Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Claustrophobia...

Have you ever felt a sudden urge to be alone..all alone.Or move to a place where noone knows you.A feeling of walking into an apartment,where only you stay..only you.Dunno if you do,but nowdays I fell that way.Theres a sudden desire to be all by myself,live only for myself,hibernate till i wanna come out & meet the rest of the world.
I have been in a hostel for the major part of my life,shared my room with 2/3 room mates or my dorm with 42 others.Apart from the bed and the cupboard,nothin was my own. There wasn't a place where i could go and be all alone. Yeah,there were always the loos but with 50 other people using it,it wasnt the heaven that u always dream of.And no thought there can be stronger than the stench.
The few years I had been with my parents,at home,the room was mine but the space wasn't.My mother strongly believes that in a typical Indian family (which she thought we were,nbut now she begs to differ),there is nothing as private space. Everything is a family issue & can be worked out as just another dinner table solutions. In a year's time, I will be married to the man I have loved for a long time.The house would be "our" house. But the craving for solitude has not subsided.Told my mom and my would be husband,that i need 6 months..6 months all to myself..6 months in a place,where I would be a complete stranger.But they think its another bout of insanity. Looks like my wish for solitary confinement will never be granted!!

Standing in a crowd,
a creepy little doubt,
Fills up my mind,
in a desparate bid to find,
a place for myself,
a place of my own,
very far from that place,
where from childhood,
i have grown,
Will the search ever end?,
And the rules ever bend?..

Monday, March 14, 2005

A world of our own..

When i had left Mumbai one n a half years back,I had dreamt big.Dreamt of sailing through the MBA course & landing up with a job that would assure me a fat pay packet.I had planned to settle down in bangalore itself & enjoy the slow paced life compared to the mad rush back home.That was my vision,mission and goal at that juncture in life.
The First realisation that dawned on me was how much I missed Mumbai. Though unlike my classmates it wasnt the first time i had left home (i have been in a hostel for the major part of my life) . Still I missed Mumbai & it was to such an extent that I had ended up comparing every street,every corner,every house to Mumbai and realised that Home is infact where the heart is .And my heart was'nt in bangalore!
I was told before joining the course that one doesnt make friends In MBA colleges.not when you aim to bag the best placements and projects & in the process become selfish..very selfish.I was even told before leaving that for the next 2 years,I would have to live in cocoon.It would only be I,me & myself,a true sign of a professional (all i can do when i think of this theory,is swear!)
Realisation II was that when u make good friends, you neither live in a cocoon nor believe in the I,me & myself theory. Here,we are a group of people who makes each other's lives in bangalore worth living!. For us, " we " matter more than 'me',more than projects,more than placements,et all.It's our own world,away from the incessant pressures of college,profs & our own career expectations.Where "we" look forward to the evenings in our den & over a cup of chai or kaapi , go through the day's happenings,gossip about who's doing what..who's seeing whom, & bitch about our "common enemies". Where i dread the weekends when some of us would go home and for the remaining (which is mostly me) it is empty corridors & lonely days. Where, birthdays mean a cake appearing out of no-where at midnight and loud out-of-tune "happy birthday to you..". And later,where you are stripped of all your savings in the name of a birthday treat. Where exams rock & are more like picnics with loads of food for the night-outs and inedible PJs cracked under stress.A world where you never feel lonely and depressed.
This post is an ode to Sarita,Anu,Ciby and Niti for making my life so much better here.Love you guys!

Monday, March 07, 2005

The class apart!

My IV & final sem has finally started ..and today was my first class.Like every semester i have promised myslef to be a good student this time - listen in class, take down notes,complete assignments on time n yeah take those precious "photocopies" before the D day. As per the plan,for the first half n hour i did painfully try to pay attention n decipher every word spoken by my prof..But finally when i couldn't fake it any longer i gave up..After all its Finance!!. Decided to sit for the next two hours n do some soul-searchin(which incidentally is one of the 9 S's of stratgey..i wasnt completely off track you see). So i looked around and saw 50 odd faces n realised that why not analyse my own class!!i have always considered marketing to be my core specialisation. And in order to know marketin,I have to know abt human behaviour. And i had to start somewhere..right?

The Front benchers
This is the group that glorifies the name of any institution.They are the lecturer's best friends. Life for them is a strategy Always attentive and always eager to learn!.Armed with well-maintained notebooks n pens of various colours,they come to college with a mission.And why wouldn't they?..The headings are drawn in Red with wormy underlines in Green,the body written in Blue and the sub-headings are marked in pink..Signs of a really Colorful existence!.They are the dreams that parents have about ideal children when they plan for a baby..and then people like me are born..lol!They are found in class rooms,if they aren't in the library and in their study room at home if they are not found in both those places.They make all of us proud..!!!

The Middle Benchers
In my class,they belong to the brainy people who have managed to crack the CET with excellent scores and hence pay peanuts compared to us.They are truly,deeply and madly in love with finance and anything remotely related to it. Pride themselves when they are addressed as finance wizs.Most of them absorb every single word spoken by our finance profs,with their mouth wide open and their pens ferociously note down every pearl of wisdom. They hate marketing subjects, find consumer behaviour and marketing management boring (aargh!),criticise Kotler for wasting valuable text space by givin examples..and think that marketing students are basically freaks to spend their life "selling soaps"!!

The Last Benchers
Then they are people like us.The lords of the last benches.People who feel that inspite of the whopping amount that has been shelled out on our education - Life is fun!.For us studying on regular basis is a sign of impending lunacy.Where after a week of yawning and stretching , weekend is party time. People whose library card only contain the names of issued novels, who buy books a day before the exams and sell them a day after - and still make profits.
People who dont slog but manage to to pass the exams with flyin colors...In a nutshell,who dont need management education- coz they are born managers!!