Conservative; Restrictive; Orthodox; these are some words that could be used to describe the familial background in which I was raised. Don’t get me wrong, my parents and my siblings did their best to uplift me to the most optimal position, providing me with facilities, resources and most of all support and love, few are fortunate enough to receive, but one thing there was a lack of, was intellectual stimulation and untethered access to information.
That changed on the 31st of March, 2010, after much struggle with my parents, I received access to a world of information that would change my life forever; access to the World Wide Web. Over the course of two years, I had a radical shift in my personality, that shook the very foundations of the person I used to be, revealing abilities and skill sets previously unbeknownst. This process, while essential, hardly scratched the surface of who I was to become. The greatest challenge for me was unlearning a massive chunk of knowledge and cultural bias I had accumulated over the years, and this started during my under-graduation, which thanks to my teachers, could be described as nothing less than an unqualified success.
My success in my under-graduation paved the path for me to be offered multiple offers for Integrated Ph.D. from top-notch institutes like Indian Institute of Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, IISER Pune, to name a few. I eventually decided to join the National Center for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru to pursue my doctorate, where I encountered one of the steepest growth curves I had experienced. I pursued research in neuroscience, trying to understand the basis of memory formation, and spent long sleepless nights for years, training, refining and looking for answers, until the point, I felt sated. The point of satiation reached its peak at the end of the third year, where I made a decision to move on, and not invest four more years of my life for a doctorate when the program had already paid its dues commensurately in the form of personal growth. I went in a child and came out as an (almost) full grown professional scientist, with a desire to apply the skill set he acquired to solve problems.
The decision to quit was expensive, in all ways, shapes, and forms, but I had always prioritized growth, knowledge and expanding ones horizon’s, so there was a certainty that there would be opportunities that would help me improve myself into a more refined form. This opportunity presented itself in the way of an MBA. It’s been close to four weeks since I have joined the MBA program at MDI Gurgaon, and it has been nothing short of a rollercoaster ride, jam-packed with lessons, learnings, and refinement. This is just the start, and I have already buckled up for an intense ride of learning, that will hopefully extend much farther than just my MBA, and will continue to grind towards my personal goal of novelty, generalism, and knowledge, sometimes, as epitomized by my Ph.D. experience, at costs that will only bear fruit in the long-term.
An important aspect of my struggle for knowledge and freedom of thought is best summarized by my story of suits. Suits have been an expression of sophistication and class for humanity, specifically for men, since the dawn of the 20th century. Due to their classic allure, the business world was quick to pick up on the trend and make it a pan-industry staple. My personal fascination for suits developed by watching situational comedies like ‘How I met your mother’ and ‘Suits’ and accentuated by watching my personal heroes like Warren Buffett don a suit, with an intellectually intimidating and charismatic aura.
One of my first encounters wearing a suit was during a cousin’s wedding, which was just the regular run-of-the-mill suits from the local tailor. The effect of the suit was, to put it mildly, underwhelming, both at a personal level and an extrinsic level. This experience with suits continued on for a few more occasions, both formal and informal, that made me feel like that the match between me and my much-infatuated suits, was one, that was simply not meant to be.
My perception about my tumultuous relationships with suits continued to remain the same for quite a while, until this small detail slipped my mind entirely, in the regular grind of life. This changed a few months back when the results for the common aptitude test were released, and along with that huge swathes of GDPI offers being rolled out. I had a wardrobe misaligned to my requirements to excel in the process and land up in my dream business school, so I set out to buy a set of formals, with a nagging memory of my less than mediocre past experiences. I ended up at Peter England, and bought a suit, along with a pair of shirt and trousers, and a matching tie. During the clothing trials, my historical predilection reawakened, bringing with it, a gushing sense of nostalgia and confidence, a memory of childhood heroes and their personality statements. The feel of this suit was different and left me brimming with confidence, a feeling of perhaps having stepped in the shoes of Warren Buffett himself.
I wore this suit to multiple interviews and discussions, delivering quality content with an aura of soothing calmness, mostly brought about by the emotional value of my childhood dreams combined with the quality, comfort, and class of Peter England. ABG allowed me to feel confident and sated, that allowed me to outperform my competition and crack the process for my dream business school, where I am currently flourishing and living the dream.