We walked in as strangers and walked out as Family. Notes on the ISB co 2011 - Delhi meet

We were strangers when we all walked into CCD on a Saturday afternoon... When we walked out, we were family!

Guys, my 2 cents on the Delh meet. In total we had some 25 odd future ISBiians, some had come in early (like Vinayak, Saurav, Komal and moi) and some dropped in late... I myself parked my car and had a smoke (thinking 'What the HELL is this gonna be'). The minute I met up with Vinayak inside and Saurav joining in shortly, I laid my fears to rest. It was a typical 'Formal' affair to start off with, warm handshakes, practiced smiles, timely 'I am so-and-so, I 'do' this (no pun intended), I work here and so on...

And then the fun began. We started off with a nice ice-breaker where everyone talked about their 'Road to ISB'... there were people for whom it had been a cakewalk (for lack of a better word), like Kriti who it seemed was just destined to be here, (I finished my graduation, started working, gave my GMAT, got a super duper score, applied only to ISB and got in) and then there was the majority of us, Nadeesh was simply super describing his life journey (All my friends got into consulting post graduation and here I was without a job, I started working with an Ad Agency for sometime, felt like a rockstar last year and quit after applying to Harvard, Wharton and Kellog... Alas, they did not get back. But dude, u got some infectious confidence... Am drafting my resignation after this post), then there was Saurav, who talked about his transition from a number of lowdowns to this superb high... Vinayak's intro as I mentioned was hilarious and 'desi' (apologies again for my limited vocabulary)! Then there was this team of 2 guys who work in tandem to make firms go bankrupt (one flies business class, stays at 5 stars and the other consults them on how to do this better with more expenditure). I will leave aside the 'Chinese' part of the meet, this can be better discussed over hot pan fried Hakka noodles :-) Man the meet was rocking.

Once the games began and 'Kapi Nirvanas, sandwiches etc' doing the rounds the grins on our faces were visible from miles away. The late comers can vouch for the fact, they just entered and looked for the noisiest seats with the smiling faces. Post the introduction session, we broke into smaller groups and chatted away for over an hour. I recall having good conversations with Komal (works with Oracle), Vibha (for a moment i thought she runs the canteen at Google, but no, she just work there), Vinayak (the main cause of rising commodity prices), Saurav (headhunter cum educationist), Gireesh (dont know what he does, but remembers the names of all women), Juhi (Architect cum pro cyclist), Kriti & Puneet (both work at Accenture), Varun (my buddy from retail), Deepti (she is lighting up villages with solar lamps - works with TERI), Mohit, Vikram and many more...

As for me, I sell what what no one really needs :-) for me ISB was a dream that I started dreaming 18 months back... I had my share of downs, but did not stop dreaming... I think that was the differentiating factor this time round. A couple of lines that I penned down for the Delhi meet:

We were all strangers when we decided to meet up for coffee one saturday...
Some of us waltzed in like pros, we do this for a living...
Some of us were a little unsure, but am glad they made it...

We had a gala time, we laughed away the hours...
And got to know each of us a little more... We walked away from that evening, a little better for ourselves...

Its the opposites that attract... and we are here to learn from other what we dont have...
The choice is ours... we can be unsure of each other or traverse this journey together...

I choose the latter, because in my case, the longer I dreamed about ISB, the more real my dream became...
Like I said, we were all strangers when we walked in for coffee one saturday afternoon... but we walked out as Family!

Cheers!