Some say there ain’t no such thing as a beginning.

You’re searching, Joe, for things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings — there are no such things. There are only middles.
Robert Frost

They’re wrong. At IIM Bangalore, there is a thing called The Beginning, and it is called Orientation. Orientation is a joint programme conducted by the IIMB Administrative Office and the PGP2 students (our seniors) to welcome us (but more importantly, prepare us), for the upcoming two years here. And it is done before classes begin.

(Quick diversion: The first week at any top B-school in India gives you a taste of what it is like to be a machine–more specifically, a machine that does not stop working. Management graduates are nodding their heads with a nostalgic grin as they read this. ‘Nuf said.)

The Week that Leads to All Weeks

On the First Day, The Gods came down from the Heavens and with awe and admiration, we listened to the Dean and Director and the other Powers That Are talk about the Institute, it’s facilities, the student community. We watched with bated breath, the awarding of Certificates of Merit to the DMLs (students in the Director’s Merit List, the Top 10 students).

On the Second Day, we went through a programme called Understanding Self, a game and activity based session that was generally arbit, but centered around themes from management. Skits, roleplaying et cetera took centrestage. An ice-breaker session, mostly.

On the Third Day, a few nice folks tried to teach a mostly befuddled group how to appreciate art and culture. Named ABACUS (I think it stand for “Appreciating Beauty, Art, Culture and Self/Society”), the workshops consisted of a medley of sorts, ranging from making sense out of randomness to doing Suryanamaskara. Pretty interesting stuff, especially when we were asked to read a newspaper across its columns, and then constructing a sensible story out of it. The result was just random junk, sometimes funny, but mostly arbit. I guess the idea was to expose us to thinking out of the box.

On the Fourth Day, we went Outward Bound to a camp called BreakThrough. This is supposedly a corporate getaway, with MNCs regularly sending their teams for a day or a week–to chill out, play games, climb rocks and and through all of this, identify their strengths and weaknesses as a team. The games are well thought out, clearly designed as to expose specific issues within a team. I was impressed. The idea of the entire day was developing team building skills inside out through adventure sports and activities. Though I was skeptical of the whole process initially; it turned out to be, without doubt, the coolest day of the week (and the most exhausting).

And so on and so forth.

After Orientation Week, classes begin… and life begins to get miserable. Don’t get me wrong, I’m lovin’ it (as McDonald’s says). One thing (out of the many things) one learns here is to push the limits of work your body and mind can take. A typical day involves at least 16 hours of work. If you play gulli cricket or tsepak (two of the more addictive sports here), the figure shoots up to about 20. (Management graduates reading this are now grinning like Cheshire cats with a PGDBM degree.)

After a week of a schedule like this, you begin to realise that your body can take much more than you are accustomed to giving it. And if, after a week, your heart is still pumpin’ away, you must be alive. And if your body can take it for a week, it can take it. Period.

Pushing the limits is the name of the game.

Arbeit macht frei, says the sign that marks the entrance to Auschwitz I. Cynical as it is, it has a profound meaning.

It means: work liberates.

And that’s what I’ll try and do for the next two years.

(I’ll keep writing about IIM Banaglore piecemeal, as and when I get time to do it (which is not very often). But I guess one of the things that you learn very, very quickly at this place, is to respect time down to the last millisecond. Seriously, every second counts.

Coming up: Great Expectations, Or, What I Came Here For.)

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