A memory to cherish for a life time!

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Thursday, 11th June?2015 was a dream come true for the MBA aspirants who could finally get themselves registered at the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi. It was a moment of pride for each one of us to step into the academic block at Suchana Bhaban and get ourselves registered as IIM R students.?The proceedings continued till 12th June 2015.

All of us had heard a lot about the much craved IIM life and had always dreamed of experiencing it. Finally we had made it into the league of the fortunate 140 PGDM and the 50 PGDHRM future leaders. Adrenaline levels soared high amongst all of us!

We were somewhat wishing that the administration spares us on the weekend and starts afresh from the next Monday. ?After the induction program schedule was mailed to the us, we found that it was scheduled ?from Saturday itself. So we lowered our hopes and consoled ourselves saying that ‘Chalo attend kar lete hain, sirf to baithe baithe welcome speeches sunna hain’.?So we reached ?the CMPDI auditorium, picked out ?the known faces from the registration day and clustered into groups, soon settling into a comfortable zone.?Respected Dean Prof. (Dr.)?Pradip Kumar Bala addressed the entire batch with the welcome speech focusing on the mission and vision of IIM R.?This was followed by the welcome speech by respected Director, IIM R, Prof. Anindya Sen. It was a fun speech and kept the entire auditorium captivated for a long time. I was mesmerized by Sir’s motivating as well as entertaining speech till he ended saying ‘I can go on with this, but I shall rather limit myself for today’.

Prof Gaurav Marathe had designed the entire Induction Program very meticulously. Infact he had been preparing this since the last 3-4 months, that very time when we were all rushing with our interview calls from several B schools. However none of us were much aware of what was awaiting us in the next moment. ?A pamphlet was distributed amongst us and it mentioned the group divisions. All the 190 students were divided into 8 groups and Prof Gaurav Marathe asked us to assemble in the respective groups without speaking to one another. He told us that it was test to ensure that the institute has chosen the most deserving candidates from the cut throat CAT struggle. And to our own surprise, we did it!! Pin drop silence and we clustered into the groups. I was in group 7 and had none of the known faces in it. I felt tentative as I was forced to get out of my comfort zone. We had a short round of introduction amongst ourselves and started gelling. But then the BUMMER! Prof. Marathe declares the ‘Assignment’ of the day: A 7 minutes short film on ‘Management in our lives’ within 24hrs!! We were already aware of this term ‘Assignment’, prevailing in B schools, but an assignment like this on the very first day!!!?That too with a bunch of people who hardly knew movie making and the worst part was that they didn’t even know each other well.

But assignments are ‘Assignments’ and ‘deadlines are sacrosanct’. So we started discussing all sorts of concepts and stories which we could act out. Too many intelligent people, too many ideas, too many conflicts, too many determined directors and actors….only time did not halt for us. It could well have been a case where too many cooks had spoilt the broth. However we were determined not to make that happen. We returned to our hostel rooms, got fresh and again assembled in our own groups. It was already 6pm and somehow we came to a conclusion about the storyline of our film. As we were running out of time, we figured out ways to reduce the conflict and focus on more productive decisions. Slowly the power plays and conflicting opinions vaporized and we were finally being collaborative and concentrating on team building. By this time we were all unanimous on the fact that RESULT SPEAKS more than individual egos. We the members of Team 7 enacted the Transformation of Income of a Potato Seller. It was entirely a no production cost film. We collected few potatoes and chips from the hostel mess and chose the setup in and around IIM R hostel campus. We did not even have a proper DSLR to shoot the film. The entire night was spent on shooting followed by editing the movie clips. The editing went on till the next day morning, and we were scared that we might miss the deadline. But the amazing part of all this hustle and bustle was that Team 7 submitted the movie first and got quite an appreciation from the seniors who were helping Prof Marathe in hosting the program. As the other teams were submitting their videos, we saw that the file sizes were like 550mb, 650mb or 750mb, and guess ours, onlyyy 80mb!! More adrenaline rush!! But as the showtime began, we found 3 of the other teams ended up in filming on the same story line of the last 24 hour journey!! None of them were aware of the other’s motion and missed points on the ‘Uniqueness’ of the storyline. Thus we made it to the top 3 movies of the day. It was an awesome feeling!

The short film show was followed by a ‘Know your state’ session where Economics Professor of Ranchi University Prof. Saran enlightened us about the tribal community in Jharkhand. The next few days had presentations on Administration, Hostel and Mess, Library, AIS and other facilities provided by the institute, not to forget the important Bloomberg session on being familiar to the Bloomberg terminals. We also had a few foundation classes on Excel, Case Study solving and Quantitative Techniques.

Prof. Amita Dutt, Uday Shankar Professor of Dance at Rabindra Bharati University, gave us a lecture on Dance forms of India and enlightened us of its heritage and value on our culture and lives. Prof. Swapan Kumar Mullick, Director, The Statesman Print Journalism School gave us a lecture on film making and we were mesmerized by what it means to be a film critic. Prof. Deepak Dhamija?and Prof. Ghanshyam Lalsa also guided us and taught us the art of drama making.?We also had an outbound program arranged in collaboration with the RMG Learning centre. We got some time out to visit rock gardens, visit the 120 year old Firayalal Shopping mall, take snaps infront of Captain Dhoni’s house, taste the much acclaimed sweets of Kaveri restaurant and also the famous litti & chokha. RMG group had also given us the dramatic platform of investigating a murder story, where we had to interview the enacting ghosts of the story and solve the murder mystery.

Besides this we had the area presentations on Accounting and Finance, Operations, Marketing, Economics and Strategy building and HRM and Organizational Behaviour by the respective faculty members.

But the most interesting part was the sports events that our seniors had arranged for us. Tug of War, Doucheball, Bricks, Pipes and Marbles and what not!! It was an amazing experience where we not only found the smart seniors executing the games and managing such a big crowd so efficiently, but also learnt the management skills that helped teams in winning the games. The defeats also revealed our short comings where we need to work hard on. Our seniors also worked very hard on introducing each and every committee, club and SIGs. The presentations of each and every club/committee, right from the Placecom to Samarpan(CSR club of IIM R) left us spellbound. We were amazed by the mission and vision of our seniors and felt the Wings of Fire within ourselves.

And last but not the least was the Talent show. During the entire 2 weeks Induction Program, each and every team had to find out that wee little valuable time and?prepare ourselves for the Talent Show, which was to be presided by the Respectable Dean and Director of the institute. Each and every team worked really hard, some even staying awake till 4-5am. We the Team 7 members had prepared a nukkad natak on Honor Killing. We practiced a lot, striving for perfection and bringing life to our act. We were determined to keep the audience captivated for the entire 7 minutes duration.?Other teams also staged mimes, dances, songs, mimicry and we realized the endless talents in this batch of 2015-17 amidst the enriched diversity of engineers, geologists, architects and commerce students having varied work experience in diverse domains.

And guess who came first? Team 7 againnnn…We excelled both the Film making and Talent show. The satisfaction that engulfed us was beyond words.

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With this awesome 2 weeks journey we got full on entertainment and were also rejuvenated from the mundane CAT preparation and/or daily office work. We were totally prepared to ride the daunting B-school roller coaster as the classes began from 29th June 2015.