Back to B School

On one lazy winter morning, I passed by my school while going to the office. It was 10:00 but sun wasn’t quite visible yet and it was all foggy. The chilly breeze was making me shiver even in my fat jacket. I stopped for a while to peep through the gate and it reminds me of a time in school. I am chatting with my best friends and sipping through a coffee, sharing every bit of myself and laughing on the stupid stuff. This is all what we used to do the whole day and we still couldn’t wait to meet the next morning. All these memories gave me a quick flash of my life from high school to college, to corporate life. After battling through series of exams and interviews as I stepped out of college and now with the acceptance from a top rated MBA institute, these word keep ringing in my head “yeah! I am going back to school”. May be it’s a business school, but I choose to concentrate on the school part for now.

School was a platter full of bitter sweet tastes, memories I can never forget. For most of the people high school is where all the things happen for the first time, bunking classes for doing nothing, movies with friends and most importantly…first crush. Then in college all the things happen again, but at another level. Bunking every alternate class, going to movies you don’t even know the names of and first crush becomes forever love. For me High school was all about “How to”. All my energy was focused on how to get good marks in exams, how to make my parents proud, how to talk to that girl in the class and how to get into a good college… After getting into the college, I made a conscious effort to stop indulging into any kind of cerebral exercise and it all becomes about "How not to". All of my energy was focusing on…..how not to flunk the exams, how not to get caught when I lie and.....how not to get dumped!!

While in college, I wished to get over with it soon and start with my professional life. Then when I too did join the rat race and became a Naukri-wala…. I thought about the time I had spent in college. I remembered knocking myself out in the middle of the week not worrying about tomorrow, wearing different football club jerseys every other day for which I could have been killed anywhere in Europe, chatting till three at night and staying half asleep in the class... and many things like that which were long gone. Office seemed to be full of pot-bellied bald guys, wearing black leather formal shoes with the denim jeans, having espresso every hour just to keep their eyes wide open and saving themselves from falling asleep on their laptops, which if would break, would cost them their whole month of 9 to 6 job. If you want to see how the world would look like if apocalypse would ever happen and everybody turns into a zombie, my office would give you the best picture and for that matter any corporate office. One more thing which I hate was to tell people that I am no longer a student. People expect a lot of money from you which you do not really have. Earlier I used to easily save myself from police walas with even `20… but now that they know that I am working in a big corporate, they expect a big bribe.

College is full of extremities, extremely ambitious and extremely in love. I was madly in love and looking at her beautiful face was my top most priority each morning. Then I used to spend rest of my day figuring out classes to bunk to spend most time with her. She was the one who made the stars in the sky shine a little brighter for me. All that ended soon as the college got over an in no time I found myself sitting in front of, as they call it in IT, workstations with pupils dilated to maximum because of all the caffeine in my blood, mind numb with all those feeling long gone. All of that seemed to never come back again and I was on this oblivious ride to become the fat, ugly working stiff. This letter in my hand is my saviour. I can already experience the exhilaration of the roller coaster ride lay before me. My mind is flooding with feeling of excitement and anxiety. Yeah I am going back to school, a B-school- piles of workload, crazy shopping sprees, crates of beer and endless cups of coffee, this is going to be some ride and yes, I paid my dues.