The "Summers' Journey" : Getting Listed

Right from my childhood I have this bad omen of not being able to find my name in lists displayed on notice board. Lists containing the names of successful candidates. Whatever 'list' on which I got listed were not the paper driven ones, what I mean is: I have had success finding my name in e-lists of successful candidates but not the physical lists. In fact I dread searching for my name in them.
The reason for starting this blog with this piece of crap is because most of the shortlist of companies for the summers process are provided in the physical lists.
McKinsey was the first to come up with its list, BCG followed soon. And I had luck with neither. Though I never had much of hope with them, but the sight of people congratulating each other for being listed did bother me. ( JEALOUS??? Is it inhuman to be jealous ).
Let me put it over here, throughout this period of "short lists" - the run-up to the final day, I had my luck following a peculiar sinusoidal pattern. It started from a trough and whenever it was at the pick I had a plethora of calls and then again trough.
My Luck started favoring soon as the first call that I got was from A.T.Kearney and HSBC on the same day. Macquarie ditched me. It was hard to understand their shortlisting criteria. Bain followed suit giving me a call and suddenly I had three calls inside my kitty. No mean achievement considering that it was just the beginning of the season.
I soon got to wake up from my slumber as I started down the downward slope of my Luck Curve. Looking back I found I have two consulting shortlist which I never believed I would be able to convert and just one i-Bank shortlist. In the meantime I had lost out on JP Morgan, Barclays Capital and A D Little. Oho and Rothschild had not shortlisted me in their first list (Which was a strange piece).
The first derivative of my luck curve once again showed positive signs when the next day I got a shortlist from ABN AMRO, I was really happy with this one for I was among just 12 shortlisted for the same. One thing worth mentioning over this list is, it had a strong "Bong-Connection" associated with it. About 8 of the 12 were either Bengali or were from Calcutta.
The next day was the peak for me as I had three more short lists. Rothschild had modified its', and the other two were biggies!! Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.
HUMMM!!! I was restricting myself with the dream of getting about 3-4 calls and at this moment I had 7 and still about a quarter of the day-0 shortlist yet to come.
I remember making a comment at this point "I don't need any more short list ,for If I am not able to convert one out of 7 I cannot convert 1 out of 20". Though The statement was true to my heart it became true to my destiny as I did not get a single more shortlist. Temasek, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Deutsche all gave me good kicks on my ass. The "Kicks" which charged me up to prepare even harder.

The "Summers' Journey" : An Autobiography in One Page

I had always believed that I have enough credentials and accomplishments, for a lot many people to envy. Never I had fallen harder flat on my face. The shortcomings got evident when I could fill my multi page master bio-data by hardly two and a half pages. I was shocked to say the least the amount of work almost everyone else had done in the form of organizing events, publishing papers, watching live Black Panthers - No Offense Meant, Just a Summary of all the other points that lit up a CV - I had done practically nothing in my life, apart from being way too technical, and playing a few games at the institute level. In the meantime I came to know that my manager at Fluent (My previous workplace) had just left the company putting me into further trouble. He was the only person who knew the exact nature of work that I had done in the company and now I knew a certificate of that would be hard to get.
Never the less I got to extract some solidity through some of the work that I had done in my teens as my mentor could find some light in them and used that to lit up my lackluster autobiography.
While writing the final one page CV I did not face the kind of dilemma others felt. I had a few points in my master version and did not have any doubt on which one should get into the exclusive list and which one should not. Again thanx to my mentor the initial drafts were prepared and they looked good to me. However this satisfaction was short lived. I made the mistake of taking multiple opinions regarding my CV. Some people were of the opinion that my CV lacked SPIKE, some would ask me to remove certain items which I felt were my strongest points and instead add some crap. With each passing day I felt more and more depressed as I did not get a single positive opinion regarding the quality of my CV. In the meantime I was constantly trying to bring out that SPIKE which I practically could not.
Finally I decided to get back to those people who would understand me and they were the IIT KGPians. One of them is an I-Banker himself. Got some tips from him and the much elusive solace that my CV is good from one of seniors from KGP and IIM-C. By this time I had reverted back to the CV that my mentor helped me prepare. I was sure that I will get at least one or two short lists from the SLOT 0 companies and if luck favors I could get 3.
One thing was clear at that point and that was I would need to fight it out. So the preparations began !!!!

