The very first day of Life@IIMK

The first day at IIMK is finally over and life goes on. The strangest thing about this place is the absolute lack of bonhomie that is actually supposed to make up a college. I don't know if it is because the people out here are trying too hard to be professionals, to actually separate themselves from the run-of-the-mill college junta or if there is something deeper running within. I can understand the hesistation of the junior gang to actually gang up but the way the seniors have been behaving looks to be pretty senior-ish, if you know what I mean.

I think I saw a lot of people I could identify with from my previous chats, blog comments, etc but I could not really talk to them. I could probably identify Prithesh, Divya, Ronald from the senior batch and Neeta, Malini, Vidhyut from my own batch and as I mentioned, if talking to seniors was a luxury, my own batchmates did not provide any thing free either. Perhaps we are all a little afraid of each other, all a little apprehensive about what the others will make of us and so we are all a little cautious to begin with. I know that a major part of the blame lies on me, too but the kind of atmosphere that's been created somehow prohibits much interaction.

The very first gathering of seniors that addressed us was actually for a committee called Konsult, which is a marketing consulting committee of IIMK. I know that it looks like a good idea to impress firmly over the minds of the future IIMK-ites that people here, especially the seniors, mean business but it doesn't really look like good sense to actually torture people on the very first day with some CNBC crap by Sumantra Ghoshal (God rest his soul in peace). If the seniors did really plan this, I must say that it was in poor taste. We could and should have had an informal gathering to start the proceedings and committees like Konsult could have possibly waited for a more opportune moment.

All the cribbing above apart, people here are in deed very very interesting. Inspite of the engineering college and Infosys experience and the DPS experience much before that and much more enriching in terms of content, I think that this is the most varied gathering of people that I have come across. There are freshers and there are people with 7-8 years of work experience. There are people in jeans and tees and there are the simpletons with formal shirts and trousers. There are the studious kinds with a dead-pan look on their face whenever there is talk of studies and there are lazzards (I invented the word) like me who give a sheepish grin to show their intentions on these occassions.

As I go on writing my blog, I don't know if I would be doing justice in assigning names to the characters that I meet and interact with during my two years at IIMK. It is good to be honest but I don't think that it is my right or anybody else's to publicly pass comments on some one. On the other hand, I think that this blog of mine has seen some of my private moments if it has been home to some well and truly public reviews of books and movies. I don't know how many of my batchmates actually read my blog but I do want to mention that even if you do and if at any stage of my two years here, you find something offensive in the blog, please do not take it to heart as it is just the ramblings of my mind and might as well turn out to naught before long.

Since I seem to have come out of this dilemma and seem to have finally decided, thanks to writing this entry, that I am going to name my characters and continue being honest to my blog, I hope that life does not become too difficult because of this.

Yesterday evening was spent shopping but not before I met Yogesh, one of my class mates from DPS. Ever since I had heard the name Yogesh Goswami in the roll call at the IIMK gate, I knew that it was going to be the same Yogesh. I won't say that he has been amongst my best friends but we certainly have spent a lot of time together and it was a pleasant co-incidence to see him here. Yogi joined Abhijit, Ravi and me as we took our two bikes (Ravi's ThunderBird and my poor Caliber) down to Kunnamangala to get some utilities. That done, we had another horrible meal in the mess (I can't really believe Ravi when he says that the food actually used to be good before we landed up), which was followed by the absolutely boring, stiff and sleep-inducing session of Konsult.