The last line of resistance that stands between you and MBA glory is the institute itself. One would think that being in the 99.9th percentile in an entrance test with half a million other applicants, and having an IQ that would make your father contemplate a paternity test should be enough to get in. But being alert and on your toes at all times is equally important, lest you miss a turn and instead of the campus, land up amidst the prospering lion population of the Bannerghatta National Park, located next door. Prospects of academic excellence and lucrative job offers start looking very bleak thereon. The reverse of this also holds true. A number of unsuspecting families, armed with picnic baskets and binoculars, have been known to crouch for hours behind bushes, hoping to catch a glimpse of the famed Bannerghatta lion, only to be tripped over by students taking an after-lunch stroll on the lush green campus grounds.

But it would be wrong to place the blame entirely on the tourists; for the 100 acre campus of IIMB does bear a striking resemblance to a wildlife sanctuary. As the official website boasts under ‘facilities for learning’, the campus overflows with ‘verdant, lush woods alternating with undulating landscaped gardens.’ By some curious logic, the architects of IIMB had decided that the best way to train future capitalist pigs of the country was to completely cut them off from the realities of the capitalism outside, and secure their impressionable minds in an environment that closely resembled the sets of M. Night Shyamalan’s movie, ‘The Village.’ ‘We need to ward off the evil commercial influences that lurk on the edges of the forest. We don’t want to corrupt their minds with the harsh realities of actual life, do we?’ must have hissed the chief architect, defending his idea of erecting a 20 feet wall all around the campus.

Thankfully, someone must have lobbied very hard against the idea of make-shift tenements as accommodation. Twelve hostel blocks, an administrative building and a few classrooms were added to the blueprint at the last moment, no doubt earning the strongest disapproval of the rest of the planning committee, and perhaps a punishment posting as Professor – HR, or some such completely made up title.

Riding through the campus gate toward the hostel blocks in a taxi and hearing the traffic noise gradually peter off made me heave a sigh of relief. The last few years of my life felt like a daze now. Looking back at three years of pretending to study physics in Delhi University, taking up tuition classes for MCA, MBA and all the three letter-courses just to have an answer to questions like, ‘So, what do you want to do with your life?’, I couldn’t help feel a little frightened. How had I survived all the uncertainty? How had I lasted this long without knowing where my career was actually headed? How had I managed to hold my own when the world around me seemed to have all but written me off?

‘Yeah…he did show some promise in cursive writing in class 1, but that’s more or less it,’ I could hear them saying behind my back. ‘He never really lived up to his potential, did he?’ It was amazing how others could gauge my potential within minutes of meeting me, when I myself was struggling to do so all my life.

But now, things were different. I had the last word, and had earned myself a tag as good as anyone I knew. I was to be an MBA graduate from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. I was finally out of life’s waiting room, and had boarded the train to my destiny. And my actual life was about to begin. ‘Suck on this, Varun!’ I thought to myself, as Frank Sinatra tap-danced around on my right shoulder and started crooning, ‘I did it my way…’

Read Chapter 3, Part 2: The Quartet (Next)

Read Chapter 2: BFF (Previous)

Photograph Courtesy: © Rishi S

Browse Timeline

• « 2.1 Chapter 2: BFF
• » 3.2 Chapter 3, Part 2: The Quartet