Going back to IIM A -Part 1

Sometimes the hardest journeys you undertake are not the ones that tax you physically. They are the journeys you take inside yourself. Confronting your biggest fears, overcoming your prejudices, letting go of past slights.  Forgiving others, forgiving yourself.  

When I got admitted into IIM A 17 years ago, it happened abruptly, unexpectedly. It was a sudden turn on a life path I had intended to take somewhere else. As I stood shocked, opening my admission letter- my mother mirrored to me what I felt deep inside – This had been a lucky fluke. I did not deserve to go.

My brother, an IIM A alumnus himself –and my chief supporter through the preparation process – warned me that I was underprepared for the challenge that lay ahead.  He suggested I give up my admission and go on and do other things. Come back and attempt CAT a few years hence.  Luck does not shine twice. I was not willing risk testing my fate again. Besides, how hard could life really get ? 

If you have only walked short distances and don’t know how to cycle or swim, imagine signing up for a triathlon.

A few weeks into IIM, as everything I knew about life, people, effort, academics, and myself underwent a churn and life spiraled irrevocably out of control, my greatest fear became my living reality. I was a fake. I did not deserve to be here.

The all-star company did not help. I was awed by my fellow batch mates. There were IIT studs and CA rank holders, economics toppers and corporate high fliers. And academics were not their only forte. Junior sporting national champs rubbed shoulders with rock star musicians. Singing sensations with national quizzers. And here I was: a middler. An average B.Sc. biology grad with no real talents to boast of. More average than most in this hyper talented, hyper driven place.

As I struggled to cope, and survived on the largesse of my Profs unwilling to fail me and saved by my groups who covered for my lackluster performance, my self-confidence took a fatal blow. I became hollow, empty. Over time, my image of myself, I saw mirrored back to me, sometimes amplified in the behavior of several of my batch mates: lazy, maybe even a little stupid.  A reputation I did nothing to alter. An image that would haunt me for the next 15 years.

IIM A was also my training ground: my first lessons in adulthood. Fresh out of the cocoon of unconditional parental love, I learnt that not all relationships are as unconditional.  Used to making friends with people on the simple basis of whether I liked them not, I discovered that your CGPA could lose you a friend sometimes. Or gain you a few.  That generosity could be mistaken for naiveté. Naiveté, sometimes, for idiocy.  That trust can be blown to smithereens and that sometimes people will treat you badly, even when they don’t know you at all.  That maybe your eulogy would matter eventually, but nobody would read it unless you had a good resume.

I learnt that being one of 16 girls in batch of 200 boys was a bit like being a celebrity: they knew you – or they thought they did- even if you did not know them. Your every move scrutinized, your every CP analyzed for hint of a brain. You were also public property: you could be soaked wet (dunked) anytime, you could be linked up to anybody, anytime. The batch yearbook had me mentioned in the write-up of no less than six men. Slut or Sport, I do not know.

Through all the churn I also learnt several positive, important life lessons: the ones that have shaped my life thereafter.  Some taught to me by my fabulous, and fabulously tolerant marketing group, others I learnt by the inevitable passage of this place called IIM Ahmedabad.

Don’t be a middler. Be Kick-Ass at what you do, or don’t do it all.

Work Ethic is important. If you take something on, deliver or die trying.

Hard Work is a fabulous substitute for raw talent/intellect.

Think. Period.

After I left IIM A, I tried my best to leave my IIM A identity behind as well. I reduced contact with batch mates, except for the handful that had been close to me. I cut myself off from the institute, but no matter how much distance I put between myself and my external connections with IIM A, I could never escape myself. My broken scarred under confident self.

So I kept on running, trying to put distance between myself and my IIM A identity, trying to prove to myself that I had deserved to be there. But nothing I did, was good enough.  I avoided meeting batch mates, afraid to see in their faces, the me I was trying so hard to leave behind.  To most lay people, I did not mention my conflicted lineage, afraid that I would disappoint. Not live up to the reflected expectations of my Alma matter. Of my esteemed peer group

When I finally could run no longer, I sought professional help.  As I learnt new skills, new ways of looking at myself, I finally broke free from the shackles of my IIM A identity- 10 years after I entered IIM A.

I continued to control my interactions with people who had been to IIMA with me.  Limit it to people who cared. People in whose eyes I would not encounter the person I had tried so hard to leave behind.

So, it should be no surprise, that the idea of a reunion was terrifying. While others were celebrating their nostalgia, I battled my anxiety.  

Isn’t the best part of a reunion the opportunity to reprise your younger self? To meet that familiar stranger who used to be you, in the company of the very people who knew you back then? But what do you do if you have spent the better part of your adult life running away from that person. What if that persona, I so disliked, reappeared unannounced, next to me? Inside me.

I deferred the decision to go. Let momentum make the decision for me. Fortunately for me, momentum did. And in a wave of peer induced nostalgia, I booked my air tickets.

Even as I boarded my flight to Ahmedabad, butterflies fluttering all the way from my toes to my head, I wondered what the reunion would feel like.