and we are stuck forever in them getting suffocated internally.

Live in present: I think this is the biggest thing we can learn from a children. A child does not live in either past or future. He exists entirely in the present, he has no memory of what he did in the past and he is not bothered about what he is going to do in future and that’s why they are always happy, cheerful, optimistic and excited about life. They do not carry any baggage. They are at peace at what they are right now but as soon we grow up half the time we are in past and remaining half we are worrying about future and thus little is left to enjoy about the future.

Simplify the world around you: Kids don’t believe in complicating the world much, they keep it simple. They believe the purpose of living is to play, play with anything they can get in hand, they talk in simple language, if they don’t understand a word they will make a new word for it and then the entirely family has to use that vocabulary. Now it makes the shopkeeper quite puzzled when we ask him to give us ‘bhui’ which is the word coined by my nephew for cars or ‘konoya’ in place of ‘khilona’ but it works for him and it works for us also these days. We should also simplify the world around us if we can’t understand its complexity, redefine few things according to our own convenience and live happily.

Saying No: Nobody says NO quickly with absolute emotionlessness than kids. If they won’t to, they won’t share their chocolate or toys with you and they would abruptly say No to you making a mockery of you in front of many. Such an important quality some of us later forgot and found us extremely uncomfortable to utter this simple word which led us into multiple troubled situations. Keep it simple, say no if you don’t want to do anything and there will be peace in life.

Laugh & be happy: Children have the purest form of happiness, unperturbed from anything, their smile is the most innocent feeling in the world and they laugh wholeheartedly and they actively find reasons to laugh. A children can be happy if he gets chocolate, cake, a new toy, a ride on bike, on watching a stupid cartoon, someone making weird expression or at times on nothing, they are genuinely happy from inside. It’s such a cruel reality that we kill these happiness later by all the expectation we put on them and ruthlessly make them run into the race of life else every children can teach us to find happiness in small joys of life and celebrate them.

I think we face 2 big responsibilities now. First to revive the inner child in us that we mercilessly killed to become successful, mature, acceptable and whatever pretence we have to do to make a place in society. We have to learn to be happy again, learn to do things that makes us happy, learn to become immature and learn to stop thinking much about consequences all the time. At the same time, we have these tremendous task of saving children of these generation to become the rats in many of the races we want them to run. We have to stop making a champion out of them in everything. 

Parents start competition so early; our child learn to walk 1^st, our child learn to speak first, it looks so stupid that children are being ruthlessly converted into ‘trophy child’ and they are another ‘showpiece item’ to flaunt. We have to let them live like children, let them score 70%, let them play in garden and let them waste time on top of the roof gazing stars, let them be the creator of the future instead of making them programmed robots first in school and then in workplaces.

We have this incredible task of preserving smiles of all the children and I hope by doing so we will be able to meet our own inner child. :) 

Turning 25..........

Let’s rewind our clock a bit, when we were child, small height, very less power, we often used to dream about growing up as soon as we can. There is always a relative frame of reference, when we were in 2^nd standard we thought that 5^th standard students were really big and huge, they must be pretty intelligent too. When we reached 7^th standard, 5^th standard appeared to be stupid infants while 10^th standard students looked like super intelligent and super powerful. Then we reached, 1^st year of college and 10^th standard students appeared like dumb kids worrying over useless issue like board exams while final year students seemed to have got everything sorted, most of them had jobs and gf/bf and a well-planned life ahead.

When we reach final year we realize the irony the world is, we are as clueless about life as we were in 10^th standard or 3^rd standard, we still compete with the same bunch of people we were competing forever, sharma ji ka ladka still tops and yet he doesn’t become Einstein, Verma ji ka ladka is gold medalist in swimming yet he is worried about job and future, the charming guitarist also struggle with making a future and we escape from reality one more time and dream about an age where everything is settled.

25 seems like a milestone, a checkpoint, a year of introspection, I turned 25 few days back and I am revisiting all the pages of my life to compare the deviation of real version from the ideal version imagined at different points of life. It’s quite unfortunate I didn’t become a high flying hardcore WWE champion with a bad ass entrance music, I also didn’t become the first cricketer to score a triple century in an one day match and took 10 wickets in the same match, I have not even started my first novel far far away from the vivid imagination of living a retired life in outskirts of a hill station living like Ruskin Bond exploring nature and writing about its beauty, even my most practical and realistic dream of completing B.Tech by 21 from an IIT and then finishing MBA from an IIM by 23 and becoming a billionaire in the same year has tossed away. In the real life, I have finished my MBA and will be joining a job soon. Doesn’t look as fancy as I dreamt in childhood and yet I know I am living dream of many and I am grateful about it.

