Finally MBA

Finally MBA, huh!
Finally MBA, aahhh!
Finally MBA, yippee!
Finally MBA?
Finally!
MBA? What’s that?
Finally MBA, trouble over…
It’s only an MBA, come on!
MBA… ho gaya?
Just 2 years…
MBA Vroooooooooooooom……………
MBA – Mazaa Bahut Aaya

Aah! Finally writing a blog. It was a long hiatus by any standards, actually by many standards. Thomas Friedman would say, “The world has flattened even more. While you were sleeping Charan, ten flattening forces synergized more intensely and all of a sudden Bangalore has ceased to be the epicenter of this phenomenon of flattening. India is no longer invincible outsourcing hub, though USA has still to learn its lessons.” I would reply, “To hell with you Tom, I wasn’t sleeping. I was busy doing something more important. I was doing my MBA. More importantly I was in the second year.” I believe everyone in MBA fraternity would vouch for it. All the non MBAs please read the previous blog for instant enlightenment ;-) its difficult to believe that I wrote it more than a year ago.

After going through the justification of my long time-away, wherein I amply used Friedman’s Global Gyan a.k.a Gas, I think my avid readers (I like to live in make believe world. Hic Hic.) would forgive me for being away and busy like hell. Mind it, such global and intellectually stimulating Gyan can come only from MBAs like me and there is a high probability with a level of significance of 0.99, that it would be better understood by MBAs or of their ilk. Finally I should start talking some sense now and actually try to unravel the phenomenon of “Finally MBA.” At the very onset I must make it clear, this phenomenon is bigger than anything you have dealt with till now. Even if Ravi Vishwanathan C R declares that Sivaji and Rajnikanth is Baap of all phenomenons or Behzaad Patrawala alias Baap thinks that he is the best thing that ever happened to this world, simply ignore them! After all they both are MBAs themselves.

Before one can declare that I am finally MBA, there are two things that need to be done. The first thing is to complete the first year and the second thing is to complete the second year. Sounds silly? Simple? If your answer is yes, you need to do an MBA. I had already taken a lot of pain to tell the world about my first year in the last blog. So allow me to skip the first thing and let me talk about the second thing. There are only two seasons in the second year i.e. Placement Season and Non – Placement Season. You needn’t study in any of them. Parties, booze and lots of sleep are the key common characteristics of both seasons. What differentiate both are the increased level of attendance in Placement Season and the substitution of mostly pedestrian faculty with dream companies as most worshipped entities on campus.

In a nutshell second year is all about having fun and lots of fun. It’s the time when one forges great friendships which last for lifetime. In second year nothing seems too distant and too difficult. There is a certain sense of well being. Some of us keep their feet on the ground while some balloons float. Then placement season comes, balloons burst. Thud! Humility is the last lesson which MBA taught me.

** During placements - Anxiety for sometime, tension and stress. Running around. Yeh form, woh form. Yeh company, woh company. He is the CEO material. She would do wonders. GDs and PIs... Phir se? Koi jeeta koi haara... par sab sikandar. Kuch din ke liye party band, jeans pehnna band, daaru band, classes band, sab band… and then after all this megalomaniac pandemonium. Farewells and convocation, vacations to goa, fun times and party times. Everyone is king of good times. After all these times didn’t last forever.” **

It feels great to be “Finally MBA”; it gives me a sense of achievement. But then I am so much more anxious and so much more uncertain. Case studies are over. Now handle the real cases. Still those two years will always invade my memories. Wish it was for two more years.

Finally MBA, huh!
Finally MBA, aahhh!
Finally MBA, yippee!
Finally MBA?
Finally!
MBA? What’s that?
Finally MBA, trouble over…
It’s only an MBA, come on!
MBA… ho gaya?
Just 2 years…
MBA Vroooooooooooooom……………
MBA – Mazaa Bahut Aaya

aM.Be.A.

Master of Business Administration – The most overvalued, over hyped and glorified thing I have ever pursued in my life. A mere master’s degree has become so important part of my life that I eat, drink, sleep the same – no it’s not about academics – it’s about life itself. At one moment I feel “Oh! Why I landed up here?” and the very next moment is an Aha! moment.

