Today while traveling for the first time from hostel to IIM Ranchi I came across a building I never thought I would see again!, the place where I was born. It's not every day you get to see your exact place of birth having lived all your life more than a thousand kilometers away. While the bus was breezing through the roads of Ranchi and I was lost in my own thoughts and my journey rolled in front of my eyes.
It felt almost yesterday when I was about to start my schooling, being the notorious and carefree kid I was, always trying to come up with Jugaad(yes we had life hacks in 90’s too ) to get things done. To counter my habit an Idea struck my mother and what can I say it was a ‘
What an Idea sirji’ moment in my life. She handed me rotating circular maps filled with various information of India and instructed to just observe it an hour daily for a month, and there I was left wondering how to bypass this problem, ultimately absorbing it in my brain.
My admission for Kindergarten had been delayed due to my father’s transfer as a result the school didn’t offer me admission in between , after a few talks I was to be offered an admission only on one condition that I clear an INTERVIEW, now here comes the twist I wasn’t interviewed just by a single person but by students (wait for it …not yet…) of standard
8th during their
geography class . Imagine facing an interview in early days , let alone a group interview for a kid, what are the odds you have faced a group interview that early in life ? I was scared after seeing all the students, I had no hack in my quiver that would come to my rescue, out of fear I closed my eyes and felt not the students but the map itself rotating and asking me questions(yes I faced my interview eyes closed), I did answer most of basic questions of Indian geography , but still couldn’t figure out why students were laughing while I answered, only to realize years later how it funny it would have felt answering eyes closed like a parrot.
Years passed and I grew very fond of numbers and sports, but the real test was yet to be passed when despite being shortest in class I had made it to the school basketball team. Well passing is an easy game , you just have to build a small algorithm , simple , yet effective. I still remember crashing a lot on those ‘
Ultra Tech ‘ cement bags kept aside during construction of new court while practicing my 3 step shoots and also climbing on them to recover the occasional ball tangled in the net, guess not all cushions need to be extra soft.
My thoughts just got out of sync when a bus hit a big speed bumper and had reached ‘Suchana Bhavan’ of IIM Ranchi the place where I am currently learning and discovering about my new phase of life
Well it has been rightly said by Mr. Kumar Mangalam Birla
Our values provide us with our roots and they provide us with our wings.
My Journey started from roots of Ranchi and is now under wings of IIM Ranchi