Taking off in the MBA Flight

In the beginning of the movie Batman Begins, when Bruce Wayne finally scales the mountain and reaches Ra's al Ghul, he is huffing and panting.

Ra’s: Are you ready to begin?

Bruce: I… I can barely stand.

And then he gets kicked to the ground. A couple of more blows later, Bruce finally starts to defend himself, puts up a fight, and eventually faints.

This is the welcome a b-school gives to you, once you scale the mountain called CAT.

I wasn’t oblivious to this. I have heard friends talk about it. Most of you must’ve heard this too. But it’s not the same thing. It’s like the Matrix; you can’t be told what it is, you have to see it for yourself.

The first couple of weeks aren’t so bad though, when the only thing turning up the heat on you is the Sun. You walk around in campus, and survey the crowds for what IT guys would call leads and opportunities. There is an aroma of new found freedom in the air, and a proclivity towards being irresponsible. 

And then out of nowhere, you are expected to be athletes. A multitude of races are laid in front of you, and your mind starts to spin.

Clubs. Committees. Presentations. Exams. Competitions. CV. Placements. Placements. Placements.

On the very first day, I remember a line from the induction ceremony: “Most of you here; your lives have been graced with success till now. But beware; a lot of you will experience failure here in some way or the other.”

His words started making sense soon enough.

The feeling of complete worthlessness is a phase through which almost every MBA student has to pass. Regardless of what you have achieved before b-school, or how inhumanly talented you are, you will break. There is no escaping it. Winning all the races is out of question.

Yet the fact that some seemingly do better than others is undeniable. Some have that extra spurt of energy for whatever they do. In fact, experienced folks start feeling like a hundred years old, when kids fresh out of grad school run around and speak with over-exuberance. “Who’s that jumpy kid? I hate that bastard.”

Needless to say, extroverts run riot. Poor introverts, especially those who lack self-esteem, are left to question if they even deserve being here. I belong to the latter, and ended up with zero club/committee selections. A couple of selection tasks required me to online propaganda, or write boring articles with fancy words so that it is apt for a newspaper. I blatantly refused. In fact, most tasks will make you ask yourself, “Do I really want to do this? Is this really my thing?” Most of the people do it anyway. While some merely believe they can do it, others would see the incentive – CV points.

The importance of CV points is understandable, when you realize that your batch is full of people like you. It’s not class 9^th anymore, where you were the only one who could speak amazingly fluent English, or write poetry, play football, or play guitar, or have 90+ percent marks in 10^th and 12^th standard. Or even have all of the above. (Actually, not having 90+ percent marks is a crime you’ll pay dearly for throughout this life and the next seven or eight lives.)

I digress. Having gone through the turmoil of this first term, with an internship secured for next summer, I have realized one thing. One may call it a cliché, but that’s why they’re called clichés. They’re lessons we need to learn again and again.

What we have on our resumes doesn’t differentiate us. It’s our attitude that does.

MBA teaches us this critical lesson. Everyone’s paths will be crossed by falls and failure, regardless of your resume. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve broken down like a child myself. But I did not lose faith, thanks to the unbelievable support of my parents. When it mattered, especially during the summer placements, I had it together. It’s what Yoda from Star Wars would call the Force. The invisible shield that acts as a cocoon against all fear, doubt and disbelief; and keeps moving forward.

A word ought to be said about the people. We humans have always shown great unity in adversity, and it is no different for Term 1. Every 1^st year would agree that the seniors made a phenomenal effort to ease our burden, and we’re all encouraged to follow suit next year for our successors.

Life in MBA till now has been like an aircraft taking off, without its passengers wearing seatbelts. Our insides have been properly shaken and stirred, and the plane is now stabilizing into an auto-pilot mode. Hereon, we can either take control and choose our destiny, or sit back and stick with the auto-pilot.

Hereon, the world is at our feet. 

The Power Of Randomness

In one of my daydreams I've seen myself writing a book with the same title as this post. But like SRK says, kal ho na ho. Forgive me for not having a better quote.

How many times, my friends, have you associated something with luck? An average person would tend to believe atleast five of his friends who've 'made it' in life (whatever the hell that means), have had a fair share of luck.

What is luck, after all? A random event occurring in your favor? I think that's the popular opinion. And here's what I think..

As a kid I used to say I don't believe in luck, and as an adult I often claim I believe in randomness. There's a very subtle difference.

In my opinion, all wisdom starts from accepting that you're highly ignorant. Human beings have always justified ends from means. But nothing we say can be accepted as a timeless truth, where by timeless I imply something that is, always has been, and always will be valid.

Going by that assumption (since calling it truth would lead to a self-contradiction or a paradox), it comes to accepting the fact that, there are a great many things in this universe outside our control.

Mike Tyson once quoted - "Everybody makes plans, until they get punched in the face."

Ask yourself, how many instances can you recall having gone exactly as you planned? 

This, my friends, is called randomness. It is something that happens, seemingly out of place. When it looks to have advantaged someone's predicament, we call it good fortune. Otherwise we call it bad luck.

So luck is ultimately just a perception of the consequences of the occurrence of a random event.

Let me give you an example. I'm sure you've heard of the term negative publicity. Sometimes movies get famous (or infamous in this case) because they happen to hurt religious sentiments of a particular community. This inadvertently sometimes leads to greater anticipation for the crowds, and the movie ends up making more money than it estimated.

Here, before the movie was officially released, this event would've counted as bad luck. They could not foresee a certain scene affecting a certain group of people. But it did. What they cannot foresee, is whether the movie will ultimately be released or not. It is beyond their control. And depending on how this outside factor acts, the reaction to that scene will get labelled as good or bad luck.

If someone gets sent off in a football match, the team is considered disadvantaged, no matter how good the team is. But in some cases the sending off arouses the ten man team to perform even better, and they go on and win the game.

So what I'm trying to say is, there is no count of how many things are actually outside our control, but that does not change the fact that the perception is still upto us. People often use the phrase 'a blessing in disguise.'

"I make my own luck" - Harvey Dent, from The Dark Knight.

All of us tend to think of the immediate consequence of an event, but no one can foresee how something can change our lives forever. We tend to get depressed when the love of our life doesn't reciprocate the feelings. Or when we get rejected in interviews. This brings me to the idea of Hope.

Hope, is the belief that the consequences of the randomness around us, will somehow benefit us in the long run. That no matter how colossally our plans fail, there is something good at the end of it. 

And ironically, it is perfectly okay to hope, because of randomness. 

As a kid, Sidney Sheldon tried to commit suicide when he was 17. His father, having forgotten something (random event), walks back to the apartment and catches him in the act. Or more appropriately, before it. And this is what he tells him. 

'Life is like a novel. It's filled with suspense. You have no idea what is going to happen until you turn the page.'

I don't know a better line which captures the beauty of randomness. Having read his autobiography, Sidney Sheldon's life from that moment went on to live one of the most possibly enriched and envied lives.

I would like to give the readers the same advice. Many times in life, people will reject you. Events of heartbreaking capacity will happen to you, make no mistake. But imagine the opposite. Imagine things inexplicably swinging in your favor. Imagine all your dreams coming to life.

People or events don't intend to make you or break you. NOBODY can take the power of choice from you. The choice to hope or to dismay.

Embrace the power of randomness. A power that will make you laugh heartily at every unexpected event, man, woman or child who seem to think they decide your future.

A power that you can wield, to live life beyond your wildest dreams.

"Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."

- The Shawshank Redemption.