How ABG touched my life…..
There is no introduction needed from my end to explain how big and diversified, Aditya Birla Group is as a brand. The conglomerate has a reach in almost every sector and has touched a lot of lives in India and around the world. It’s same in my case as well and a certain brand from Aditya Birla Group has a special place in my heart.
The year was 2015. Like any engineering graduate in India, I was job hunting after graduation and I somehow landed a job interview. I needed to buy formal clothing and was roaming around in my home town thinking from where to buy and my eyes on a Peter England shop. It was pure instinct and I don’t know why, maybe I was lazy to roam around. I went in brought a shirt, pant and tie and reading this some of you might think I cracked the interview wearing Peter England mercendise. No, I didn’t, I failed miserably and not once, multiple times. The funny thing was I wearing the same formal attire to each interview, the reason being this was only formal attire that I had.
Finally, I cracked an interview and got a job and I still remember the first day I went to office. I decided to wear the same formal clothes even though I had brought new ones. The reason was simple and it might sound silly to a few of you. I am a person who gets attached to the things that I use frequently. This period that I have mentioned, was a time in my life when nothing was going right. All those times I got rejected after each job interview, and going back home with a heavy heart, there were things which were a part of me at that time.
This was the simple reason why I decided to wear the same attire on my first day to work, just so that I always remember that journey from where I was and where I am now. Fast forward to 2019 and I am sitting in an interview all suited up as an aspirant to get into one of the top B-Schools in the country and I was wearing the same tie that I brought from the Peter England shop 4 years back. After all these years, it became sort of my lucky charm.
How I overcame a challenging situation in my life……
There is a quote by a poet named JM Storm:
‘Magic happens when you don’t give up even though you want to. The Universe always falls in love with a stubborn heart’
If I look back at my life, the most challenging period would have been the years after my graduation, when I started my journey as a student aspiring to get into a good B-school. 4 years of my engineering education was a complete mess. It was a guide on multiple ways of how you can screw up your life. I was low on confidence to the point of thinking that I was a complete loser.
In my family, everyone used to say that my sister had the brains which was true as a matter of fact. I was the guy who slogged relentlessly since I knew that I had to work harder than I possibly thought I could, if I have to make something out of my life. But somewhere down the line, I just lost that will to push harder.
Back papers started piling up, but somehow, I rediscovered the spark inside me and cleared my arrears and graduated within 4 years. With my graduation marks, I knew that it will be difficult to get a job related to my field. I got a decent job, but I knew inside my heart that I was settling for something less, so I decided to give a crack at CAT. I was finding it difficult to manage both studies and work and my attempts at cracking CAT were going nowhere. Multiple attempts and I was not even close to getting through to a good B-school. The ghosts of my past kept coming back and thoughts of how I screwed up keeping coming up in my head. By 2018, it has been 4 years since I have graduated and I was simply trying each year and failing and I was feeling depressed and mentally I was not in the right frame of mind.
I thought of giving up my dream of getting into a B-school, but something inside did not allow me do that. The first thing that I did was to accept the fact that I was not putting my best foot forward and to let go of what has happened in the past. I gave my best effort, but still fell short of getting an IIM call. I still believed in my self and thought that I can make the most of whatever opportunity that I have and applied to other B-schools.
I got through to Goa Institute of Management and I still remember the day, I got the call letter. I was happy with the fact even though I did not get what I wanted, I refused to give up and made the most of the opportunity I had in front of me. The stubborn heart finally prevailed in the end.
#ABGLPWooME #GIM
