Journey to VGSoM!

Clock ticked half past noon. I, along with few others have been waiting. Things were
going very slow. All I can see is a man in mid-50s walking in and out of the room for
every 5 minutes. The tension and anxiety on peoples faces is palpable. Even mine.
The door cranked open and a girl entered with blank face. I could guess nothing from
her facial expressions. In-fact, there was no expression at all!
Next one can go, she told and I am that next one. I took out my folder, adjusted my
blazer and stood up to go to the interview panel room. How was it!?, I asked the girl
and she replied It was casual and they were focusing on Mathematics.
It has been 4 months since I had given the CAT examination, and I almost forgot much
of the Mathematics I prepared for it. I walked out of the waiting room cursing myself for
my fate and entered the interview room.
Abhiram Aditya Please take your seat, the interviewer in mid-50s said.
After a counter response of Good Afternoon, he asked Are you getting late for
something?.
Nothing that sort of. I just need to go to office after this, I responded.
O.K! Tell me why VGSoM?.
One preparing for any MBA interviews will surely do ones ground work for this
question, and so did I. I mentioned the advantages that one can obtain my pursing MBA
from the IIT system. After 5 mins of interaction with the first interviewer on my
background, the second interviewer quickly asked me to pick up a paper from the desk
and draw a simple architecture of a signal transmission system, highlighting the
sender and receiver systems. It was the first time I heard such terminology.
Damn! I cursed myself once again. I took out the pen and started drawing 2
transmission towers while the second interviewer interrupted and asked my stream in
bachelors.
Electrical Engineering, I answered affront thinking that is a chance to escape from the
signal transmission. Oh Sorry! I interpreted it as Communication, he replied, which
gave a bit of relief.
The interview had continued for 10 more mins, during which I was asked about my job
role as an SAP Finance consultant, and few questions on my SAP hands-on.

I came back home and turned on my office laptop, and started to retrospect my
performance in the interview. I was satisfied, and was confident to crack it.
Since my higher schooling, I used to envy the brand IIT and the IITians. That may be
because of their talent to crack the JEE examination, or the knowledge they gain in IIT,
or simply may be because of the respect they get in the society from people just like me!
Though I couldnt had cracked the chance to get into IITs for pursing my bachelors, now
I got a chance to get into the IIT system for pursuing my MBA. By securing a 95
percentile in CAT.
I got my offer letter from VGSoM on 23rd June asking me to report at the campus on
13th July. I started my preparations both at home and at office for my career at VGSoM.
And finally the day has come to travel to Kharagpur. After 2 hours of flight from
Hyderabad, I landed at CCU at 8 am on 13th of July. The first thing I felt right after the
moment of stepping out of the airport is the humidity. It took me few years back,
remembering me the same humidity I struggled with while I landed in Chennai for my
first job.
Despite my initial plan to take a cab to Kharagpur, I later decided a cost effective way of
taking a train and took a cab to Howrah Railway Station. The driver had over sped the
car through the roads of Calcutta and dropped at Howrah Station in around 30 minutes,
from where I boarded East Coast Express and reached Kharagpur by 2 p.m.
It was a strange feeling to realize that my next 2 years of life is bound to this place and
my future is depended on these 2 years. It was overwhelming excitement to digest the
feeling of becoming a part of IIT and pursuing my dream of MBA here. I took a cab to
the IIT-K campus. It was a surprise and a strange feeling to see cycle-rickshaws and
Ambassador cars after many long years since childhood.

Kharagpur Junction Railway Station

The car moved swiftly through the lush green and neat roads of Kharagpur and stopped
at the main gate of IIT Kharagpur campus.

DAY 1 AT THE CAMPUS!

