Yeah Mumbai, we've arrived !! (Summer Internship in Mumbai)

The office being in Navi Mumbai – Belapur, to be precise – we decided to find a nearby place to stay for the next 2 months. We were lucky to get a flat just 2 blocks away from the office which saved us from the daily local train travel. This meant we could stay awake till late (work or have fun) and get up late than others, which was awesome. On the first day of Internship we were greeted by the CEO himself. He being from an IIT+IIM background himself had a good amount of expectation from us. We discussed about the academic rigour at an IIM, the faculty and how the new IIMs are growing up fast. The CEO asked us, whether we wanted a ‘Pressure Cooker’ project or a ‘9 to 5 Relaxed’ project. Obviously we chose the former one – I don’t think this was even a choice. We learnt a lot from our interactions with him with respect to consulting, commitment and some unique stuff such as - “what is usually unusual for a client should be unusually usual for a consultant” or “If you are different and you say you are different then you are actually not” and “If one is a yes man, then he is a no man”.

One and a half months down the line, I have had my fair share of ups and downs both with respect to office as well as personally, but the overall experience has been a great one. We’ve had office parties, work related disagreements, chasing deadlines, lots of learning, discovering the city on weekends, eagerly waiting for our stipend to arrive and then seeing it get spent so quickly. All put together has been one hell of an experience, the kind I was looking forward to. Honestly, I am missing college and my friends, but meanwhile trying to pack in as much experience as possible in the remaining 20 days of SIP.

Throbbing with the vitality of dreams and the will to realise them, of reaching for the stars, Mumbai is a city of instant changes, constant changes, a city of opportunities, a city of fortune. It is where tomorrow stands today. I believe if you have the guts and the gall to live in Mumbai, survive it, and enjoy it, you have arrived. This experience has made Mumbai ‘Number 1’ in my list of places I would like to work in after MBA.