Relativity Revisited

‘Success’ is a relative masterpiece, so is competition. Had Einstein been an MBA, he would have loved to explain his theory of relativity with vignettes of competition and success and how they helped shape the world. Just when you are at the top of the world with an enviable 99.xx under your belt, you are hit by the reality of competing with the top-of-the-top from across the country for the final convert. Yes, sadly they are all 99 percentilers; probably with a better exposure, more maturity or simply superior knowledge.

"When in Rome do as the Romans do" and when in a group discussion do all the bullshit you can do!! Well, this is exactly what you feel when you are midst a GD with those howling scavengers fighting over minutiae points. You suddenly wake up to reality and start shouting some random jargon, constructed in such a way that the others find it hard to comprehend, let alone argue.

Somehow you scrape through the GD process and ‘expect’ a decent interview as that is one place you don’t have to directly compete with anyone; but the worse part is that you have to cope with the expectations of the interviewer. This is where my story starts. After a GD dominated by ideals and not ideas, I walked in for my HRM interview for XLRI. In my GD I had talked about Naxalites, their issues and their side and how they needed to be understood and not fought with. Being someone from the epicentre of Naxalism (Chhattisgarh), these issues touched my heart.

 Point blank; as soon as I entered the room the question was, “If a tribal does not want to join the mainstream, why are you hell bent on making him do so?” Stunned by the welcome, I took a breath and somehow answered it raising the emotional quotient of the issue, but the professor kept pressing, “Do you have any logic to support that argument?” Answering some of those (or at least trying to do so), I used the innocuous little word called ‘growth’ in one line and ‘progress’ in the other. As expected the next question was “OK Akshay, just differentiate between ‘growth’, ‘progress’ and ‘development’ in terms of HDI you have been talking all along; and for a satisfactory explanation you are in.” That one point in time is etched in my memory, perhaps for eternity; not for the explanation but the circumlocution on my part; that day I discussed all about growth and markets and humans and a humane gesture but pointed out the differences. It made me believe in myself and my ability to actually get into an MBA course. They finally took me ‘in’ as promised, in HRM and BM programmes (I joined BM though) and I thought that was that. That was the ultimate triumph I thought, and how wrong I was.

One month into the college and I relish those memories, those were the ‘not-so-competitive’ times, after 3 successive heart-breaks (read quizzes), those break-neck GDs and PIs look so much more pleasant in retrospective. The fight to stay afloat in a schedule of ‘n(n+1)’ activities in ‘n’ days seems tougher than a much talked about QT paper at XLRI. We all were winners to get into this place but to win here one needs that much more focus, commitment, competitive spirit and as the seniors would put it ‘passion’. “Put it into perspective”, they said, “the last success was the start and relatively inconsiderably tiny; what you do here will define you as an individual and your life ahead.”

Relate to relativity now?