Off the beaten path

Well, I formally joined the ranks of the unemployed on April 1^st (nice choice of date – folks at office thought that it was an “April Fool” prank). After spending my first 15 days of unemployment doing nothing but lazing around, I started on my journey to Kolkata in mid-April. It was quite late in the night by the time I reached Joka – thanks to the long queues at the Howrah taxi stand.

The first half of the initial week was spent in registration and induction which gave me time to settle into the new place and “try” and get things organized. During the induction, I met 43 other like-minded people who had just negated one of the basic tenets of Ancient Indian wisdom. After all, were we supposed to turn back in “Grihastashram” and return back to studies? Off the beaten path... yeah – this is the band of 44 souls comprising the Class of 2012 at the IIMC PGPEX program.

Registration was over and many of us went with great “enthu” to collect our books. A snap of people while they were collecting their books would have been one to cherish. Bewildered expressions would have been seen on how we were going to finish all those books within the year. That is when our friend distributing the books put an additional caveat. These books were supposed to be “internalized” in the first term – not the entire year. Yeah – my friend who did his MBA last year was not joking when he said that the 1 year MBA is a bit rigourous. Talk about understatements.

The next day saw me in front of the classroom – did I ever think that I would be in front of one after all these years. Apprehensions all over – will the brain be able to perform as designed or would the rust of all these years take its toll. Mercifully, it proved that the design principles used in its manufacture were sound.

Here is lunch time. Time to cycle through our very own “Howrah Bridge” and come to the PGPEX mess. One of my biggest tensions before coming to Joka thankfully proved to be completely unfounded. The unanimous opinion is that the food is good and suited for the palate of people from all parts of the country. Bappi da is a good mess contractor who does his job well. Having a good mess secretary also helps who gets feedback from the batch and ensures that it gets done. “Continuous Improvement” is what they call it.

Lunch over and it’s time to get back to the class. Herzberg’s motivation theory, cash flows, balance sheets, Demand-Supply curves, Regression coefficients and cloud computing await us there. You better pay your utmost attention – you don’t know when a surprise quiz is about to come. Or worse, cold calls when someone in the batch is engrossed in “meditation” and somewhere close to nirvana.

Classes over, it’s time to go back to the hostel. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is something I have preached to my son often enough and now it’s time for me to walk the talk. So, it’s off to the gym for a few games of badminton. They say that the gym is empty these days since the PGPs are not on campus and it’s just the VLMP, PGPEX and FP crowd who don’t number that much. So, that means more opportunities to play or rather in my case – more opportunities to get thrashed and massacred. But, I get the chance for some payback on Wednesday – when we play TT instead of badminton :).

Dinner is over and no, it’s not time to sleep. Far from it. Pre-readings for the next day. Cases to be gone through. A coffee at the night canteen and then back to the hostel. Different group meetings for different assignments. And yeah, it would help if you could go through any topics done in class that day. A quiz may be just around the corner.

Week 3 has ended. Some of us have gone though our evaluation for the ManComm course and hence some sense of relief (and a bit of time that led to this blog). Things promise to continue to stay as exciting (or is it a case of “Yeh to trailer hai, dost”).

In my earlier avatar of a corporate professional, time used to just fly past. Now, the importance of time starts to sink in (what if I had 5 more minutes of that FRA quiz :)). An experience to cherish. Off the beaten path – but there’s no other place I’d rather be in.