Now all microblogging sites are full of clichéd articles about mid-20s, dilemmas of life, checklist on 25^th year, 10 things to do before turning 30 and stuff and most of them have pretty much similar content. Our present generation at 25 is often stereotyped as unhappy, clueless, directionless, struggling and all kind of other negative adjectives. To some extent it is true also, many of us are indeed directionless. We are supposed to follow our passion which has lately become another cliché but most of us don’t know what that passion is and if we know we don’t know how much practical it is to pursue that passion. A large population went with the flow of doing engineering because that was what everyone was doing and now half of them are chasing the next must do goal of M.Tech/MBA/MS while those who have already done it are wondering whether their life was miserable before or miserable now.

We don’t know our goal is to be happy or to be rich and whether happiness follows money or not. We don’t know we want to spend our weekends with a bunch of friends or enjoying a movie alone eating Maggie. We are confused, that’s a fact because most of us didn’t believe in the iron fist rule of getting educated, searching for a job and then settling down in life. Unlike our previous generations we enjoy a long gap between getting a job and settling down and that is where we wander like lost souls. We fantasize ourselves with the multiple possibilities that exist in our life and the decision paths that could be followed right now and yet when it comes to taking a courageous decision, most of us panic and chicken out. We love and hate our cage of convenience at the same time. It is like the ‘ring of power’, we hate it and yet we can’t afford to lose it though we hate what it has turned us into.

Our generation is also the most masochist one. We are incredibly hard on ourselves to the extent of cruelty. We have reproached ourselves for not scoring 90% in boards, we have cursed ourselves on failing to get admission in our dream college, we feel inferior on gaining weight and getting bald, we always live a comparative life and thus we are also the most unsatisfactory bunch. We are always in a hurry to declare ourselves a loser, be it on not getting the job we desired, or getting rejected by the person we liked or even getting less marks in some stupid tests. Many of us start with a job that gives more money than what our parents are getting towards the end of their working life and yet we don’t feel happy or in many case not even contended. . There is always scope of doing more. That’s what all the books say, that’s what all the sports-persons say, that’s what the message all the inspirational movies give and that is how we were raised from the beginning. To achieve more, always remain hungry, always improve and keep fighting and keep moving. We have wonderfully converted our life into some Japanese anime, we don’t fight physically or with imaginative monsters we just look for better grades, more money and bigger jobs.

We are so much in need of motivation, we instantaneously share the blogs and articles of “It’s ok to feel lost in mid 20s” and stuff, a little empathy is all we seek because we feel that most people wouldn’t understand us. Indeed, it’s tough to explain to your parents why are you unhappy even with a 7 digit salary or to explain to your uncle who is doing the same thing from last 30 years that you don’t feel motivated to go to work as you find no meaning in it. 25 is the age when not being in a relation make you incompetent and inferior in some way. When ‘liking’ the pic of someone flaunting their biceps in gym or someone enjoying a drink in Goa makes you sad. When you are supposed to act in a mature way everywhere while you want to jump on Mickey Mouse in a fair.

May be everything we feel, hear, share is something that was common to all generation, we just have better and fancier platform to share them. May be all generations want to rebel from their previous conventions and yet all are trapped to them. May be the gossips and rants are transferred to whatsapp and facebook from pan addas and barber shops. These questions always ponder me, are we the most complaining and unsatisfied generation or our misery has been publicized much?

I get a weird feeling when I think about the fact that Nadal had already achieved a career grand slam before turning 25, Sachin was already a living legend, Miley Cyrus has already earned millions, people much younger than me are achieving accolades far superior than what I can imagine with my conventional life and yet I know I have my own set of achievements. I appeared in some of the toughest competitive exams; cracked a few, screwed a few; I competed with some of the brilliant minds of the country to get a good college and I also competed with the selected lot again to get a job. I have already travelled a lot of country and many more places are on the list. I have tasted some of the finest cuisine and I will taste more. So far, Bhutan is the only foreign country I have been, but still an achievement, isn’t it? I didn’t write any novel, yet I am managing my blog for more than 7 years.

