Branded. For life.

The moratorium has ended.  I wouldn’t call it a rejuvenated resurgence of activity on this blog, because I know better.  Such spurts of action have crept up in the past, only to be extinguished by hopeless subjection.  The good part is that the cobwebs would probably go away this time around and I won’t be dead online two years in a row. So anyway, the blog, yes.

It is rather unjust to underplay the effect an Ivy League stamp has on your resume, and completely irrational, more so, to deny the marked difference an IIM stamp creates on your profile.  Do I feel proud of it? Of course! Do I feel I earned it? Hell yes! But something’s amiss.  I’m probably asking myself the wrong question, and that has manifested itself into a plausible deniability of the aura that surrounds such an “achiever”.  Why is it that the feeling of belonging to a niche group has overtones of arrogance and self-importance?  Why does it not feel right to announce to the world about the two years that shaped my career and made me stronger and resilient in the face of adversity?  A constant stream of a guilty conscience underlines such probing questions.

I hate to advertise, I always have.  Probably being amongst the nerdy bunch in school and being exemplified by all aunts and uncles as role models for their sons and daughters took its toll, as I kept moving further into my shell.  Any feeling of celebration on a personal achievement would inadvertently be subdued by a growing fear of being put up on a pedestal again.  I hoped to be normal, just regular.  Fitting in was always a problem.  Lunch time was spent in the library, for fear of sitting alone at the lunch table with no friends, sports time was a nightmare for fear of messing up the one opportunity to shine and show talent beyond academics.  My classmates were NEVER nasty to me, in fact, I don’t remember a single year of school or college when others deliberately made me miserable.  My misery was my own creation.

This “God complex” to set everything straight, to be larger than life, to not be defined by one aspect of life, has been my nemesis.  Somewhere along the way I lost track of the fact that my indulgence and aptitude also define me, that my actions and achievements are a consequence of my abilities, so it is okay to be happy about them.  Always running away from applause and the tag of an “IIM waala”, the search for true identity and a calling has been a far cry.  Unfortunately, as this realisation dawns upon me, so does the inevitability of most of my future thoughts and actions being attributed to those of an “IIM graduate”.

It is now time to embrace the dark side, to not care if the world says that KayGee had a spark of brilliance because he’s an IIM guy, to no longer hope against hope that some day people would know me for more than “that IIM guy”.  I have found inner peace in the sanctity of my conscience which has shown me that I already am what I am for the ability to have achieved what I have and the promise of more just because of who I am.

It is true, like they say, we are, in the end, “branded, for life”.