Barsaat ki Ek Raat – The Committee Conundrum

In the last post, I mentioned about Pre-reads during first week of academic season. In the same post there was a mention about senior batch coming back from their summers and their attempts to reclaim the campus and also to make the junior batch to “fall in the line” of the so-called MICAn Culture. This “educational” process goes on for about a whole week in the after-hours. I could not witness too much of this whole process as I had developed some allergies owing to the rainy season and climatic change for me. For once, I was thankful to these allergies and the awesome timing it chose to erupt for sometimes I was sent back to rest and take my medication. I personally have anyways never liked the idea of being on either ends of such forced “cultural education”.

On this particular night, the weather was nice, day had been sunny and my health was showing signs of improvement. Like every day, when the night fell upon us, lights went out and we all gathered for our next lesson in becoming a true-blue MICAn. Since I was in rather better condition that day, I wasn’t sent back to rest. I also was a little curious to see how it goes. It turned out to be a fun night after all and I was happy to be there.

After the usual rounds of head count (oh! That epic-ness) we were informed that committees are an integral part of a fruitful MBA life. We were looking forward to the committees ourselves and this got us completely. So we were told that tonight is the time when MICA holds the first rounds of committee selections from junior batch. We all gathered in a seminar hall for further instructions. One by one many committees’ introductions were made. Groups of seniors representing various committees made interesting introductions. There were flashy presentations, funny videos, theme songs, dress codes, slogans, parades, banners, impressive speeches and what not. And mind it, we were just being inducted in to the mysterious world of MBA presentations. It was all so impressive and overwhelming. We were so excited and thought finally we were going to be part of this magical world. All the committees sounded so great that one would want to be a part of all/most of them given a chance.

We were briefed about the selection process, criteria and other general instructions. Then we were introduced to another concept which is going to remain with us for a long time. We were asked to submit our EoI (Expression of Interest) which is basically an application in MICA lingo. EoI was to become one of the most important and lingering phenomena in the days and years to come and we got to know it that night. After EoIs, we were supposed to do some tasks as part of selection process. The campus became alive and abuzz with activity. We were a bunch of overtly excited people eyeing those coveted and cool committees. Finally we were having our time with our seniors; we were being inducted by them, being given a chance to be a part of it all. We were becoming MICAns after all.

And then it started raining after a perfect day and a perfect night. A light soothing drizzle soon turned into heavy showers. But even this didn’t deter our spirits and we continued juggling between those tasks, interviews, GDs and other screening process running around the campus. Among others, I vividly remember 2 committees’ selection process. For the first one, we had to submit a small article on some topic given to us and after that we were called in a room in groups of 8-10 and then we had some intense group discussions. We wrote our articles and fought in those GDs with vengeance like our life depended upon that. From that process, I ran to my room, took everything out of my closet, chose a new floral summer dress, changed and ran to Audi. Dance committee selections were taking place there. I didn’t have any song with me as I could only manage to change. There was a long queue for dance auditions. I waited for a long time in that queue, was called for another interview in between, got drenched in rain due to all the running around and waited again in the line and was finally called in.

I was a bit nervous. I wanted to be on this committee more than anything else. I didn’t have a track ready and had no time for any rehearsal. The seniors were friendly and nice (for the first time since their arrival) and made me comfortable. They gave me few options from the tracks they had and I chose one that I was familiar with. I was confident of having given a good performance and of being among leading contenders for the committee. I was happy. All the running around and getting drenched in rains and finally the profuse coughing (the allergy kicked in badly at last) also could not stop me from missing the chance to be part of all that fun.