I think the origin of most of our pain lies in the ‘larger than life’ life we all imagined for us in our youth. Guess, life doesn’t work that way. Your life don’t change much even if you get a great job or an average job. There are always problems, worries, anxieties you have to fight. May be all those who look very happy in their Facebook profile are also fighting with the same, social media is the biggest scam everyone put to appear happy. I have seen people most unhappy once they achieve the biggest goal of their life, then they feel purposeless. May be the crux of the life was all about celebrating the small success, be it losing 5 KG weight, making that cake eatable for the first time in life, travelling in a local train for the first time, writing the story you always want to and get it published, finally summoning the courage to ask that girl out, get rejected, and denounce our attachment with the materialistic world with friends later that night.

May be all of us can’t be the superhero we thought we would become and save the world, or the billionaire that owns 100 cars, maybe we won’t get a girlfriend like Emma Watson or a boyfriend like Ryan Gosling, we won’t have a private Jet. May be life was never supposed to be a fairy tale, it would always be this harsh and illogical, some people will betray us, we would lose things we consider the most important for our survival, we would abandon many of our dreams, we have to change the path many times due to things not in our control, we will fail and we will fail more, we will succeed and yet we won’t feel happy.

The bottom line is, life is as dramatic or as boring as we perceive it to be, let us continue on the path we have created and then get drifted again from it, met new people, lose old people, go to new places, we are just 25, we are still young, we are too inexperienced to proclaim our success and too immature to understand we have failed. However let us never ever abandon things that make us happy no matter how busy or helpless we become. Sing that song, practice that dance, write that story, run that marathon, finish that painting and then do it again. Do not get stuck, soon you will turn 50 and like all the clichéd article says you will definitely regret what you didn’t do when you were 25. 

The silence aftermath..........

The hostel is almost empty, the rooms have gone quieter, there is no rush on dadu’s shop, bishu da’s day canteen is not opened today, no one is playing music, there are no laughs beneath the Bodhi tree, no one is sitting on the MTR benches, the old campus seems to be meditating quietly disturbed only by occasional noise made by dry leaves which helplessly blows under the force of wind. Few autos are coming and students are leaving one by one, some formal handshakes and some sincere goodbyes, some meaningless all the best and some silent thumbs up with wet eyes followed by one last look at the same building where countless memories were created in past few months. It started with a bang, loud and clear and it is ending much more silently.

Just a day before the situation was drastically different. There was rush and commotion everywhere. Students were running here and there. Some were enjoying the company of their friends while some were being tour guides to their parents explaining every building and its history. Parents’ faces were beaming with pride and students were finally happy that they have given the ultimate happiness to their parents. Everyone was trying to capture as much of this moments as they can, people were clicking photos, making videos, taking selfies. There was so much noise which can be followed only by such stark silence.

The campus is not sad, it has learnt to control his feelings. It has sad goodbyes to many batches and it will continue to do so. It doesn’t display its emotions now, it is rock solid now, it doesn’t suffer in silence anymore, silence is the way it bids good-byes to batches because 2.5 months later it has to clean the slate again. New batch will come, new stories will be created, the drama will continue and the campus has to become strong again to withhold all the drama and then silently say goodbye to that batch also. Such is the plight of campus, it is part of all the pictures, it is tagged in all the photos and yet it has only silence to offer in return, the most mature way to say goodbye.

I intentionally booked ticket a day later, because I wanted to witness this silence. Here I am sitting in my room, the room which witnessed my ambitions, my hard work, my frustration, my desperation and much more. The room which pitied me for being so vulnerable and the room which congratulated me on my accomplishment. It has done the same for countless people, some of them might have been very successful leaders in the corporate now. Mayank Sharma will leave it today forever and 2.5 months later it will find its new resident who will bring his own culture to the room. He will stick new posters, he will play different songs, he will host different people here. Every room has his story which it never shares, the room respects the privacy of its resident.

The professors are habitual of this silence. They have talked to many students informally yesterday perhaps for the 1^st time and asked them to keep in touch though they know most of the students won’t. They know they have taught bunch of mature professionals who might never remember them again. Yet they know that they have contributed to shape the future of the country once more and they will continue to do so. They are liking our photos and videos on social media which they have done in past and they will continue to do so for the future batch. They are also enjoying the silence.

