It has been terribly long since I wrote, so you nice people with incredible amounts of patience are going to excuse me if I'm not entertaining you enough. I intend to mock myself every once in a while, so you have something to look forward to.
I'm not entirely sure of what I want to write in this post that's been titled with zero creativity. All I feel is an overwhelming want to tap away at my keyboard - and I'm feeling good while at it.
When I was set to begin my MBA course, I was very apprehensive. It was to be my first time away from home. I wanted different things from my life - I didn't know what I wanted, really, but .. different. For several reasons good and bad though, MBA happened in 2011.
Like with every important occasion in life, my relatives had a lot to say.
"These places are full of fast girls and boys. Don't pick up bad habits ok?"
"You will not find friends here. Everyone will be very competitive. DON'T make friends."
..and the classic - "Why all this? Just get married no."
Damn you, you old menopausal lady - I'd get married if you could find me an unsuspecting fool.
But my wise cousin who has been there, done that helped soothe my nerves. "Friends you make at your MBA college are ones you'll surely carry with you through the rest of your life", she said. And she couldn't have been more right.
After six terms, a few hundred assignments and exams, twice as many episodes of falling asleep in the wrong places and 10635 times of my face meeting my palm in extreme slow motion.. it feels like it all began just yesterday.
Balls. I'd laugh at anyone who says that because I feel like I aged 8 years! No, you little owl, I know you think I meant I've gotten bald-er and fatter and shorter. But while that might be true to a great extent, I managed to crash-test my head so many times that I came out of it all a tad wiser.
See, there are these lessons you've always known because you studied them as a Kannada gaadhe or as proverbs in schools - or because your mother narrated them to you while she attempted to feed you dinner. You've always been told stories of how success is short-lived, as is failure. How you really can achieve seemingly impossible things if you wanted them real bad - if you just tried hard enough. How sometimes, you might not get what you desire despite wanting it desperately. And these lessons only seem to make sense to you when you've come across an event in life that helped you relate to them. For me, this entire MBA course seemed to be structured around helping me relate to these lessons that have surrounded me since I was little.
I learned to love unconditionally - for someone who is an only child, I can now gloat about having learned to share my time, energy and most importantly - food, with my new-found siblings. I know now that it's hardly possible to constantly please everyone around you. I know that you can't sit happy on your previous little achievements and that you have to constantly better yourself - because you can prove yourself smart once, but folks will still wonder how you managed to bag yourself a good job, until you prove yourself smart again. I know that Formula1 will start making appearances in my dreams if I drop indications of quitting this sport - this sport and I are stuck for good. And thanks to the mirror and my receding hairline, I know that absolutely nothing is worth losing your mind over. *insert appropriate YOLO gif*
While I am entirely convinced that the writer of my fate was not sober when he decided that I'd successfully complete a course in finance, I don't despise him for his irresponsible drunkenness. My fate took me to all the nice people, a slew of incredible places and ohmygoodness, to top it all - it had me pay my way to a Formula 1 race. That's more than ten years of yearning for something with every cell of my being and then suddenly being lucky enough to get to it. So when I say I love what the last two years have placed in my hands, I mean it. For the most part.
Sure, life could have panned out differently had I done something else instead. I could have even been happier as a database administrator or an F1 junkie, perhaps. But right now, I couldn't possibly care less. I'm taking away with me a truckload of experiences that I can narrate to my nieces and nephews when I'm forced to babysit them. I'm taking with me friends who'll stick with me until they produce more kids than they can handle. I'll carry with me some incredible professors who're the sort of friends that have your back and discuss your favorite singer's good looks with you. Heck, I'll even take with me a degree in Finance - whoever saw that coming?
Irrespective of what 'I'm taking with me' though, I know I can't prepare myself for what's in store. Be it work in the big, bad corporate world or just, you know..life. Thankfully though, I can stay confident of being ok despite being knocked down because I have the incredible ability to laugh at myself. And you - you can count on me to update my twitter account with my periodic facepalm and foot-in-mouth moments as well. And also slap me every five months that I don't churn out a blog post because *HOLY COW AND RED BULL* I feel so good right now!
Alright then. Since I have sufficiently ranted, I'll put an end to this post. I will now look forward to that day, 20 years from now, when I'm going to be teaching your kids Geography, in my backyard.
