We, at IIM Raipur, are currently staying at a temporary campus in Sejbahar, Raipur. The campus is unique in its own way. We share our campus with IIT Bhilai and also the Government Engineering College, Raipur.
Our b-school basically has all its activities covered up in a single building as of now, which in itself is a great advantage and highly time-saving. Although we do need to walk about half a mile to bathrooms half asleep every morning, we feel tightly knit as a community. With mess and canteen in the basement and more than half the boys’ hostel in the basement and classrooms in the first floor, just a minute’s walk away from most of our dorms, we need not waste time doing those sprints trying to better professional athletes, from our little dorms to the classes. So basically the class is all filled up on time and anybody is hardly ever late to the classes. We also have our gym and badminton court and the table tennis set up all in our basement, which would again save us from those boring walks which in most campuses, has to be done.
This tightly knit campus would also mean that we almost get to see every single face, who is a part of the PGP course, somewhere or the other, either waiting for their turn in table tennis, or doing some bicep curls in the gym to pump up their arms and make those veins in forearms visible, or as a part of 8 people who simultaneously play badminton in a single badminton court, or napping in the lobby’s leather sofa, or grabbing a bite of sandwich at 3 am after submitting the assignment just before the usual deadline of 2.00 am, or still working on an assignment sitting in the mess, without realizing that the deadline just passed by, when they had to make their mandatory video call to their girlfriend, 1000 miles away. The campus is full of tired and at the same time enthusiastic people at any point in time, tired because of the 4-hour sleep they get, and enthusiastic people who make maximum utilization of 20 hours in a day.
We are soon supposed to be in the new campus already, thanks to the civil engineers of India, who have treated this new campus of IIM Raipur just like any other construction project in our country and have already changed their schedule of completion over the last 2 years, we are still in this beautiful little campus of ours. I feel kind of fortunate about this fact as we would be the only batch of people who get a good taste of 2 campuses in their MBA life. After all, among all management grads, how many would have had their 2-year course spread across equally in 2 different campuses?
Once we move to the new campus, we would be among those regular B-school people with air-conditioned individual rooms, where we won’t have 5 people sleeping in 2 cots. We will have to be among those groups of people who walk a mile from class to our rooms and from rooms to mess and to the sports block. We will enjoy the many a perk of being on a new campus. We would possibly get to witness the completion of another phase of our new campus which would be a huge learning curve for all of us there. But I am also fairly certain that we would lose the feel of being so close-knit. We will be eating our food, not bonding with each other while waiting in the long queue of our small mess for 30 minutes. We would possibly be the last batch of IIM Raipur that sees our mates as brothers. We will be a batch of people and not a community or a family anymore. This campus makes us a family. This has given us a home away from home. This campus has taken away a family of four people from us temporarily and given us a family of 400 for a lifetime.
Which ABG company would you like to work for and why?
Of all the ABG companies, I would want to work for Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited, as I am someone who is currently inclined towards retail marketing, and so fashion retailing would provide me with a holistic experience of retail marketing and management. Also, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited is already among the industry leaders, well spread across the entire country and so I feel it would be a great launch pad for my management career.
BALA BHARATHY is a First-year student at IIM Raipur.