This silence is enlightening, this silence is defining, this silence is tranquilizing, this silence has to be earned, no one is entitled for it. This silence is the testimony of all the noise that was there for past 18 months and this silence is the reward for it. This silence is music, this silence is memory, this silence is a beautiful poetry, this silence is spirituality, this silence will be followed by noise and like yin yang they complete the circle of life in XLRI.

The campus looks beautiful today, it is sleeping now, it is resting, it has worked hard enough, it needs rest now, it has to prepare himself for the future. The flowers are desperately trying to cheer up departing people by their colors and smell, the trees are shading leaves in sadness, the wind is slow and smooth and occasionally stirs up few memories. The eating places will be shut for next few months now, workers will be gone, cobbler won’t be here, they will rest too and then the circle will start again. New faces, same story. Hearts will be broken and people will be shattered and then someone of something will bloom life again into them.

In the end, everything will make sense. Every story, complete or incomplete, will give a meaningful conclusion. Whatever happened, expected or unexpected, predictable or unpredictable, painful or happy will open new ways and people will ride on new experiences from the experiences they have got here. In the end, you don’t hold any grudge, you let it go, you find peace, you don’t carry any baggage, you are silent from inside like the campus. You pack your bag, you say goodbye, and then you are gone, you become part of a frame then, you become 1 of the many pages in the history, you become a story which is there in the book and those who care about will read and others will ignore.

XLRI, here I am saying good bye, enjoying the silence and thanking you for it after all the noise. Thank you for accepting me as a part of your glorified history.

To all the wonderful people I have met here who were taming their own demons like me, to all the stories that were concluded, that left incomplete and that were never started, to all the victories and failures, to all the hard work and laziness, to all the memories that will be cherished and to all the memories that will be forgotten, to all the disturbing noise and to all the calming silence, Thank you!! J

Last walk in the campus.....

Yesterday I wrote my last examination as a student, so this blissful moment right now is the most awaited moment of my life, at least from the last 2 years. Finally being done with a course that has a physical, emotional and mental toll, I don’t have the count of nights I spent fully awake juggling between multiple tasks. The brain wrecking assignments, running from one deadline to another, quizzes, exams, projects, GDs, interviews, events, the mind is burdened with too much memories as a lot has happened in last 2 years.

I started packing few hours back, collecting and classifying everything, what I will take back and what I will leave here. Going through all those books, notes and material one more time I tried to relieve all those moments again. Running to classes with the notes in hand, or pulling an all nighter getting immersed in these books, who was sleeping in the class when I was writing this paragraph, who was playing with mobile, what was I thinking when reading page no. 29. It’s interesting, how every day seemed to be a long agonising journey with classes beginning from 9 AM and continuing till 9:15 PM, clock just used to stop in the afternoon lectures with everyone trying to stay awake somehow and now, at this moment right now, it appears as if all happened in few seconds, BOOM. You slept properly on one fine Sunday of June 2015 and the next time you opened your eyes, you are here with everything flashing through your mind like a dream and I am trying to capture all these memories before I forget them.

7262 is the exacted numbers of mail I received since joining XLRI. There are mails of project details, forming groups for project, marks, grades, company details, getting rejected in a process, committee dinners, competitions, rules, events, mail threads where people appended their part in a PPT or a report and many other things that were integral part of my life from last 2 years. Checking the mail almost every hour and cursing our life because of the deadlines was a daily routine. Now, in this very last moment the mailbox is filled with mails requesting testimonials for people, testimonials for people who I know completely and have spent major time span or testimonials for people who are just added in my facebook as friends.

I was writing testimonials for people yesterday and that’s the funny thing about writing testimonials or farewell message. You are supposed to write only the good things, you just count all the happy memories you have with a person and you put all the goodness that he/she exhibited in some way and you write some lines describing him/her and the experience with him/her as something worth cherishing which might not be the reality but this is how we humans are. We want to end things on a happy note, we don’t want to carry any baggage or have any grudge against anyone because this is the ending, you won’t be seeing all these faces again, you won’t be talking with many of them again and thus the compulsion of having +ve last moments. The thought in itself is not wrong and that’s the reason I am writing this post.

