TO MOUNT EVEREST, THE MARIANA TRENCH, AND BACK – NEVER AGAIN.

I had good grades in school. There were some ups and downs, but mostly I was either at the top of the class, or in the top 5%. In other words, I looked set for an engineering or medical career – those were the only sensible choices for the ‘good’ students back in the 80s and 90s. However, I was petrified of chemistry, and as a vegetarian frog dissection grossed me out. So I chose the world of economics, commerce and business instead. Several friends and their parents were aghast at my choice. They called it a stupid move. I somehow stayed put, as I was clearer about what I was running from, rather than what I was running towards.  

Fast forward to the second year of University. I was equally lost. A few of my dad’s friends, when they had come over, told me about this trending MBA thing – you should do an ivy league MBA after your degree, they said. I vaguely registered this.

A few months later, I had a chance encounter with a family friend who was visiting from Mumbai. He was a few years older, and asked me what I was going to do after graduation. I mumbled something about an MBA. So how are you preparing for the test, he asked.

What test? I responded. Here, he said, and gave me a slip of paper on which he had scribbled – IMS, 1/45 Tardeo AC Market Building, Mumbai.  He said, write to them, buy a correspondence course, because without preparation, there is no way you’re getting into any ivy-league business school.

That little piece of paper spliced my life into two parts – before I received it, and after.

For context, I was in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh. No one from this mid-sized city had ever made it into an IIM (Indian Institute of Management) – India’s premier business schools. Most people thought it was foolhardy to even attempt to get into one of these. They thought I was stupid to even try. They tried talking to my parents to drill some sense into me. Luckily, I had school friends who had made it to the ivy league engineering colleges – the IITs. One of them had even ranked an All-India no.1 – a superhuman feat, if you know how tough the JEE exam for IITs is. They all encouraged me to simply ignore the naysayers. I clung on to that reassurance and set my sights high.

I worked harder than I had ever worked before. I even gave up the love of my life, cricket, for a whole year. Twelve months of consistent, hard effort later, I took the exam, on the 8^th of December 1991.

I knew, as I got up from my seat, that I had done well.

Come the 1^st of February, 1992 – a miracle. It was as if I had climbed Mount Everest. I had cleared the written exams, and was invited for interviews at not one, but ALL FOUR of the ivy league ‘IIMs’. I had made it through to the written exam of another ivy league B-school called XLRI as well. To say I was on cloud nine is to put it mildly. I was the talk of the town. The first person to have made it this far, in the history of the city!

I then travelled to Mumbai for some interview training, with the same training institute, IMS. That, however, didn’t go so well. The volunteering trainers, who were alumni of the same business schools I was applying to, were far from impressed. Even though I was the University topper, my academic answers were poor. I wasn’t convincing enough in any of the key interview areas. They made it quite clear that unless I pulled up my socks, there wasn’t much hope. I didn’t really take that warning to heart. After all, I was a star. I had been invited to interviews at all 4 IIMs!

The interviews took place in February 92. My head was filled with all that adulation from having smashed the written test. What could go wrong? I didn’t do much to prepare, and as a result, my performance was abysmal. Along the way, I had this sick feeling in my stomach that the interviews weren’t going well. Two of the four were particularly bad. But hey, the written score was given 50-60% weightage, what the heck, it couldn’t matter all that much. I couldn’t have been all that bad? My engineering friends reassured me again. Don’t worry, nobody works as hard as you did. But this time they were wrong. I wasn’t working hard at all.

The results were announced in April. I hadn’t made it anywhere.

In the 10 weeks that followed, my weight went up from 68 to 82 kilos. My spirit went down to the Mariana Trench. I mostly stayed at home and sulked. Friends came to visit me and offered condolences. My closest friends told me I should sit out a year and then apply again. I looked for jobs in the meanwhile, but even there, some of my ‘lesser’ batchmates got placed, while I was rejected. To add insult to injury, I had been rejected by a so-called ‘mid range’ business school too. I knew I had been too cocky and overconfident in that interview, almost deliberately, as that business school was too ‘insignificant’ for me. I had just laughed it off. I wasn’t laughing now.

It’s fair to say that this was probably the worst period of my life. I was alone, dejected, my spirit broken, my reputation shattered. I had nowhere to go, as I had made no plan B. I cried. My mother cried with me. She felt devastated for me. I wasn’t a bad human being, she said. I did not deserve this.

Then, one afternoon, on the 1^st of July, as I was doing another mock test, going through the motions, the doorbell rang.

A Sikh gentleman from Blue Dart had a courier for me.

It was a letter from IIM Lucknow, one of the ivy league schools I had applied to. This year, they had decided to add 10 more seats, and I was one of the people they had extended an offer to. If I was still interested in joining the business school, please could I ensure that I was on campus at 9am on Saturday the 4^th of of July?

And so, just like that, all the doors of opportunity had opened up. I was back on Mt. Everest. Life had changed forever.

Even to this day, I’m not quite sure what to make of the whole experience. Should I remember this as a triumph? The story of how a nondescript boy in a low profile city dreamt big, ignored all the naysayers, and made it? While I’m proud of being an alumnus of my business school, I’m not proud of the fact that I almost didn’t make it. I tremble when I think of that period. I never want to be caught out for being so cocky again. I never want to be in the ‘if only..’ position again.

Looking back, I guess the whole experience has profoundly shaped my personality. I don’t take success for granted. I seldom underprepare for anything – a meeting, a presentation, an interview, or even a visa appointment. I never count my chickens before they hatch.

More importantly, though, I have spent a significant portion of my professional life looking for these bright but slightly lost souls. In 1995 I joined the IMS community of alumni trainer volunteers. I taught classes and conducted hundreds of mock interviews over the next 11 years. My journey as a teacher, Mentor and trainer continues to this day, in other aspects of life. I try to do my bit to ensure that they don’t make the mistakes I made. In essence, I try to be that person who gave me that address.

I have bittersweet memories of the whole experience, even thought it changed my life and made me who I am. If what I learnt from it has prevented someone else from going through it, I guess it was worth it in the end. But would I want to go through it again? Never.