Its now almost a year since I have been here in Mumbai doing my MBA. Sometimes these 11-12 months seem like few seconds because one never realizes how time flies here. You just keep fighting against deadlines. Deadlines for everything… Projects, Presentations, Assignments, Surprise tests, Mid terms, End terms, Placements, Alumni meets, Corporate projects, B-school competitions, Seminars, Extra curricular activities, Festivals…. Huh! I am out of breath but this list doesn’t end here… And even after all this you see lots of parties happening… birthdays, achievements or without any reason… Let’s go for booze!!!! Then there are late night movies, strolls on beaches, an ice cream around the corner, and coffee with few close friends…. Clash of egos, clash of personalities, clash of titans and all kinds of clashes... hence helluva sound…. Remaining awake whole night to complete the assignments or remaining awake whole night just to talk to your best friend coz you don’t find time in the daylight… Doing all this and much more but still one thing remains the same… You just keep running against time and never realize when your next birthday is around the corner…

And sometimes you tend to feel as if time is moving at the snail’s pace. It may be due to the concept of relative velocity. You run as fast as time, so time seems static. Am I talking metaphysics? The monotony of doing the same things again and again and again… similar presentations, sometimes even similar topics albeit with few modifications… just stops exciting you. Surprise tests stop surprising you anymore. Hypocrisy comes to fore. It’s only on your birthdays and achievements that you realize that you have many more friends than you counted on your finger tips the previous night. Few close friends become still fewer. Late night parties become sickening and boozing sessions see the same discussions getting repeated. The Steel Man from our class will always tell that how he worked like a coolie at his sister’s marriage. The fanatic from placecom will give you his old wisecracks. The CFA in making will tell me that why I am a CEO material and I will reply back by saying that I don’t have those big ambitions. The chikna Metro sexual always seems to be assessing what the hot girls in our class think about him and still tells that he doesn’t care about girls. I will be generally stuck up with same issues too. The Cool Maratha will keep advising me on my repetitive mistakes and thus this cycle of repetition goes on and on and on… It seems as if time has come to stand still.

Then at the end of the year you see the light at the end of the tunnel. You get a well-deserved break in the form of summers. So here I am working for 2 months in an organization. If I sum up the entire year, I would say I have earned 3-4 decent friends, and some knowledge. I made so many mistakes, which I will never repeat in life. So that’s a takeaway. I can understand hypocrites and losers better. You know this seems pretty interesting. I read the story of the fox and sour grapes when I was a child. It actually applies pretty well for an MBA. It’s as good as any organizational politics. People never appreciate the winners here. They just try to justify their failures and attribute your success to the most hilarious of factors. I have lost a little bit of purity of mind and of course a hell lot of sanity and inner peace. I have understood the ephemeral nature of success. What else? There’s a lot more to tell but words are difficult to come by.

So at the end of the year I am partial MBA and can proudly say “Main Bhi A” – I m also there. By the next year-end I will be “Main Bhi MBA”. I was trying to find various other connotations of MBA that suits the philosophy of me being an MBA. So here it is to conclude my ideas.

aM – it is present of the word BE. It signifies my existence. MBA indeed has become an important element of my existence today. It defines me in a different hue altogether.

Be – No! No! Not Behzad Patrawalla. It just signifies, Be there, Be present, Be real, Be ALIVE.

A – First letter of the Alphabet. What can this signify? This signifies highest category, the power of ONE.

Well this is getting too much for you and me. So let me close here…

MURDER AT NINE TWENTY

Jilted in love?
Nagged by your girl friend?
Frustrated by her behavior?
Relationship turned sour?

Don’t worry! Come to this dark and silent by lane of Mumbai for the easy way out! One stop solution for all your relationship worries! Get a big stone and hit her hard as many times as possible before her cries could reach anyone. Hit her hard on head till she bleeds to death.

Please don’t get me wrong readers. This is not what I am suggesting. This is in regards to a recent murder near my institute. Well you people must be thinking, “So what?” Murders are such a common place thing these days. Nobody raises an eyebrow when a person is killed in a brutal act of violence. Bloodshed doesn’t move us anymore. “So why I am writing about a murder?” May be because it happened when I was just on the other side of the wall or may be because the victim and the culprit both were related to our institute in the past or may be just because its all about love going wrong. May be the whole episode tugged my heart strings a little bit…. May be!!!

Sometimes I wonder how love can be so violent. A friend suggested it was not love. It was plain lust…. Still killing her just because she seemed to nag him after years of being in a relationship is too barbarian a thing to do! Was this manifestation of unmanageable stress levels youth go through? The guy must have killed her in a mental fit because after killing her at nine twenty in the night he went to the nearest police station to surrender. He was a shattered soul. That’s what I felt! Naah! I am not trying to justify his actions, not at all. Neither I want to analyze the reasons for his doing so.

I just wonder about the ephemeral nature of relations these days. Somewhere over the years that innocence in love and friendships has evaporated. Perfection is sought in each and every relation. Nobody accepts you as you are with all your flaws. In pursuit of doing away with all these flaws one may go through repeated cycles of stress. Add to it the fast pace of life, highly demanding jobs, academics, ever growing wants… What we get is a youth who can kill someone at 9:20.

Another thought to close this article - which disturbs me a lot - is that when this murder took place, people at my institute were more worried about the reputation of the institute and even media was linking the murder to the institute as if it is accountable for it. Come on give me a break!!! Somebody has died…..