Being in a B school keeps you on your toes. I’m always running around and doing so many things I completely lose track of why I’m actually doing the thing I’m doing. I’m having trouble prioritizing things. Do I study for the quiz or head for the alcom room to make my calls? Do I attend the meeting for the OB project or attend the meeting for the marketing project? Do I figure out how to make a decent profit loss account or do I research the next company that’s coming to campus for summer placements? Everything seems important, I want to do them all but I find myself doing something while wondering if perhaps I should be elsewhere.

There are those who manage to do them all and still find time for a basketball match. Something inside them is driving is them….and I’ve realized I don’t have it yet. There’s a part of me, which rebels at all the hard work. I’m a type B personality caught in a type A environment and I feel guilty about it.

I realize I came to a B school not for the academic learning or the placements. I came to a B school because I felt there were a lot of things about me, which I needed to change. I felt a B school would drive the dreamer out of me and turn me into someone who was assertive and got the job done. Now as I actually try to accomplish a dozen tasks a day, I long for the day I can just loll on the bed without a care in the world. Will that day ever come? What is more important to me? Getting the job done or sitting back and reflecting on life? Can I do both? Only time will tell.

At the end of 3 weeks, we were a limp demoralized lot. The faculty had taken pity on us initially and hadn’t objected too much to our corpse impersonations in class. As the weeks went by however they became more and more irritable and took to prodding those of who drooled on the table, far away in their own sweet world where no senior would bang on the door at 4 in the morning.

Now we found it impossible to sleep during the nights. The 3 weeks had turned our biological clocks inside out. We were wide-awake at 2 PM and colder than stone at 9 in the morning.

The faculty soon started adding to our trouble. Quizzes, exams, assignments and projects began rain down on us. Only now apparently, was real life at a B School beginning.

I spent the first week of my life at IMT leading the life of a hunted animal. I wasn’t alone in my misery; every first year student at IMT will have the memory seared in his brain forever.

Every morning we would be woken up at 6 to attend yoga. We would bend, stretch and groan until 7:30. After which we’d be given an hour to bathe, have breakfast and attend class. For the first time in my life, I faced the problem of sharing a bathroom with 16 individuals fighting a frantic battle against time. I bathed in the loo for the first 3 days.

Breakfast would be eaten in a daze. It was the best meal of the day but we were too bombed to notice.

The first week was supposed to have introductory classes. I say supposed to because none of us were actually conscious to notice. Classes were followed by lunch followed by an alumni lecture. We’d be left alone for a couple of hours and then dinner. Dinner was followed by presentations made by the various committees in college. It would be 1 in the morning by the time it got over. That when the horror started.

We would assemble at the amphitheatre and the seniors would come roaring out of their rooms, fresh and charged up at the time half the world was in bed. We must salute them, they said, wish them, respect them, a senior was always right, don’t you dare forget that. And remember, it is not morning until the classes have started. Nobody cares if its 5 in the morning, you still say Good evening sir, all right?

We saluted, we roared Good evening sir over and over again but they were never satisfied. You can’t say Good evening, at least sing for us, cant sing? Dance then. Stop stop! You call that dancing? Run around the ground, waving your arms shouting, “ It’s raining, it’s raining! Oh I love the rain!”

A senior would come, scan the group and pick the guys and girls he wanted. We’d be led to different corners of the ground and made to do his bidding. We’d start of by introducing ourselves. In the first week, I introduced myself about a thousand times.

For my first PDP (they never called it ragging, it was a personality development programme), I was asked to market ‘Grassy Swipes’, nature’s all natural toilet paper.

When the senior finally got bored of us, he’d send us of to another eager senior and the whole thing would start again. I was asked to enact Rakhi Sawant yelling at Mika Singh, Kareena Kapoor caught by the press kissing Shahid Kapoor. After which I was supposed to throw myself at the feet of some unsuspecting senior and weep “ Don’t leave me, don’t leave me, what will become of our unborn child?” I don’t know why, but I always got the female roles.

Sometimes the senior would take pity on us and send us back to the room. The sympathy was wasted because just after we went back to bed, another senior would bang on the door and take us out.

The ragging would go on till 5 in the morning after which we would be bid good night. We’d stagger back and collapse on the bed. At 6 it was time for yoga. Another day had begun.

I went an entire week without sleep, bombed out my senses, not hungry, not thirsty, totally immune to the fact that the campus was actually filled with lovely women. The 7 days went by like a horror movie played in slow motion.

Updates will follow soon.

I havent got around to really writing about my experiences at IMT yet but my friend Kshitij has taken out the time to do so:

introduction-of-characters

Needless to say I'm pretty flattered with his description of me :-P