Week 3 - The week of Surprises

Week 3 has finally reached Day 7.

What an eventful week - surprises, war, losses, and a pile of deadlines. But let’s start from the start…

The week began with this beautiful poem in Prof. Saral Mukherjee’s class (hands down, my favourite professor at IIM-A so far). And now, looking back, it feels like the poem was written just for this week – “in the darkest times, our united voices can inspire hope, and the future is carried forward by honouring those who came before us.”

Well, I lost the Secretary elections for the Career Committee—by just 7 votes, but the bigger bad news for this week was the real-world tension between India and Pakistan. Thursday evening, I found myself glued to the screen, watching the Indian Army neutralize drone and missile attacks with incredible precision. It gave me goosebumps. There was this strange but solid sense of relief knowing that the Pahalgam terror attackers were met with a strong, fitting response by the Indian Air Force.

Among all this, Week 3 also came bearing surprises.

Surprise-1: The very first surprise quiz. Right at 1:45 PM when each one of us was planning for the post-lunch afternoon nap -  an email dropped. Quiz at 2:30. Subject? No prizes for guessing… DOMD. Classic IIM-A.

At this point, I was about to award this week as my worst week at IIM-A. But then, something changed. Or rather, someone showed up.

Pav Bhaji!!! And oh—also my wife, Mansha, who brought the Pav Bhaji.

Mansha could finally add faces to characters of the IIM-A story I used to describe on calls. It felt nice to have two parts of my world in the same room.

Despite the mountain of deadlines, quizzes, and the terrifying FAM (Firms and Markets) mid-term sprinting towards us next week, we decided to hit pause—just for a while. We went out for a celebratory Sunday lunch (because some people did win the elections, and well, that’s worth cheering for). We went to this Asian restaurant - Tuk Tuk Thai – and for few of us, trying to eat with chopsticks turned out to be a steeper learning curve than MD (Modelling for Decisions).

But it was worth it. A much-needed break to just feel human again.

That’s all for this week. See you in the next one (that is, if I survive the FAM mid-term).