Musings...

(Published in the Alumni magazine for the Mudra Institute of Communications Ahmedabad in 2008)

‘First’s are always complex experiences – first day in school, first love, first loss, first fight, first interview, first job – there are conflicting emotions of deep anxiety and delirious exhilaration, of romantic adventure and a sense of foreboding, of immense hope and equal amounts of doubt. ‘First of the MICANs’ experienced no less. It wasn’t just the fact that most of us had left home for the first time, were in a post graduate course for the first time, had to live in a hostel for the first time - we were also in an institute that had just started up – with no past glory to speak of, no lineage to fall back upon, no old boys network that would get us the jobs, just a determination to make a difference in an industry full of MBA grads. With so many firsts to deal with all at one go, the forty-two chosen ones just decided that ‘what will be will be’.

Looking back at the past eleven years one would have to agree, we haven’t done that badly at all J There are thousands of MICANs doing brilliantly well in life and work across the world, the institute is hugely prosperous with the best of faculty and facilities, there are international collaborations in place to expose students to the global paradigm and lucrative jobs at the end of their tenure here – not so bad when I think of the meeting we had just before the campus recruitment for the first batch. It was held on the staircase outside the oldest hostel block – some twenty of us, depressed and angry with ourselves for having chosen MICA – the experiment, instead of a few other more conventional options we had. The only agenda for discussion seemed to be - what if no company came to claim our souls for a package they would offer, what if no one thought we were good enough. While some tried livening our moods saying Mudra would surely come the others sneered at their naivety. It seems funny today, when MICANs face an embarrassment of riches when they choose the companies they want to work for at the end of their term.

I stepped back into the campus again after almost nine years and this time to organize an arts based course for MICANs. Walking through the campus at night I met some familiar ghosts who came out of the shadows – fights unresolved, loves lost, promises made and some undone, presentations prepared on chart-papers with rough brushes and paint, and festivals celebrated in rather high spirits. Two years and millions of moments. Only one thought haunted me – ‘I wish I could share this with the rest of my batch’. A sudden yearning to know who is where, who is doing what, what have their lives become, an almost unbearable desire to connect with a bunch of people who shared a certain very important phase of life. They say it’s a sign of reaching middle age and I humbly accept J

I am delighted to use this opportunity to announce a nostalgic project some of us have just undertaken – we want to meet again this year sometime – yes, the whole batch after eleven years and hopefully at MICA. It will be beautiful if we can, and probably heart wrenching too with all the hair loss and extra weight. But somewhere I feel it would be wonderful to continue a conversation we began here many years ago. Something inside us will always connect in a rather MICAN way.