Was it a Sunday?

After spending around eight hours in lectures on Saturday and running for tea in between, we saw the following post being shared by the class representative on Facebook page. There was also an email lying in our inbox with similar content.

For Tomorrow - 7th October, 2012

07:00 - 10:00 JGW - Serve those who serve us
10:45 - 11:15 Inquizitive preliminary round
11:15 - 12:00 jNAN Shastra - session

12:00 - 12:45 Inquizitive Finals
03:30 - 07:00 JGW - SPANDAN

I wished I could dislike the post. I wished I could reply to his email saying, “Common! it is Sunday – The only day we get some respite”. Moreover, the schedule of the next week is completely painted with lectures. It is not easy to find free pockets of time in next week schedule. All I wanted to do was to relax a bit. But, I had forgotten about the spirit of people organizing and participating in these events.

Little did I realize that there was something common to these three unique events and there was something novel about them. As I write this and as the Sunday gives way to Monday, we can recognize that all these events were new initiatives undertaken here. This common thread binding all of them was strengthened by the motivation of volunteers and organizers. The theme of the events varied from social service to peer learning to quizzing. Joy of Giving Week (JGW) events were to celebrate the ongoing festival of philanthropy at XLRI and in India, ‘Inquizitive’ was a quizzing event challenging our business knowledge and ‘jNAN Shastra’ was about sharing your knowledge and experiences with your peer. 

It takes lot of effort to start anything and set the ball rolling. The organizers did an outstanding job and the response of the participants was equally supportive. This Sunday was full of exuberance and vigor. The day started with a joy of giving event and ended with a joy of giving event. There was joy in serving and sharing. There was much liveliness in the air we breathed today.  Who says Sundays are for relaxing when there is so much of action around you?

The End of End terms

The cheer and noise of my friends from outside Father Prabhu Hall who had finished their last exams before time while I was still thinking and writing to make some sense proved how big a relief it was. The uproar compelled me to submit mine too and join the party. Yes, end terms will return but right now the small joy of their end is bigger than their intimidation of coming again. 

Exam-fever can catch you at any age. You cannot get immune to it. It is indifferent to the facts that we all have faced many such exams long before in our lives and that we have faced tougher situations than them in our professional careers.  End terms are like a heptathlon event in sports.  Each exam different from the other yet fundamentally requires the same stamina and temperament. Interesting stories emerged after each exam. Consider this, "The heart start thumping as you are about to hit the final key on calculator to check if balance-sheet balances. And you get a mini heart-attack when you  see that liabilities are not equal to assets. The term 'balanced balance-sheet' seems oxymoron in that moment and it appears all those balanced balance sheets in the world must be fudged". Tragic as well as hilarious.

What I liked most about the end terms was the intensity in the environment. It is incredible to see people putting such efforts after a long hiatus from academic life. Some of us were going to sleep at four in the morning while others were waking up at that hour. Good mornings or good nights made no sense. Did we decouple ourselves from time or were we following different time zones in the same time zone?  For many, library was the new bedroom. Some studied in groups and executed divide and conquer. The deserted path to GMP hostel almost looked like a curfew being imposed. Astonishing adaptation!

Sleep deficit in GMP must have raised dangerously close to India's fiscal deficit and as Indian government awakes to overcome it through recent announcements of FDI in retail and aviation, cut in fuel subsidy and disinvestment, let us all sleep enough to reduce our deficit too in the one week break.

Happy Sleeping GMP...Go Hibernate..