Its hard to say good bye!

It begins when you hear your maami ki chachi ki beti ki best freind ki bua got into IIM-A and is now earning close to a crore a month in plum investment banking job in New York. So when you are done getting into the herd pick up bus of TCS/Infy/Wipro and are studying at any engineering college worth its Computer Science division you quickly enroll your self at the nearest CAT preparatory course. It will have a fancy name, mine was CATapult. You wont study till a month a before CAT. Then you would suddenly wake up to rank 1246847865 in one of the mock CATS, dust the covers of the preparatory material and start to ghot. You will dig up old contacts who are in IIMs or other self respecting 100 % placement on day 0 institute , join pagalguy/mbaforum and start filling endless forms. The D-Day will arrive, you would either score 99.99 with 99 in all sections, go to IIM A/B/C and live happily ever after or write a book of how it wasn't happily ever after and become rich either ways.
But then that isn't my story and this is my blog. So I scored 98.67 with a suicidal 86 in one of the sections. No IIM thought i deserved to be in it. Not even the new ones in MP and Kerala.
But 3 me-too's did. And I got into 2 of them. One of them a private college with great brand value, another a government college whose name I heard for the first time when I filled the form. Its website had this really oil&mining PSU type of feel and it was number three on my list.

I ended up joining the PSU type college. It was called NITIE. Most of my friends went "huh? what? where? you left MDI??? ohhk..doctor?"
A year and half ago I landed in Mumbai, and reached NITIE using two metaphors "L&T ke paas " or "IIT ke paas". We had been promised single occupancy but were soon saddled with a roomate each. Mine was this thin, short girl who had one travel bag. One. I could have whooped with joy. The cupboards were mine. (Later she would reveal she had 3 more coming to NITIE soon)

I had these visions of sleepless nights working through the midnight oil. Of grand strategy classes. I also had a desktop. One of the 5 people in my batch to have it.

3 weeks into the course, we were given access to ipmessenger, dbabble and DC++. Sleepless nights took on a different connotation all together. Certain gentlemen shared upto 1 Tb (yes 1 Tb) of material on DC++ with certain "only for boys" sections too. Of course my curiosity never got the better of me. Just like other girls.

Summer Placements came. After a fantastic GD-PI conversion ratio of 3/15 I landed into the GE Corp, GE Money to be more precise. I also wrote my first module exams after studying for 2 weeks. I had never felt so unprepared or unconfident before nay paper in my life. A year later I would realise that was the maximum I would study in any module. Last module I studied for 2 hours.

Summers meant running after 186 from NITIE gate, running towards the ladies compartment of Churchgate slow and dealing with telecallers all day. Sales wasn't tough I learnt. But you need patience. It was grassroot. There was no AC office, to sip coffee, and design on excel.

I came back to Prerana. Can you feel so much passion for something not living? Can the desire to make an event successful consume 10 individuals, each more than the other. Can you sleep at 4-5 am and be up at 8 next day with the same vigor. Day after day. In NITIE I was part of that madness. A madness called PMG. Once a PMG member always a PMG member! Yes, I was told this in the committee interview. I understand now. Yes I do.

Coming at a time of great personal turmoil, placements the million dollar sign dream with which we all enter a MBA institute were here.Package. Profile. Brand.
CV designing was a new time consuming art form. Attending a corporate lecture became one to one corporate interaction with CEO of leading investment bank for many. To remain on the right side of ethics while making your CV irresistible to the 5 minute glance of the HR was a tight rope.

There are people who say at NITIE you will have to compromise. You will have to take what you get. I have one word to tell them-"B$#@s!" If you have the patience, if you have the dare, if you wont compromise. You will get what you want. be it Sales and marketing in every leading FMCG (Leading hair oil FMCG HR please note:people do come to NITIE for S&M, most of FMCGs bigger than you do hire them from here.) , finance, there were fancy profiles like derivative structuring to which I could only say wow, since I couldn't make head or tail of what it entailed or the traditional strong points-SCM/IT.
After intense disappointments of initial 2 days. I did manage to get placed.
Standard Chartered gave me consumer banking. Johnson & Johnson gave me MD Sales and marketing. But there was one brand which simply put the competition out of the picture. It offered me an amazing flexibility, a handsome package, and a renowned management trainee program.
When deciding on whether to join MDI or NITIE I had asked one question to alumni at both places. "Does HLL come to campus?"

Yes am going to HLL now HUL. The BLT program promises a world of adventure for my wandering spirit.

One and half years into NITIE. I can say Thank you. For the best two years of my life. For friends and more than friends. For the lessons in the class room and outside.

PGDIM. 96 steps. TOPA. Freshers. Denovo. PMG. Ataria. Nescafe. PPO road. Poptates. HN. 303. PGP-5. Mess 3&4. Vodka with sprite. Prerana. 123. 321. PMG wing. GE Money. Charlie's Angels. DC++. Dbab. Ip. Huma Adlabs. Nirmal Lifestyle. 186. 25. Masala maggi. Acad section. Audi. Ethics. PPO. HUL.

I dont know if my maami ki chachi ki beti ki best freind ki bua felt what i feel today. Thank you NITIE.
Goodbye. Godbless.