The "Summers' Journey"

When does one stop worrying about himself, about everyone else, about everything else. Instead enjoys every bit of the stage called life. Let me put some milestones which everybody believes would end a man's woes.
"Get through IIT and life would be smooth"......"What is SMOOTH????"
"Get a good job, and voila!!!!"......"No way this bloody job is for the thick heads"
"Crack CAT (Go through my previous blogs and you can understand how much it meant to me)...and MONEY --> HONEY"......"Cracked it to find 280 people spanking their own a****, having group meetings, presenting cases, and "AND WHAT"..no one knows the answer to these WHYs, WHATs, etc"

Comes Summer Placements (Or was it always there???)

And here comes my post on the Summer Placements in the IIMs through my eyes. A process which finally is supposed to open the gates to stardom (martyrdom??) for some of the people. The answer to the question "Who wants to be a millionaire". For the last four months the advice that I am constantly getting is "crack a good Summer and you would have nothing to worry about" DejaVu..So the story begins.
Since this is going to be a relatively long story, I thought of breaking it down into a few episodes. The episodes are coming next.

Un-getting Fluent

Back to good old college mode. Back to good old 'westernized' form of living. Yes I am speaking about the body clock. There has been a complete reversal of whatever changes that took place in my daily schedule in Pune. I have not slept before 3 for the last two and a half weeks. Life has become hectic to say the least and people say it is only going to get worse.
Oh My God!!! And I am writing a blog.
Oh My God!!! And I actually played three games today : Volley, Footer and then Cricket...somehow resisted the temptation of TT. And to make matter worse I have loads of catching up to do in the form of CASES, and everything else that is expected from a B.School student.
The starting lap of my run in IIM C has not been good, I have not done well in the first quiz that took place. I have been sort of depressed for the last few days. And the worst thing is, those are the kind of feelings which I cannot share with anyone.
I only hope that there are better days ahead.

Graded "A C L K " . I have the world at my feet.

The world is best viewed from the top. When you look up a mountain, nothing but the fear of failure comes into the mind. But at the top, everything seems beautiful and accomplished. Recently to me life has become something of being at the top of Mt Everest. And looking back to the course that I followed in scaling this great height, It looks nothing but amazing. I am not sure how much far fetched it might seem, but the kind of satisfaction that I had after getting final offers from both IIM A & C, can only be understood by a mountaineer. Formal MBA course at the IIMs would start at the last week of June, but I feel management education started the day I started taking the MOCK tests back in August. The pressure associated with taking tests every weekend, the fine balance that one needs to make in the CAT, the rigors of GD PIs, and finally the mental torture of waiting for the results indefinitely, makes one better prepared for a career in management.
And finally when the results are so sweet that you have the luxury in choosing between the bests, the success seems sweeter. It is for the first time in my life I am having a sweet dilemma ,the dilemma of choosing between A and C. To say the truth I am enjoying it. I am enjoying it because It is a win win situation and the difference hardly matters. And this is the reason why in spite of having enough accomplishments in my life this is being at top of the world.
People often ask me Why MBA?? Is it money or is it a natural career choice?? Only I know the actual answer, and after giving many twisted mugged answers to the interview panels I thought about the world of blogs to be the real confession box. The reason is simple: I Want to Shine, I Want to Shine Bright. Weird?? Yes weird but that is the truth. I believe I am an under achiever, be it the WBHS , WBJEE, IITJEE, or even for that matter my performances in B.TECH & M.TECH I have never performed to my true potential. This is pay back time. I want to shine being an MBA which I somehow feel I would not be able to, with a B.TECH/M.TECH.
These are the last days in Pune, trying to enjoy as much as I can and recharging my batteries to run my heart out on the last lap of my career building. All the MICHAEL JOHNSONs out there (Leading Me??) BEWARE and RUN.

