God has his own ways of slapping you and then laughing right at your face. Only one day after my CAT 2010 results were declared, I found myself visiting a friend who lives just beside Mittal house.
IN FRONT OF MITTAL HOUSE IN 'the dying city' KOLKATA
(in keeping with ideas being more important i've not shown my face)
(in keeping with ideas being more important i've not shown my face)
When you score a miserable 75 percentile in CAT (Indian management entrance examinations)forget IIMs, you wouldn’t even get a seat in a decent MBA college , no not even in the top 25. And here I was just the day after the declaration of my failure, in front of the family house of a man who could easily be called the greatest businessman of my generation. Running your business (and a big one at that) in Europe is not easy especially when you are an Indian. Surrounded by people who loathe your very race (French president Nicolas Sarkozy had reportedly said “now French industrialists would have to bow in front of Indian industrialists to get a good price for steel” when Lakshmi’s Mittal Steel took over Luxembourg based Arcelor) yet coming out to be a winner sure is a test of your character. Mittal made one of the greatest companies in Europe through the biggest merger in steel history and is now the richest man in the U.K. Ironical for me to pass by this man's family home just a day after I was intimated I hadn’t cracked the MBA entrance (CAT examination is considered the toughest examination in the world). You think of how Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and yet changed the world but your heart knows you fool yourself in saying that(most Indians admire Americans and I am no exception).
Still pinning my hopes on another MBA college FMS, New Delhi hoping the dean is impressed by what I wrote in response to "Why an MBA?”
“Bent upon making everything that can be made in my country; I wish to enroll in an MBA course. I wish to utilize the placement that your esteemed institution offers to understand how the engine of a multinational corporation works and utilize that knowledge in taking the small business that my father runs to new heights. Sir, knowing fully well the juncture our country is in right now, I deem it fit not to seek a mere corporate job through an MBA, but to provide jobs and become a part of India’s growth story.”
My friend laughed after reading it remarking “If only the world run not on what people did but on what they thought”. Depressed and sad, one more year of toil before a shot again at the management entrance. When you have faced failures all through out your student life, it hurts little to add one more. From studying in a college with not such a good reputation, to getting a no from the only girl you had ever fallen for, you suddenly start to remember these things (weird how these thoughts suddenly come to haunt you even more in tough situations). It becomes even worse when all your siblings study in some very good colleges in India of the likes of Miranda House, New Delhi; Sri Ram College of Commerce, New Delhi and St.Xaviers College, Kolkata (the latter happens to be Mr. Laxmi Mittal’s alma mater) Failure in cracking the MBA entrance in the 1st shot is just one more feather to the ‘cap of shame’. You suddenly just want to break free. You question but you simply have to go on be it with a heavy head, a head full with the burden of failures, you go on trying – trying to rectify the errors you notice, desperate to not fall out of the race of being a part of your nation’s march.
Funny but true: Only a beautiful girl's euphoric face could rid you off this sadness momentarily.
Fine now?
Britain - World’s Greatest Tyrant Ever?
Indies abroad
acsent For the first time across the Himalayas
Britain - World’s Greatest Tyrant Ever?
Indies abroad
acsent For the first time across the Himalayas
