I
have been working around for almost all my life right after graduation. But
there always has been a zeal in me to try newer things, take up new challenges
and strive to never make my life easy for something better.
I got
selected into Tea Board of India in 2013 and have been an officer of the
government till the day I quit (erm yesterday; look at this post’s date). But
unlike a typical babu, or rather the typical impression of a babu I have always
strived to be as clockwork as possible. Maybe the reason why I was feared for
my punctuality by many of the stakeholders. I have also been appreciated a lot
of times for striving to find solutions for the same people who would fear me
and designing a path amid odds.
In
2018, probably the bat hit my head, figuratively of course. My younger brother,
cracked CAT, graduated in engineering and headed off to join IIM Ranchi. This
is when I realized while coaching him for the WAT-PI that these are the stuff that I would too like to do. So, we packed him off in a plane and off I
went back from home to my workstation with the books he had been lugging
around.
The role that I worked in required a lot of travel and even my commute to the
office on a train would be about an hour long at the least. To top it up, I had
already paid up for the gym and had cooking and chores duty at my residence.
With all this in hand, I realized that sitting at a table would be almost
impossible albeit for the weekends and some holidays.
So,
off went the table plans, the books that were huge weight out of the window (again,
figuratively) and in came all the gadgets I had at hand namely the iPad, the
laptop and the cell phone.
In
managerial roles, it is told that one should listen to their juniors, and I had
one at home. This brother of mine happened to quip, you can either learn or you
can practice for the tests and learn on the job err test. Being a person who
would like to take the efficient route (I have never been able to sit at the table
for more than 30 minutes ever in my life and I proudly have the attention span
of a fish) I took the test and learn way. To spice it up, it was “test and
learn on-the-go”. What it meant was, all learning happened in my commute. That
probably had been the toughest learning methodology for me till date. Imagine
standing with your nose stuck to someone’s back or bag on a good day and armpit
on the worst, holding the iPad or the mobile, scrolling through the
applications and solving quant and DILR. There have been times when I have
dozed off while in comprehension questions, though it even happened on test
day. The other spare time I could find was while cooking, so wait for the rice
to boil, the fish to fry and do the sums at the same time.
The
biggest takeaway through that process was that I was always under pressure of
either the commute, the nearby passenger wanting to gossip, the calls from the
office, of overcooking the rice or burning the fish or some other trouble for
the day which I was gifted by the Almighty. The biggest pressure maybe was that
I have been out of academics for almost 6 years when I started crawling back
in. And as a lovely friend of mine put it, the ‘dil maange more’ trait in me is
what makes me do these things (though the exact words used was madness)
So,
the test came and the test went away and I had no idea what had happened inside
the hall, except that I got some shut-eye in the verbal section. Cut forward to
January and I get interview calls from IIM Lucknow, IIM Shillong, all the IIMs
participating in CAP and the newer IIMs who didn’t.
The
interviews were another game of their own and the only common theme for me was
defending, “why at this age?”. If you ask me how I defended, my honest
submission (pinkie promise for all who still believe in it) I do not recall the
exact words. But I can surely tell you that it contained something or the other
from the passages above. And who says no to a caffeine-laced drink over some conversation?
So,
here I am, with conversions from almost all the institutes interviewed for and
finally having selected PGPSM at IIM Lucknow. I am Prakash Roy, an engineer by
profession, a former Factory Advisory Officer at Tea Board of India, Ministry
of Commerce, Government of India, a humble being with hobbies in photography
(Instagram: @prakashray), blogging (utopianfisherman.blogspot.com, prakashray27.blogspot.com),
micro-blogging (Twitter: @prakashray) and a knack to speak in public. This is
my story of whatever it took for me to get through CAT.
And
if you are in search for some inspiration, look up the Stanford Commencement
Address of 2005.
