This is my third Valentine’s Day post. It goes to show two things. One, my blog has been in existence for such a long time. Two, nothing good ever happens on Valentine’s Day. I seem to have some sort of a “chattees ka aakada” with the day. Case in point, look what happened this time around.
The story begins long long ago, circa October 2004. My first visit to IIM A in the company of GA, Ram, polie, quirky and gang. The occasion – SPIC MACAY west zone convention. While it was more memorable for the incident of my first nap in a classroom at IIM A, I also distinctly remember us looking for a college senior of ours who was in IIM A at that time. We came to know that the guy is in Turkey, on a student exchange program. Tintin (D-12 was it?) went on to explain the funda behind exchange, and we were fascinated by the whole concept and wished we could do something like that! Cut to April 2007, when I came to know that I would be going to IIM A and I told my mom, “Looks like I will finally get to use my passport”. I was really looking forward to my turn to go to Europe on a “three-month vacation”, as they call it.
Once on campus, tuchchas (seniors at IIM A) went to tell me that almost everyone who wants to go to exchange, gets to go. So things were all hunky dory on this front. Then came summers, and when ING offered me an internship in Thailand, came the first hurdle. How? Well IIM A believes in the concept of equal opportunity, and hence they have a rule that for allocation of exchange school, first preference will be given to those who have never had a previous foreign exposure. Now I knew that my options are going to be very limited, but the tuchchas still maintained that Europe is still within reach with more than 82 seats in Europe alone. Out came the ranking list according to which allotment was to be done, and I stood at 121, thanks to my foreign internship. But with 126 seats on offer in total, and also the fact that most people tend to opt out eventually put me on the safe side. History was also on my side, with allocations last year happening till rank 160.
The first danger signal for me was when it was decided that the allocation was going to happen on 14th of February. It was a bad omen for me. Then one fine day, someone unearthed a tit-bit from The Constitution of WIMWI which reads “Not more than one-third of a batch can go on the Exchange Programme (refer to Appendix 13)”.That meant a maximum of 87 students. Still dry grounds, but something that started to bother me. Yet the still was enough hope.
Now I and Quaddro (my next door neighbour) were separated by just two ranks, and there was a good possibility that we would end up at the same place. So we began our research and come up with a priority list. Thing to consider – location (travel wise), academics (who wants to study on exchange), attendance (bunks are essential for travelling) and reputation (the thing will be going on my CV). It took 6 hours, 2 chicken sandwiches and some coffees, and we had a pecking order ready by bedtime (5 am).
Come 14th February, Valentines’ day was marked by a very distinct red tinge to people’s attires. We attend morning lectures as usual and eagerly waited for process to start, scheduled at 3:30 in the afternoon. We were sitting in our rooms, armed with laptops and our excel sheets with all our calculations. Updates started coming on Dbabble and we started crossing off b-schools from our list. As expected, the top rankers began with US B-schools like Stern, Columbia and Chicago GSB and then started the European parade. And as usual, some people opted out at the last moment and all was going as planned. 60 ranks and 48 seats gone, it followed the last years’ pattern and opt-out rate was set to increase.
And then things started to go really wrong. HEC, ESSEC, ESC-CAP (all France), Cologne, EBS (Germany), ESADE (Spain) went as expected but the trouble began when people gobbled up Bocconi (Italy), Vienna, Solvay (Belgium), St. Gallen (Switzerland), Nice, Toulouse et al. in absolutely no time. These were the schools we had bet on based on our calculation from previous trends, and they started disappearing from the radar. And the more serious problem was we were getting too close to the magical figure of 87. The countdown began, 40 ranks to go and only 28 seats left. It began to feel like the end overs of a cricket match with the team chasing getting iffy. We reached to the exchange office only to find out that the whole of Western Europe is done. 12 ranks and 8 seats left, people began to gamble on Canada and Scandinavia. I and Quaddro could see our exchange dreams disappear. 6 ranks and 4 seats left, one guy suddenly opts out. Quaddro let out a whoop, “I am in!”. And then one more guy opted out, “We will be taking till rank 120 only”. Disaster struck, and I was left stranded with nothing in hand!
It simply couldn’t get worse. So near yet so far. There I was, dreams shattered, thinking what a great blog entry this will make. Aussies believe 87 is bad luck because it is 13 less than 100. Now I knew why. And I slowly walked back to my dorm, with only one song in my head:
“दील के अरमान आंसुओं में बह गए ..."
