After a hiatus of near 2+ years, I’m back to posting and being active on wordpress again. Much of it has to do with how primitive and user-unfriendly the interface is, especially for the app, which nobody uses. A little though, also has to do with how I was occupied with pursuing an MBA degree for the past 2 years which rarely gave me time to breathe and settle in comfort in my bed. Even when it did, the mental chaos was far too much to let me write anything.
But NOW, that I am done with the degree. Get ready for TMI !!
WARNING: It’s going to be long, and not going to be funny. Skip in case you’re in for short and funny.
The above pictures are from my graduation and I guess I’d want to write a summary of the past two inactive years, even if for my own self in case nobody comes to read this 🤡
The Beginning
I quit my job in May 2021, for a life of riches and comfort, and increased sense of control.
…. and reduced sense of mental well being. The bottomline still being riches and comfort.
which began, with a training in discomfort.
The course began in the last week of june and till August 30th I studied in an online mode (for two months) at my home near the hills of Uttarakhand before taking off finally for Ranchi to reach Jamshedpur, to pursue the course on-campus since the curse of covid has pretty much subsided by then, or within control. In Hindsight, it was pretty much peaceful at home. btw, the institute is called XLRI, and is the oldest B-school in Asia, at 75 years of age !
My birthday was the first one celebrated on campus, under huge and severe restrictions, we danced for 4-5 minutes secretly until caught and stopped by the guard, and then drank inside a room till late night. A covert procurement of cake and some liquor made possible some memorable times.
I made some good friends, two very close ones, one of which didn’t last much long after offline course began (the person lasted, thankfully, the friendship didn’t, thankfully), and the other lasted a pretty long time before differences eventually came in. But happily! I kept making other new friends too, and while some went away, others came close ! ❤
It was a long trial and error before I finally found the ones that’ll stay. It’s all convergence, all natural. A graphical demonstration below
The Going
I got a really nice room (TFER 110) in the father enright’s residence. Intermingling wasn’t allowed then between men and women since they (the Jesuits of the Jesuit society who run the college) didn’t consider us as men and women, but rather, Bois and galz.
The academic rigour was maddening!
There were other rigours too, meanwhile, which I will enumerate:
- The Rigor of Academics, aforementioned
- The Rigor of getting a good company for internship and preparing for it by making CV and other things/preps
- The Rigor of social acceptance and being cool/relevant enough for the crowd, or finding your ‘Group’
- The Rigor of making and maintaining friendships
- The Rigor of Networking and not losing out on the important things
- The Rigor of finding love and maintaining it
- The Rigor of college committees and getting selected
- The Rigor of working in committees
- The Rigor of making time for your interests and pursuits, and finally
- The Rigor of keeping sane and catching up with all these things
This left almost zero time, and on days when it did leave some time, I scarcely had the mood (and a lot of time was spent on social media, I’ll admit, because we WERE required to be active and informed on social media all the time. This causes severe addiction and dopamine rush which is very hard to give up or control later once you’re in the habit )
I got placed in a BFSI company in Mumbai for the placements that were to happen in April- June for 2 months. The placements happened within a single day at the end of October. Those were some really tough times 😦
The Partying
Once the placements were done, it was all about partying. We had gotten used to the academic rigor, which never seemed to cease, and there were events going on at ALL times on the campus. Socializing was effectively thrust upon us. Committees needed serious commitment and hardwork too.
But once we learnt how to prioritize things (for eg. how I decided to deprioritize academics 🤡) , It was in control and even enjoyable at times. The college grows on you.
The parties were WILD. No other word is nearly as accurate. It was a symposium of the ancient Greek times, with alcohol and intoxicants flowing freely. There was a committee for Alcoholism and its propagation/faciliation too.
They started at around 10 in the night and went on till 3 AM. The first party went on till 5-6 am and people cleared the gounds at 7. These parties were held in a lawn called the JLT (Just Like that) Lawn, and were called the ‘Wet Night’. True to the name, they were, indeed, ‘wet’.
