Students Corner
We feel proud to share that our First-year PGP Student, Mr. Anirudh Srivatsa was selected for the prestigious Aditya Birla Scholarship for AY 2019-20.
NURTURE YOUR NATURE
-Chetana Pawar
PGP 2019-21
It’s a never-ending process..
Calculating the statistics
Forecasting the weather
Figuring out patterns
Guessing the next ones
No matter how much
I read the information
Study the cases
Do the experiments
You never fail to surprise me
That calm surface of
water hiding a whirlpool
Mundane tides resulting into Tsunami
Stable land cracking into parts
Breezing air leading to cyclone
All of these are
vivid indicators
You are simply unpredictable
With patterns, nature, results and so on
Riding everywhere with surprise mode on
And here I am, still
keeping the hope alive
Wishing that someday I will get them right
Calculations, patterns, guesses and probabilities
And will take care of everything in vicinities
Nurture your Nature
Around and surround
Leaves of tree
Leaves of life
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Crimson
-Shreyosi Samanta
PGP 2019-21
The loud honking of the car jolted Shakuntala Devi out of her reverie. She looked out to find herself stuck in traffic on Central Avenue. The air-conditioned interiors of her Uber had caused her to dose off as heatwaves lashed across the city on a hot sticky afternoon. She looked at her watch. I am going to be late, she thought. Shubhro will reach before I can make it to the airport. Shubhro, her son, was returning home from Mumbai after almost 6 months. His new assignment had kept him so busy that it took him months of scheduling and rescheduling for him to squeeze in a few leaves to come and see his aging mother. Every day of those six months she had wanted to hold him close and brush his hair just like she did in his school days, but she never voiced it out loud because she knew that keeping him close would only mean holding him back. This old ruin of a city, boasting of great big minds of yore has nothing to offer to the brilliant minds of today. She knew that she had to let him go, for a chance at better career opportunities and a better life. And Shubhro had never failed her, always rising up to her expectations, giving her more than she would ask for. Until last night! Ma, I want you to meet someone, he had said. And her world had come crashing down.
Shakuntala Devi was married, the old fashioned way. The matchmaker would find potential grooms and he would come to see her, the whole family in tow. There would be rows of shoes outside the drawing hall and she would come out with hair plaited and saree perfectly draped holding a tray of snacks. These “exhibitions” continued till she met the family of Mr. Gopal Mukherjee who finally “accepted” her. Before she knew it, she found herself clad head to toe in a Benarasi, her head smeared with crimson red and her feet dipped in redwater, standing with her new husband in front of the archaic Mukherjee Mansion, waiting to take her first steps inside the house as her mother-in-law performed the welcoming ritual. Seems like an eternity has passed since then; the archaic house replaced by a modern high-rise inhabited by strangers and her husband taken by heart attack.
Almost ten years have passed but she still remembered everything as clear as daylight. That day too it was only one phone call which drained all happiness from her life. Gopal Babu went to his office and never came back. By the time she reached the hospital, he was gone. She remembered feeling completely helpless..lost….She had come to rely on him in ways she never understood and his loss left gaps she never knew she had. She had loved her husband. Not in the butterflies-in-your-stomach way, but in a way aptly explained by the new author she tells her students about in school, John Green. ‘She fell in the way you fall asleep, first slowly, then all at once’. His absence left voids in her heart.
Shubhro was there too, old enough to feel the grief but too young to understand what to do. Something snapped in him that day, like his molecules shifting and rearranging themselves. He matured overnight but at the same time, he lost his connection to his family. And she was so taken up by her own grief that she never realized that she was losing her son. Maybe a part of what was happening today was her fault too.
Kids nowadays don’t marry according to their parents’ choices anymore, her colleagues would remind her. You have apps for these things now. Shakuntala knew that she would have to one day face such an eventuality. However, in her heart of hearts, she still hoped that she would be able to choose a perfect daughter-in-law for her son, just like her mother-in-law had done. She thought of all the heirloom she received from her mother and mother-in-law which she had intended to pass on to the girl she would choose. No use thinking of all that now!
By the time she arrived at Gate 3A/3B the display board showed that Shubhro’s flight had already landed. She looked around to see if he was amongst the crowd of passengers outside but could not catch a glimpse of his face. Did he leave? Did he think that his mother would be so angry that she would not come to pick him up at the airport? Did something go wrong? A thousand unpleasant questions flashed through her mind when she finally spotted him. He was wearing a white Kurta with Jeans. He looked leaner than before and there was a stubble of a day or two on his face. She rushed to greet him but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the young man standing next to him. Thin and with a boyish look, he was considerably shorter than her son’s 6’2″ frame. Brownish skin with thickset glasses gave him the look of an Indian version of Harry Potter. Last night’s conversation kept playing inside her head like a loop. “Ma, I want you to meet someone. His name is Abhay. He is my beloved, my other half. I think he is my soulmate and I want to spend the rest of my life with him. But not without your blessings. Please tell me you will come, please.” Alarmed by the silence on the other side, he went on to frantically explain how he had discovered he was gay whilst in college and how he had tried to dissociate himself from his feelings, only to realize that it increased the misery. Meeting Abhay changed everything. He was finally able to embrace who he truly was and found peace and happiness.
