Trials and Tribulations

This is a story that I really don’t know how to begin. Not because I don’t know how to tell it, but because I don’t know what would be a good place to bring you into it. It is the story of the past one year of my life. A story that completely justifies the title above.

The very day I set off from India for studying in the USA, I had made one decision - that I will come back. I have lived here now for 4 years and never once till now have I felt my resolve shake. Not because I found this country bad, but because I had found my own country to be very good. And this year, I had decided to go back. What spurred this decision? I’d say it was a combination of factors, but more than anything else, I realized that I simply had to draw the line somewhere. There was never going to be an auspicious time for it unless I decided to just do it.

I needed security in my career before moving to India, and I needed that in the form of a solid job or fulfill my ambition of admission into a leading business school in India. And thus began my lone and exhausting journey.

Around mid-July I took a date for my GMAT. With just one month to prepare, I knew I was pushing it, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to apply to Indian School of Business (ISB) and their deadline was in August. Once again, I was back to studying. After an 8 am to 4 pm office work, I rushed back home every day to study for the GMAT. It needed a lot of patience and a different kind of understanding. Having done a very technological study and work for 7 years, the study for GMAT took some time before I gathered some traction. My verbal skills were falling short. Critical Reasoning and Sentence Correction were totally not up to the mark. And I knew that I could not afford to take second chances. Through some conscious out-of-the-box thinking and many 4 hour long practice tests, I improved, until my final GMAT where I scored 760 on 800.

The first step was a solid and good one.

Then began two phases simultaneously. My application to ISB had a deadline of mid-August. But also, I had to be mature enough to understand that I must do everything I can to apply for jobs in India too, just in case….

The one good thing about ISB’s application was that it was completely online. But this application was similar to those for the best business schools in the world. Along with the usual academic and professional record information, this application contained three essays and two recommendations from my managers in my office. I sincerely thank my manager that he understood me and agreed to write me a recommendation. But the most arduous part of the application was the three essays.

Because there were fewer essays, and my work experience was only just two years, I knew that these essays were the only remaining points of distinction between me and other applicants. And the most crucial essay was: “Million dollars or the knighthood: what will you choose and why?” This essay topic was so extra-ordinary and so multi-dimensional that I knew right away that this was the fulcrum of my application.

I’ve lost count of how many iterations I made of these essays. My friends Samir and Upen and my jiju Nilesh were the only ones who helped me in this most crucial juncture. As I worked on that essay I described above, I realized just how deep the meaning of the topic ran. Each word in that title had been very carefully chosen. And my answer too was going to be scrutinized and weighed equally carefully. Each day I changed my answer a little and polished it a little till my answers satisfied my eye. I felt so distant from those people around me who used their weekends for fun and joy while I worked on my application.

But this was not the whole picture. I was using every evening I had on every weekday to apply to jobs in India. I realized with some amount of rude shock that despite my Master’s education and a good two year work experience, the openings I had in India were both slim and low paying. I was fully prepared for a drastically low salary as compared to my present one in the US, but what I did not know was that I would get paid exactly what a person with a Bachelor’s degree and one year work experience gets paid in a software company in India. I applied and I applied… painstakingly, on website after website… through friends, contacts, relatives, job agents and acquaintances. But although everyone told me that I would get an interview call, not one materialized. I do not wish at all to say that these people weren’t helpful. They all agreeing to help me in itself was a very great thing for me. But for three whole months of August, September and October, I kept applying to these jobs relentlessly. Touching base with contacts, emailing the job agents, calling career agencies, searching for open positions – I tried all paths. But as each day went by, my hope dwindled down.

I don’t know if any of you have truly felt helpless in life. But as November approached, my confidence was really shaken and desperation mingled with gloom settled into my mind. I had nobody around me here whom I felt comfortable confiding this in. But I knew that I could not return back home jobless and with a full question mark about my career prospects. When at such times one’s hope and optimism begins to fail, one looks to have someone who can talk to you and really and truly understand and feel you.

Then came the hope I was searching for. ISB got back to me that they wished to interview me. I had a month to prepare myself. Once again, it was a struggle I fought alone. Through endless searches and many documents, I created a long list of probable interview questions. Online discussion forums, talks with my jiju about interview questions, sitting hours at end every single day and every weekend till my head began aching with thoughts and staring at the computer screen – this was one tiring month for me. Simultaneously, I was finally interviewing with one company in India for a job and the preparation for that was totally different because it was all case-study oriented. I was working four days a week on my job interviews and the other three days preparing for my ISB interview.

Post-interview, it was a long and seemingly never ending wait. How the interview went is yet another tale, but it had not given me any clear signs. For 24 days I waited. Each day I woke up with a queasy feeling. My job interview hadn’t gone well in the third round. It was all down to the ISB result.

The wait really did seem eternal. As the days went by, I lost interest in most things. The pressure was getting to me. I remember walking out of my company holiday party because I couldn’t feel happy. I remember waking up abruptly at 3 in the morning night after night with a bad dream. I remember those nights when I lay in my bed awake yet not feeling anything. Oh I remember…

I so wanted to talk to someone. Speak my heart, tell my fears and hear words that would bring me courage. But there I lay. Pushing myself every day to live my life and do my job. 24 days and 24 nights I waited thus – alone and apprehensive.

And then I got the news that I had passed and had been offered admission into ISB. There are very few moments in a person’s life that are truly “make or break”, and this was mine. For the first time, I realized the meaning of the expression “tears of joy”. The pride and satisfaction I felt telling the result to my ma and baba is indescribable.

I was going to go back…….Go back home. :)