From a Tier 3 B.Tech College to an IIM
I completed my B.Tech (IT) in 2018. Like many other engineering graduates like me, I was jobless at the end of this extremely desirable course. I was not much worried though. Years at hostel had made me miss home, and living in home in the extremely hot and sweaty months of June and July was something I was looking forward to. Besides, I knew I could crack those bank exams. I sucked at coding even after studying IT for 4 years, which wasn’t a surprise for anyone who studied in a college like mine. Anyway, I gave SBI PO exam and was really happy when I cleared the preliminary round. I had cleared the preliminary round of SSC CHSL as well and tier 2 has gone well too. I was feeling very confident in July. But then come August, I could not clear SBI PO Mains round. Things got worse in September. You see, I did not have many friends in college and I did not like talking to most of them. I started feeling alone sitting at home all day and one day in September when everyone else had gone to village and I was alone, I realized that I just could not do it anymore. I could not focus on studies anymore. I needed a break from this. Since long, I was thinking of getting into this hyped dropshipping business. Dropshipping was just playing the middleman between Chinese suppliers and customers in the rest of the world. People used to list stuff available on Chinese E-commerce sites like AliExpress and Alibaba and sell it on their own E-commerce sites after adding a markup. I decided that I have to give it a try at least. In worst case, I will lose 5–10k bucks at least. I had 70k in my own bank account so that would not be a problem. But there was one small issue. This E-commerce store everyone was creating, it was powered by Shopify who had come up with great tools and templates to help you with it. Something like WordPress, but specifically for E-commerce. And Shopify was located outside India, it needed a credit card. And me being a jobless person, I did not have a credit card. So I had to tell my dad about it. And he agreed to it, but then every week he asked me if I was making any money. I told him, this is a new business, you got to spend some money first. But he wanted profits from day one. That’s how he has thought about business since the beginning, I guess. Anyway, that business never made any profit. I ran it for few months and also gave a few banking exams and CAT during that time. Eventually, I had to reduce spending money on that business to $14/month. Also, I was pleasantly surprised when in the first week of January 2019, I came to know that I had scored 95.32 percentile in CAT. It wasn’t good enough to be shortlisted by IIM Ahmedabad or IIM Bangalore though, not even by IIM Calcutta or IIM Lucknow. IIM Kozhikode gave a first round shortlist but I guess they gave it to everyone who scored 90 percentile or more. IIM Indore did not call me as well and IIM Shillong wanted at least 80% in 12th and I had only 73%. My past had come back to haunt me again. Anyway, I got a shortlist from all of the new IIMs and most of the baby IIMs in third week of January. I put my E-commerce store on a pause and started preparing for the interviews. After 3 weeks of half- hearted preparation, I went to give the interview in Taj Hotel in Delhi. I was late, but like most events in India, they started late themselves. So, I was saved. I did not know how it went. I assumed the interview did not go well, was not sure about WAT.
Anyway, I knew now that I had to get a job if I wanted to keep running that store. And did I tell you, I had never been able to learn how to ride a bicycle. Yeah, well no one taught me. Everyone expected me to learn it on my own, same as my brother had done. Its strange how much people love convenience. My parents did not put any efforts to know why my brother did not like studying, they just wanted him to get better grades. Logic was if your own brother can do it, why can’t you? Same with me. If your brother can learn to ride a bicycle all by himself, then why can’t you? Anyway, I decided to give it another try in March 2019 at the age of 23. I tried to learn how to ride a scooty. My brother had just bought an Activa. He was worried I might crash it somewhere and did not want any scratched on his new love. I was like, what the f*ck, this piece of crap is more important to you than your brother. He even got upset when I fell once during riding it and one of its mirrors came out. And we had another fight at the end of month regarding the same thing. That was it. At the end of the month, another $14 got debited from my dad’s credit card for that Shopify store. And he got mad at me and started yelling. Why were we spending 1500 bucks every month on it when we are not generating any profits? Haven’t we wasted enough money? So obviously, I closed it next month. I gave an online interview in March but did not get the job.
April 2019 finally brought some good news for me. I had gotten my first job. My dad would soon have no power over me. In may, we got document verification done. What was better, another friend of mine from college got the same job in the same region. We have been selected as clerks in Bank of Baroda. My parents were delighted as it was a government job. We got different districts though. His job was in a town near the city I had got job in.
It was really good for the first week. We had nothing to do and were just asked to observe and learn. But the second week could not have started worse. For the first time in my life, I was asked to sit on the cash counter in a bank. I was expected to take cash deposits from customers and if anyone deposited less money than the receipts or I miscalculated something, I had to pay from my own pocket. So if the total receipts were for 98k, so total cash should be 98k. If it was 96k, that meant 2k from my own pocket. I hated that job. I had done bungee jumping few months back, but to me this job seemed riskier than that. What could be worse than working 8 hours and then paying 2k from your own pocket at the end of the day? I was relieved it was for only one day. But then next week, I was asked to do it again, this time 5 days a week. And next week again for 3 days. I was so relived when it ended. But it did not end without a cost, and one day I had to pay 120 rupees from my own pocket. And another day, I took a cheque and paid 3400 rupees, but the bank account mentioned in the cheque had no money. I was truly f*cked. My manager scolded me, everyone looked at me like I was the kid who did not know what he was doing. And even in general, one of my colleagues and my manager seemed horrible people to me. When I told my manager, another new joinee should be asked to sit on the cash counter as well, he told me to go talk to HR about it. HR who decided not to train us first before sending us on jobs and believed real learning is on the job, not during the training. What an asshole, I thought. I was certain, I wanted to resign. This is not how I imagined my first job would turn out to be. When I told my parents about wanting to resign, they were furious at me. How could I possibly even think of resigning from a government job? Another crime in the country of India!! So I could not even resign. Because I don’t want to face my dad after doing that. And it made me hate myself. Here was me, a 23 year old person, who does not know how to ride a bicycle, and looks too skinny, and can’t even perform his job well and can’t even resign. What could possibly be worse than that?
On top of that, they decided they would pay us salary after 45 days as our job started on 15th. In my 5th week on job, I heard I would be again asked to sit on the cash counter starting next week. I felt helpless. I did not have any option. But then one ray of light finally came through the tunnel of darkness for me. I was selected for MBA at IIM Udaipur. It was a new IIM, had decent placements and was my only chance to get out of this shithole. Needless to say, I took this chance gladly with both hands.
I have to say, life has its own ways of surprising you. :)