Those who know me know that I am the last person to get sentimental or nostalgic about the college ending. In fact, this is something I always wished for; as from the day I entered this college I knew that I am one of the most unfit person for this course. I was never a consistent performer in my life, and MBA demands consistency. Consistent hard work, consistent networking, consistent efforts in extra curricular, consistent courage to step in outside and attend the classes when all you want is to get lock in your room and sleep. So much this course has changed me that Mayank Sharma of 20 months back would hate this Mayank Sharma and vice verca, I can’t even call myself a procrastinator now such was the impact of course on me, I became a proactive person trying to finish everything as early as possible because there is always a probability that last hour can come up with a new deadline and then we have to firefight to an all new level altogether.

So, I had tough times, I was frustrated a lot, for a person who always thinks different from the usual, questioning the status quo and trying to be original, I find it hard to explain everything from a set of frameworks or doing things in one or two particular way. For a person who has habit of spending 2 hours tracing the route of river Ganges from origin till ending or reading at 3 AM the role of Rasputin in Russian history, it’s hard to concentrate on daily quizzes and study material. I am, in any way, not questioning the course in anyway, this is another subject to debate on, but my habits and style were completely different from what I was supposed to do, and hence the struggle.

Along with the academic struggle, there was social struggle too which starts from me avoiding the use of any ‘recreational substance’ which is considered mandatory to network or essential for social inclusivity, I have to find my ways in fitting in into a party where people’s imagination and participation reached a new ‘high’ altogether. Sometimes I managed, sometimes I chose to silently retreat inside my room so I wasn’t always able to make everyone happy around me which also happened because of my continuous insistence to get things done. I learnt the hard lesson that you can’t be a good person or remain good in everyone’s book when you chose to become the guy who gets thing done. This choice in itself will make you villain in many people’s life but again someone has to be the bad guy and fortunately or unfortunately it was me in most cases.

I can ponder over many things I did which I now think I shouldn’t have done and vice verca. I took trouble over things that proved to be completely unnecessary, I was hard on myself when it was not at all required. I wanted to interact with some people just to get to know them more which I never did. I wanted to learn few more things but I was too myopic to get away with the temptation of improving things in hand. There are multiple scope of improvements, but I am happy with the final version of what I have become. I am quite contented with my achievements. I have set the bare minimum expectations for me at the start and I was able to achieve a lot more than what I thought I could and hence I am thankful to destiny and god.

There are numerous threads I can touch on but that I would do in subsequent posts. Right now, at this very moment is not the time to find faults or complaint. It is time to be thankful for this opportunity no matter how much hard it was. It doesn’t change the fact that I was given a chance by destiny to study in one of my dream college. I competed with the best minds of the country, the cream, people with much greater intelligence and far brilliant mind than me, people who had far richer background, people whose skill set outclassed mine by leaps and bound and somehow I survived. The classes were full with abundant idea ranging from complete shit to marvellous ones. I have experienced the sheer wonder of creative and brilliant mind here, both the professors and student. I have been in classrooms of some of the legends who ever stepped in the field of academia. I have studies some of the best course of my life which really broadened my horizon and expanded my thinking level. My struggle was not a struggle for existence, but a struggle for excellence and which in turned has carved a survivor out of me. A ‘saiyan warrior’ far more powerful than his initial version.

As I walk down on these roads again for one last time, step into these empty hostels who echo wonderful memories created by multiple batches. I am fully aware that I am walking down the same paths where legends of corporate world today had walked and also I am grateful for the fact that some of the people I have walked these paths together will rule the corporate world tomorrow. I have studied with future entrepreneurs, CEOs, CHROs, CMOs, CFOs or people who would quit the conventional path and bring a positive change in the society.

XLRI, I would be honest to speak that I won’t miss you, I am not sad, I am very happy leaving from here but that doesn’t mean I am not grateful to what you have provided me and how you helped me to reach a new potential altogether and how just being an ‘XL Mafia’ gives a completely new dimension to the small towner Mayank Sharma. Yes, I have complaints but I have my experiences, my joys, my delights, my moments and learnings and I believe whatever I have experienced here will definitely help me to move a bit closer to my dreams. 

Bye Bye XL, Till we meet again ! :)