On the other side, Shakuntala’s mind was a blur. Growing up, Shubhro had retreated into a shell. She had attributed this change to the untimely death of his father. Little did she know what he was really going through! You read about them in the papers, few lines on cheap newsprint about “queer” people. She would often just skim the headlines, not giving a second thought to what she read, until now. You see, those things only concerned other people, strangers, not the ones you know or love. No! How! How could she never know?! Had she really been that bad a mother?!
Shubhro was indeed happy to see his mother. His face broke in a sigh of relief. She gave him a quick hug. However, her eyes were trained on Abhay. Abhay, she chuckled, Fearless! However, behind those thick glasses, she could see the look of pure terror. His eyes were trained on the ground and he was too afraid to even lookup. The sun was creeping towards the horizon now, the sky slowly turning red. She remembered standing with her husband in front of the archaic Mukherjee Mansion, waiting to take her first steps inside the house as her mother-in-law performed the welcoming ritual, her eyes staring down at her own reflection in the crimson water. She remembered her heart pounding and tears choking her throat.
It was almost like shedding her own skin, giving up on everything she had known to become someone else. It was like jumping across a bottomless gorge, taking a leap of faith. She could feel the burden of questions that would come, fingers that would be pointed, hush hush gossips that would go on to haunt her everywhere she went. But she knew she had to stay strong, for the sake of her son and for the sake of a terrified young boy who had given up on everything he knew and loved to be standing in front of her on a hot summer afternoon. She gently touched Abhay’s shoulder and conjured the best smile she could manage. He gave her an awkward smile. “Abhay, right? We have not had the good fortune to meet. I am Shakuntala, Shubhro’s mother. My son speaks very highly of you. I am sure you must be hungry and tired. Let’s head home. I hope you like Bengali food because there is a lot of it waiting for you! Come, let us go!”
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A New Journey Begins At IIMB
-Vijay Sharma
EGMP 51
I have ‘X’ years of work experience; shouldn’t I be promoted into management?”
My manager answers, “You don’t have ‘X’ years of experience, you have been using one year of experience for ‘X’ years.”
I was shocked to hear that at once!
Introspected and realized that I could hardly gain any new experiences in a few of my previous job; I decided to make a shift from here – to pursue some newer skills every day so that I can ask my managers to utilize these newer skills to help them day-in-day-out. I started saving up some amount of time to acquire some newer skills and brushing up my acquired skills at the same time. And trust, the results were tremendous.
The first thing I learned from the program was about ‘Myself’. I am not the person I thought I was. On the first day of orientation, and during the immersion week, I happened to meet multiple distinct biological entities carrying versatile competencies and skills that are important for job performance and career success. Not very Introvert, but Type A, Agreeable type… I always thought I knew exactly who I was, but looking at other classmates and bulging faculties, I realized that I was wrong. I only knew part of myself. It was hard to accept at first. But when I started to embrace reality, I started to think about how to improve my disadvantages and utilize my advantages. I think it is a good way for me to grow.
Another important thing I am learning here is to reach out and network with multifaceted people coming from divergent fraternities and backgrounds. The merit is obvious since its IIMB. Starting from discovering insider information, such as job vacancies, exploring new opportunities, incubation to domestic n international economic and other issues, and what not? However, that is not the whole story. To simply network with people does not guarantee you will enjoy all the benefits. To network with classmates and alumni provides an opportunity to show your value and what impact you can bring to the organization you work for. Meanwhile, let the managers also take this opportunity to figure out whether you are a good fit to be endorsed into management. In my opinion, from the company’s perspective, an ‘EGMP’ from ‘IIMB’ will all have the necessary knowledge by the time one completes the course.
Last but not least, work hard and live lavish. As a working professional in today’s competitive environment, we know exactly how to work hard. But most of us don’t know how to “live”. Country like India is overly populous and the competition is very intense from the first day we start at anything for that matter. When at school, our teachers and parents always taught us that we need to be the best student in the class and we need to spend every minute studying. But the situation here becomes a little different once you are exposed to the work environment and then again back to focused and structured learning, we somehow lose the grip to focus on study. At work, we are smart and hard workers, but when it comes to focusing a comprehensive thorough study, we become dumbs. At the same time, we also have to live and enjoy with our family that we have formed by now. So it seems to be a more un-balanced and shuffled lifestyle.
-Vijay Sharma
EGMP Batch 51
You can find the same in my Linkedin post