There were 5-6 wet nights every year. These were the parties where the entire college (~750 students) came together to drink, debauch and make merry. Apart from these there were group specific parties, and committee specific ones (with footfalls of 10-25 people). All in all, the parties, all of them, were a rage of epic proportions!
In Around November 2021, the campus opened its covid bubble, and people were allowed outside with a return time, and the parties went out of the college too, to Jamshedpur Pubs and discos.
Not to mention, the parties were also occasionally a source for issuing POSH and CASH complaints, especially the wet nights, where debauchery was at its pinnacle.
The Festivals and important events were also celebrated with great pomp.
The Trips
In October 2021, I happened to win two events conducted by a campus committee and with the prize money, me and my teammate and friend, went to a beautiful and serene trip to Kalimpong and Darjeeling in the hills, for 9 days. The curriculum was still online despite we being on campus, and we attended the classes online from there. Those were truly beautiful days.
The trip was a nice retreat since got live in farms and farmstays amidst nature and ate farm grown food.
Later, in January 2022, the third and weakest wave of covid arrived bringing another round of travel restrictions and lockdowns/curfews. The students were sent home, albeit for a brief period on a month and a half. I, along with four friends went to Kashmir on workation. We were planning on a very smooth and comfortable trip where we would study in the valley of Kashmir comfortably and go out sightseeing at other times. Optimistically, we planned for a month long workation.
However, the trip didn’t go that well, and we had troubles with the weather and the owner of property, including but not limited to lack of adequate heating facility due to which the stay was becoming increasingly uncomfortable, and the frequent power shortages due to which we weren’t able to heat up the mattresses and water, and charge our devices, and the weak internet which did not allow us a smooth online classroom and increased hindrance in group assignments.
The academic rigor also made it bad since we weren’t able to roam around with an unharrowed mind. Finally, some mishaps led to some of us leaving mid-vacation and we had to shift to a houseboat, which is somewhat claustrophobic. Not to insult the tradition, my phone broke down too, which made a bad vacation even worse, and we cut short the stay and left after having completed close to 15 days in the valley.
On the small positive, we got to make some good friends, even though for a short time, and sit without plans or ‘things to do’ which often plague a travel plan. I got to walk around the city on foot because of curfew, it was a good opportunity w.r.t. photography.
I came home and after a month and a half, went back, took the exams, and then began our Summer Internships.
(there were numerous other trips to come, to be talked about later)
I forgot to mention but, on the 31st of December 2021, I with the bois had created what would be the most lasting informal group which we called Emo Boiss of XLRI, or EMoXI, which brought heaps of fun in the lives of us 16 boys. I’ve come to think of it in similar terms to ‘Tawhid-e-Ilahi’ the fraternity, or as some call it, ‘religion’ that the Emperor Akbar founded.
The Summer
I had my Summer Internship in Bombay, and by a favourable turn of fortune got to stay rent free in a good and spacious service apartment in Bandra East.
The time in Bombay was one of the most fun and cherished time where I along with my friend Shef, who wasn’t a great chef, got to stay together and go on so many outings on weekends and weekdays alike. We cooked, watched TV, worked and had lots of fun when friends visited us.
Major outings included Imagica, the zoo, Elephanta caves, Prithvi theatre, random city tours, photography tours, beach days and evenings, and most enjoyable of all: the ‘night-out’s and sleepovers which started from cheap a bandra bar, involved local travel to Churchgate, and involved Bandstand, Marine drive, Gateway, and finally the morning 4 am train back to Bandra.
Bombay was a haven for street food, which doesn’t mean it has great street food, but rather, has a lot of it.
The vada-pao is an acquired taste which only Marathis appreciate, but personally, I love it. Along the beaches there are a great many stalls selling a variety of food items from all parts of India, I always used to have a barf-gola on the beach.
The Bombay chapter ended finally, and I went to Hyderabad to pay a visit to some dear and near old friends I hadn’t met in a while, before leaving for another wonderful trip.
