Dork: The Incredible Adventures of Robin Einstein Varghese
If Chetan Bhagat didn’t do enough to inspire me and confuse me, Sidin Vadukut has just taken it to another level. Let me tell you a little bit about the “CAT” grind. Any averagely informed MBA seeker will realize that there are 6 institutes located in 6 different places of India that abbreviate to 3 letters and one has to master an entrance test, again abbreviated to three letters, to get through the portals of the apex institutes of the management world in India. Once you join a coaching centre it pretty much becomes clear that if the picture of IIM Ahmedabad does not feature next to your beloved family deities then you aren’t really serious about your classes in these institutes which will put you through a psychological toughness that is required to endure 2 hours which will largely constitute inability to answer most questions. Once you come out you feel like shit and feel much better when you see the thousand odd students that took the test in the same centre as you feel the same shit. After this ordeal come call letters from the institutes you have applied for. These are as priceless as the 15 odd grands you spent on applications to these institutes. You meet some really cool people in something called GDs who turn into venomous serpents once they sit around a table and the moderator says the golden word “Go”. You brave all these mentally deranging events and finally end up in a campus full of people who dream of changing the world or atleast the things in the companies they will get employed in.
Though it is a sapping grind the two years will stand out as the most unforgettable two years of your entire life. The campus is probably the only place that will teach you more life than the subjects you learned. In the wink of an eye comes placements and suddenly it is convocation. The only thrill after joining any company would be an unheard of salary that keeps hitting your bank account month after month. Life pretty much goes into a slump because the management institutes never told you what the reality is like and the corporates don’t give a damn as to what you learned in the classes of the epic institutes in India. You are expected to do mostly mind numbing work and you keep wondering what use is the nickname “smart” given to you during your MBA.
So in the end all of us lose. Amongst the losers are a few who wake up and say the difference between us and the rest are spherically shaped things that are usually used in sports (singularly) but the reference here is made to a male body part. So they throw their high paying jobs and look for what some people term as their “calling” while others term it as their true joy. It really is a stupendous achievement because all the finance courses in the MBA have managed to make you fall in love with money and when you are assured a steady flow of it and all the things that are associated with money you are pretty much its slave. You can put up with any degree of humiliation your incompetent boss wants to put you through because he finally will decide your rating which in turn will mean a fat bonus and a fatter designation ultimately leading to more money. The result is a compromise and deterioration of what you truly were and capable of. Money in turn will make you the machine. After that your life is pretty much 10 or 20 odd days a year when you get to go for an exotic vacation. You live life weekend to weekend paycheck to paycheck.
I am so happy there are some people like the Chetans and Sidins who decided that they will not chase money and will instead chase excitement. They don’t need vacations to relax. Their work is their biggest relaxation because it is a combination of mind, body and soul when they set out to work on the rough draft of their book, reading and rereading pages of their own work admiring themselves as to how amazing they are. I am taking the example of these two people but we all know quite a few names who have decided to light up the roads not taken. Ask Rashmi Bansal and she has a book full of names and stories. Everybody realizes this some or the other time. The sooner is usually the better. We are a country of talent explosion and there is enough scope to find out what makes us unique. All we need to do is take the first step.
Inspired from the interview of Sidin Vadukut on NDTV Profit discussing his Magnum Opus (so far) “Dork”
http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=144118
If Chetan Bhagat didn’t do enough to inspire me and confuse me, Sidin Vadukut has just taken it to another level. Let me tell you a little bit about the “CAT” grind. Any averagely informed MBA seeker will realize that there are 6 institutes located in 6 different places of India that abbreviate to 3 letters and one has to master an entrance test, again abbreviated to three letters, to get through the portals of the apex institutes of the management world in India. Once you join a coaching centre it pretty much becomes clear that if the picture of IIM Ahmedabad does not feature next to your beloved family deities then you aren’t really serious about your classes in these institutes which will put you through a psychological toughness that is required to endure 2 hours which will largely constitute inability to answer most questions. Once you come out you feel like shit and feel much better when you see the thousand odd students that took the test in the same centre as you feel the same shit. After this ordeal come call letters from the institutes you have applied for. These are as priceless as the 15 odd grands you spent on applications to these institutes. You meet some really cool people in something called GDs who turn into venomous serpents once they sit around a table and the moderator says the golden word “Go”. You brave all these mentally deranging events and finally end up in a campus full of people who dream of changing the world or atleast the things in the companies they will get employed in.Though it is a sapping grind the two years will stand out as the most unforgettable two years of your entire life. The campus is probably the only place that will teach you more life than the subjects you learned. In the wink of an eye comes placements and suddenly it is convocation. The only thrill after joining any company would be an unheard of salary that keeps hitting your bank account month after month. Life pretty much goes into a slump because the management institutes never told you what the reality is like and the corporates don’t give a damn as to what you learned in the classes of the epic institutes in India. You are expected to do mostly mind numbing work and you keep wondering what use is the nickname “smart” given to you during your MBA.
So in the end all of us lose. Amongst the losers are a few who wake up and say the difference between us and the rest are spherically shaped things that are usually used in sports (singularly) but the reference here is made to a male body part. So they throw their high paying jobs and look for what some people term as their “calling” while others term it as their true joy. It really is a stupendous achievement because all the finance courses in the MBA have managed to make you fall in love with money and when you are assured a steady flow of it and all the things that are associated with money you are pretty much its slave. You can put up with any degree of humiliation your incompetent boss wants to put you through because he finally will decide your rating which in turn will mean a fat bonus and a fatter designation ultimately leading to more money. The result is a compromise and deterioration of what you truly were and capable of. Money in turn will make you the machine. After that your life is pretty much 10 or 20 odd days a year when you get to go for an exotic vacation. You live life weekend to weekend paycheck to paycheck.
I am so happy there are some people like the Chetans and Sidins who decided that they will not chase money and will instead chase excitement. They don’t need vacations to relax. Their work is their biggest relaxation because it is a combination of mind, body and soul when they set out to work on the rough draft of their book, reading and rereading pages of their own work admiring themselves as to how amazing they are. I am taking the example of these two people but we all know quite a few names who have decided to light up the roads not taken. Ask Rashmi Bansal and she has a book full of names and stories. Everybody realizes this some or the other time. The sooner is usually the better. We are a country of talent explosion and there is enough scope to find out what makes us unique. All we need to do is take the first step.
Inspired from the interview of Sidin Vadukut on NDTV Profit discussing his Magnum Opus (so far) “Dork”
http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=144118
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