It was 2:17 AM.
I was sitting on the terrace of my hostel, eyes blurry, CAT result glowing on my cracked phone screen.
99.12 percentile.
The silence was deafening. I should’ve screamed with joy. But I didn’t.
Instead, I whispered, “It’s not enough, is it?”
Let’s rewind.
I’m the younger sibling. The one who was always chasing.
My sister — my idol — graduated from NIT Kurukshetra, then cracked her way into ISB, became a consultant at Deloitte, and somehow also ended up being a Superhost on Airbnb.
While people showed me toppers on YouTube, I just had to look across the dining table.
She was my mentor, my biggest cheerleader, and the person who, after every failure, would say,
“It’s okay. We go again.”
In my third year at NITKKR, I decided: I’m going to B-school right after graduation. No gap. No detour. Straight to the dream.
She told me to gain work experience first. “You’ll know yourself better,” she said.
But I didn’t want to wait. I was hungry. So I burned every candle I could find — CAT prep, college exams, an internship, and a half-functioning sleep schedule.
I still remember one week in October 2022 — I had my mid-semester exams during the day, intern calls in the evening, and CAT mocks running past midnight. My roommates joked I was running on coffee and revenge.
But it all felt worth it when I saw 99.12 on that screen.
Except, it wasn’t.
No calls from BLACKI.
Being a GEM (General Engineer Male), the bar was Everest.
And I had only climbed till the base camp.
I cried that night. Not because I failed — but because I had done everything right, and it still wasn’t enough.
The next few months were hazy. I joined BPCL in a marketing role. My dreams packed up in an invisible suitcase, hidden in some corner of my mind.
But something changed.
One rainy evening in Siliguri, I found myself closing a massive sales deal at a garage — negotiating prices under a tin roof as the rain drowned our voices. It hit me. This is the real world. This is what my sister was talking about.
The pressure. The adrenaline. The fire.
I was living the case studies B-schools love to teach.
And somewhere between highway diner meetings, month-end sales stress, and product launches, the dream quietly came back.
In 2024, I decided: Let’s do this again.
But now, my life was different. No campus libraries. No free afternoons. No roommates to vent to.
I was in a full-time job with no-time-for-myself.
I started prepping in between client calls. On Sundays. During lunch breaks.
I took leaves to revise topics. Skipped weddings, birthdays, even Diwali get-togethers.
Colleagues began calling me a ghost — visible only during business hours, vanishing after work.
But this time, I wasn’t chasing a percentile. I was chasing redemption.
Then came the result: 96.5 percentile.
Not even as high as before.
I stared at the screen. No tears this time. Just silence. And one thought: Maybe I peaked too early.
But my sister didn’t let me give up.
She sat me down and said:
"Forget the odds. Focus on one shot. Make it count."
So I did something crazy. I applied to just one B-school — SPJIMR.
No backups. No CAT 2025. No second options.
I went all in.
She grilled me for interviews. Mocked me like a panelist. Ripped my answers apart until I didn’t just sound ready — I felt ready.
And when the day came, I walked into that interview room like a man with nothing to lose — and everything to prove.
Weeks passed. One morning, I was at a client site when I got the mail.
I didn’t even open it right away.
When I finally did, I froze.
“Congratulations! We are pleased to offer you admission…”
I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I just sat there, staring at the screen.
And then I called her.
My sister. My mentor. My lighthouse.
She picked up, and before I could speak, she asked: “You got in, didn’t you?”
I smiled.
She knew.