The Overseas Trip
I, with my old friends, called Priya and Rohit, left for Vietnam, which would be my first foreign travel if Nepal isn’t counted.
I boarded a train to Delhi, met my friends, who were ready with the exchanged dollars there. We took a flight for Calcutta, splurged in the airport lounges at both places, and reached Ho Chi Minh city sometime late post midnight.
It was a fun 6N7D trip and one of the most memorable ones, for good as well as bad reasons alike but very very enjoyable after all! ❤
We took a flight to Da Nang, met out host Juno there, with his introvert dog ‘Bum’. A couple nights later we took a train to Dong Hoi, saw the Phong Nha Ke Bang natural caves in the national park , and then took a train to the capital, Hanoi.
After having spent a couple nights Hanoi, roaming the streets and sightseeing, photowalking and a day tour to the Ha Long Bay, we took a flight back to our respective destinations, which for me, meant XLRI.
Goes without saying that for a vegetarian like me, the food was a nightmare. I was surviving like it was a famine in Vietnam.
The Sophomore year
The next term had started and again the rigors came back but with an attenuated force, since in the second year, the subjects were considerably less, and we had gotten used by now.
The three trimesters of the 2nd year went by like a breeze. 4th term was occupied by the selection of juniors into various committees and their induction into the XL life.
The 5th was infested with various festivals, Dussehra, Diwali, Christmas and New Year, apart from the various fests and other big events led by committees, And the last in placements and emotional moments.
There were some sad moments too, when just 30 mins past the turn of the new year, a loose mirror fell on the head of Shef :(((((((((((((( and we had to hospitalize her, and see her wound healed. Fortunately the wound was only on the outside and nothing do with internally. A week long convalescence after the stitches at a friend’s (Snu) house with selfless care from her parents saw us celebrating her 22nd birthday back in the hostel with very people but very touching celebration. She healed completely in about a month.
During the 5th term, we went to a wonderful trip to Sikkim for 5 days, and later to Varanasi and Bodhgaya, spanning 4-5 days.
During this time, we also organized cycling trips (under the name CYCLAXI) to various nearby dams, most frequently visited was the Dobo dam, once even venturing as far away as Chandil dam, which was 35 kms away, on a regular bicycle without gears. This isn’t a decision that educated folks should make.
This bicycle mania also led to my mailbox in the form of a show cause notice once, when I took control of a staff bicycle by opening the lock with trick, and got caught in the camera enjoying an unlawful ride 🤡.
Other visits included a visit to Dalma wildlife sanctuary which is situated on a hilltop. It was very foggy on the top just like a hill station.
I’ve been very silent about academics, and very fittingly so. Also because nobody is going to remember any of it.
The last term also brought placement season back. The lateral and common recruitment process got us placed. Majority of the students got jobs in a single day, before evening, and by the next morning, entire college was placed in good companies.
The journey to this placement season did include many tense days, a lot of focus, hardwork and preparation, though not for the ones who had PPOs offered during their summers.
Finally, all things done, we realized that the time to pack bags and bid adieu was nearing, and we couldn’t have enough of OLTs.
One Last Time
Also called OLTs, were parties we celebrated to remember for our lifetimes. Ironically, there were multiple OLTs. The first one being the OLT wet night after placements and another, last wet night. Apart from these, there were multiple group-specific and committee specific OLTs.
There were a lot of Cock Studio Sessions (a by-product of EMoXI again) and lots and lots of drunk nights spent in revelry till dawn appeared.
The taste of OLTs was slightly dampened by the widespread influenza and fevers, everybody was either coughing or had fever/cold. Nevertheless, it was a very memorable time.
Finally the day came when exams were over, and people started leaving. For me, that was the most emotional time of as long as I can remember. I was teary eyed while leaving the campus, leaving behind friends who came to say goodbye at the gate.
We would meet again at the convocation a month later, and then a lot many times again in the coming months, years and decades, but not as conveniently, not nearly as easily. It would take planning to meet each other, and that would differentiate XL life from the real life.
That’s all Folks!
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