As instructed in the offer letter, I had reported at the MMM hall of residence for a room
allocation. After a long wait in the queue, I was allotted a 2-sharing room in 3rd floor.
Shock, worry and surprise overtook me upon seeing the room. First of all, it was
constructed for single occupancy, but had been adjusted with 2 beds. Secondly, the
condition of the room was worst to out of imagination. The pencil drawings on the walls,
the debris of furniture, the broken cots, dusty tables and untidy bathroom had made me
to step back instinctively. I grabbed my courage and had put my luggage in the room
and opened the back door into the balcony which was full of bird nests and lizards. I
rushed immediately to the hall warden and explained him about the condition of the
room. He gave a grin and enlightened me that its same with every room, and a cleaning
staff will be coming soon to take care of it.
Meanwhile I took a walk in the campus to find out the stores where I could buy the
mattress and other basic necessities to stay in the room. After a few mins of walk, I
learnt that after Bengali and Hindi, it is Telugu the most spoken language here in the
campus. This is because I understand Telugu but I saw every 4 out of 10 talking in
Telugu. The 2100-acre campus was beautiful with greenery everywhere. Despite the
humid climate, the air breeze is cool and no pollution due to very few motor vehicles
allowed inside the campus. It is like a medium size town and almost everything is
available for purchase within the campus.
By the time I completed my shopping and went back to the room, the cleaning staff had
already arrived and ready to clean the room. Thanks to them, they made the room neat
and clean again to stay, without which I couldnt even imagine how I would had survived
in that room. After unpacking my luggage in the room, I came out in the search of
dinner and also to explore the campus. It was drizzling and the climate turned cool
(though sweating is a constant thing here). After managing some Parathas in the mess, I
started walking exploring the campus.

The lust green campus

Panoramic view from the balcony

The neat and wide roads with separate way for cycles and pedestrians reminded me of
the Infosys Mysore campus, which is a world class campus for learning, but difference
being the perfect maintenance which lacked here at IIT K campus.
Soon my eyes started straining and legs started to pain due to the tiresome day I had
since 3am. I returned back to the room and went straight to bed.

DAY TWO!
After a comfortable sleep besides few nightmares of a dirty room, I woke up in the
morning of 14th July. By 9am I was a Kalidas auditorium for induction program
followed by Document verification.
The history and beauty of the campus was told in the induction speech by the Deans,
after which the document verification program was started. The day was very long,
waiting for turn in document verification during which I made few friends from my
batch.

It was post lunch when I had got a chance to go the VGSoM building. The campus is too
big that route maps on the sides of roads alone are not sufficient to find our way. Google
Maps is a must for at least few days to understand the routes, and no 2 buildings here
are at walk-able distance. Me along with my 3 other friends took a taxi (Yes, its no
surprise that there are cab services to travel within the campus too!) to the VGSoM
building.
I stared at the VGSoM building comparing it with the image I had in my mind from the
pictures of the building over the internet and in the Whatsapp group. A question had
arouse in my mind while I was called by my friend to move to the classroom.
It was a great feeling to see the entire batch-mates in the class room, who are going to be
my friends with whom I share the class for the next 2 years. We received a warm
welcome from the entire MBA faculty and were guided on our next coarse of actions.
Introduction speeches from the Dean and the faculty was followed by the snacks.
The snacks once again reminded me that I am in Bengal, the land of sweet lovers. We
were given a Snack Box with the Bengal signature sweet, the Rosagulla, along with 2
another sweets and a Samosa.
People dispersed slowly and my mind was stuck with the question once again on seeing
the VGSoM building.
How come this small building is shown damn big in the pictures everywhere?. I was
clueless. I felt that we all were duped by showing the building in wide scope in the
official pictures and videos of VGSoM.

The VGSoM building!!

We returned to our rooms to have a bath and went to the Technical Market, a place
within the campus to buy everything and anything in the campus. Considering that there

are families of the staff staying with the campus quarters, the market really had
everything that one needs in daily household.

Tech. Market at night!

We have bargained few cycles to buy, but couldnt get a proper deal. We returned to the
rooms after having dinner and went to bed after passing some time knowing about each
other.

DAY 3!
Thanks to the God, I adjusted to the room and there were no nightmares. After a sound
sleep I woke up on the third day to attend few introduction lectures and collect the
semester course books.
The books were too big and surprising to complete in one semester. Again it was a long
day for me to take the books as my roll number was 6th from the last! It was a shock for
me to have such roll number, unlike my roll numbers till now which used to be in first 5
of the class, due to my name. We had an intro lecture on Statistics and Organizational
Behavior by Prof. Abhijeet and Prof. Susmitha.
After the lectures we again had hit the roads exploring the campus. We had bargained
cycles at few other stores and finally bought one for each. We meanwhile received an
email about a guest lecture on Marketing on Saturday. The evening was spent in some
shopping and in search of restaurants for dinner and went to sleep.

Fourth Day!
After being accustomed with the lazy weekends for years during the job, this Saturday
was no different. Woke up at ease and dressed up in formals to attend the guest lecture.
It was by Mr. Sanjoy Dutta from ITC on marketing. The lecture was interesting and
interactive.

The rest of the day was again spent in exploring the campus.
It is such a big and beautiful campus that it takes weeks to explore it and sure there will
be some stones still un-turned.
Waiting eagerly for the regular classes from next week!