Reawakening

It has been a long time since I made my last post. In between the urge to write something was felt twice, but somehow both of them resulted in drafts. It would be hard to say whether I am going to complete this one. Giving it the best shot. However I have decided to a real long post. So much so that it gets utterly boring.

CAT
It is history now. Tasted success at last. Though I must say I have been luckier this time.

Apni ASHA (Puns are intentional....Warning: Might not be suitable for all ages or tastes)

This is the episode which would be part of my dreams for a long time to come. I should get into the details over here.
19th December was the date when we started the GOA trip. It was organised by our company. This was my second trip to this majestic place, however my first visit was at an age when it would have been precocious on my part to appreciate the real beauty of this part of our country. Great expectations were associated with this trip. Expectations to be lucky enough to find the babe of our dreams, etc, etc. And the expectations got fuelled when we reached the resort. It was inter continental Grand Resort, which had a private beach and thus many "VIEWS" to get ourselves charged. Digital Cameras got handy, though I was always a bit against disturbing these sleeping beauties. -- Let them enjoy the sun , and they will let us enjoy the beauty of creation. --- The result was within no time "curtains" were drawn.

It was during this time I got to see Shannon Elizabeth shooting for her next film. It was a sort of underwater kiss scene, and the hotel pool was supposedly the deep sea. We enjoyed the shooting specially the expressions of Shannon after taking each shot. :-D.

It was finally the last afternoon of our stay. And all our hopes of meeting someone special were just fading away. People were busy going for site seeing, while myself with a few more "frustu" public decided to spend the evening on the beach. The reason was far too simple. There are enough places in this country where you can enjoy the beauty of mother earth. And we did not want to waste this precious time of ours.-- Perhaps mother earth understood our prayers. ---
"ASHA"...That is what we had, and that is what we returned with. It is on this afternoon that I ( I don't want to share) met that girl of our dreams. She was beautiful to say the least. And fortunately she was resting on the "wooden rest bed" just beside me. I initiated a conversation. She was nice to talk to. She was an Australian with some indian connection. And her name "ASHA"...Though there were three other Kabab me Haddi-s during this conversation, they were more of listeners, and were initially more interested in going back to hotel rooms or to the pool. Before imaginations start running away. Let me tell you this girl was on her honeymoon. It was the simple fact of meeting such a beautiful girl ( I do not want to mention over here that she was in a two piece bikini ) and talking to her gave me a satisfaction of a lifetime. One thing I have understood is Beautiful Indian Girls somehow has got an air about themselves, Non Indians don't have that and that is what I liked about this girl more. Our conversations ended when one of our senior employees asked me to join for a game of volleyball. I wanted her to join. Though initially she agreed, but may be the sight of large number of hungry eyes turned her off. This caused our separation.
It was just longing after that. Thought of a hell lot of ways of meeting her again. I should mention over here that Hemant was always by my side during this longing time. Though he had his own interests as well. ;-). The only though that she was on her honeymoon turned me off.
Hey the story does not end over here. It was a temporary period of fame for me when the next day we were on the lounge for checking out, when the Goddess quietly came up and was standing just behind me. Every eyes were on me, and it took me some time in understanding the situation. I turned back and found her smiling. --Oh my God she has recognised me!!!!--. We talked for some time, Sorry she talked for some time ..And the suddenness of the situation got be dumbfound. Once she wished the final goodbye, the only thing that I remembered her telling me was that she was heading for the beach. Since we still had some time, I straightaway headed for the beach, could not find her. Could not find her though. I was later told that she was actually sitting on the lounge at that time.

After returning to Pune, I only had loads of memory. Not a single photo, not a single way to contact her again. She was BEAUTIFUL. Soon the image of her beauty will completely fade away from my mind. But the memories of this meeting never would. The next few days I searched her in Orkut -- in vain. One thing that came to my mind later on was We never spotted the honeymoon couple together, I mean we never saw her husband. Was she telling the truth??? How does it matter anyway...