Not really a BLAST for some

There are people who speak so negatively about NMIMS, I feel really sick about it. Even in Bosch, people would just keep complaining, comparing their jobs to those of their friends in other companies ‘getting better treatment’. If that really was the case, why don’t they just quit the job at Bosch and go for that ‘better job’. It’s a free country right! Who is stopping them? They are either goddammed hypocrites or just not cut out for that other job, and unnecessarily want to crib about their current position as if they were forced to be in it. And even if they are in a particular system that they do not appreciate and could not avoid being in, why complain? They are part of the system right? Why not effect a change that they feel will be beneficial to everyone? I get tired of hearing people complain at NMIMS. Fine, there are problems there. But which place doesn’t have them? We just returned from LIBA completely creaming IIMK. I hate making comparisons, but put in that example just for people who love doing a ‘vis-à-vis’ at every chance they get. And hearing a case of their college doing better than a higher ranked college brings tremendous joys to their little hearts! We are no less than anyone else and a lot of people at NM are actually IIM material. They are really good. But what can we do in a country so full of smart folk! I myself missed out an IIM call by a whisker. I converted the NM call from a rank of 1800 odd to 180 which was a near perfect score in the round of GD-PI. So I know for a fact that if I got a call from an IIM, I would have surely converted it. And how far was I from an IIM call? 30 seconds at best. I just needed one wrong answer in the quant section to be right, giving me the 1.33 marks needed to clear the cut off! I could have been there. I also spent days looking at the big bold letters of IIMB that I wrote on my white-board. But if destiny would have it this way, what could I do? And if I am now in a situation where I have to graduate from a tier 2 college like NMIMS, might as well do my best in it and hopefully do my part in improving the image of college. I was asked to prepare a press review on the NMIMS placements recently, appointed to handle the events at our upcoming cultural fest in college and also took part in a fest representing NMIMS at LIBA. These are all ways in which I could do my part to improve the image of college. Just imagine what would happen if the rest of the students also did the same in their own different ways instead of wasting their time complaining about college! It would make the whole place so much better. And this is exactly the problem with our country as well. People want to get out of it and then spit on it from the outside saying there is no saving India. When they could have done so much for the country by being in it and contributing what they can. I don’t understand how people fail to realize that by simply getting out of this country, they can become un-associated with it? No matter what happens, you will still be an Indian, you would have still done an MBA from NMIMS, you would have still got work ex from Bosch. Nothing will change that! Spitting on things like this, is spitting on your own existence! Is that really what we should be doing with these few precious moments of a gift called ‘life’? Maybe I am just preaching away here, and this will probably fall on deaf ears, because the people who actually complain are not stupid, they probably know all of this. They only choose to be stubborn and negative all the time. But then again, who wants a world where everyone shares the same opinion and feels the same way I do? That wouldn’t be life then, would it? It would be the Matrix! So on a larger scale and broadening my altruistic nature, I’d probably say let people have their opinion. It’s what adds colour to the otherwise grey life. And on a concluding note, I’d like to put down something my dad once said. This was at a time when I was to decide which engineering college I wanted to get into. I had a fairly decent rank of 1400 (of almost a lakh students who take the CET exam) and could have got a payment seat at a top college in Karnataka. However, dad preferred I take a free seat, as it would ease out his financial burden. That’s when the name of MVIT came up. I had never heard of this college before and nor did most of my friends. They were all busy seeing themselves at the well known colleges of Bangalore. I complained to dad saying MVIT is not that great and nobody’s heard of it. He told me something very simple, “if MVIT is not that popular, you make it one” and in the year I graduated, within a span of 4 years, MVIT went from nothing to the number 1 college of Bangalore as rated by a leading magazine. The reason was the amazing placements our college recorded that year. The placements were of course aided by a growing economy, but MVIT managed to get better placements than any of the other colleges at that time. I definitely did not do anything single handedly. But I was part of the system that made MVIT so famous, that a college which I had to repeatedly ‘describe’ to people as they have never heard of it, transformed itself to a college that I just need to mention the name and people familiar with south Indian colleges like this one guy Sriram I met at LIBA instantly say “oh, that’s a fantastic college”. What a change! And dad knew it would be possible. Just be positive and don’t crib about being in a place that may not be in the ivy league. I had just as good an education as my friends did elsewhere, probably even got a better placement than most of the others. Managed to have as much fun, and most importantly satisfied dad too because the 4 years at MVIT with a free seat and a scholarship was as good as free for me. Now wasn’t that worth it! Will always remember dad’s simple words which he said for an entirely different reason, but became a fundamental principle of life for me.