MY HYBRID HIGHWAY WORLD

As the endless highway finally ended for me, I felt like my heart skipped a beat. My mecca for the next couple of years had arrived. As the nth gravel cracked beneath my car, my parents looked at me nervously, waiting for me to explode after watching a college that was half constructed. I didn’t want to sound afraid so I told them that I was ready for the adventure.

The sun was already upon us. It was a hot day. We walked towards the huge banner which welcomed the founding batch of the school of management. Oddly enough I felt a sense of pride in being one of the building blocks of this institution.

The initial skepticism was at an all-time high on the first night. My batch mates openly voiced their concerns regarding the sanctity of the promises made by the university sitting beside the poolside of the luxurious hotel which served as a residence for all of us. Yes, we were too lucky.

The tragedy of my life has always been my propensity to never fit into a common framework of people of my age. My uncle was in the founding batch of ISB Hyderabad and given his remarkably successful stint there, he kept feeding me about how this university will be one of the coolest universities in the country in the coming years.

Complacent like I always am, I continued my crazy journey of this MBA program. The plush carpets and the splendid hotel which was a hostel for us made things easy each day. The constant clank of the hammer against something solid had become a habit to the ear. So much so that too much silence made me think something was definitely wrong.

The train of engrossing events started right from the day of commencement of the course. The first seven days made me meet so many inspiring people that it infused me a spark to do a little more than what I did formerly. The initial skepticism among everybody heaved its last breath when everyone saw Mr.Munjal coming to college every day to perfect everything. It reassured us. It sealed the contract of trust.

We were the only ones in the college back then and we strutted around thinking it’s only our college until the undergraduates came to share the campus with us. I saw the building grow slowly from grey to red, from a skeleton to a full structure. It was quite amazing and it’s still the same.

A stroll around the campus always keeps me grounded. I see the less fortunate daily wage workers who work day and night to make our lives better and maybe even then can’t afford two square meals. It makes my decision more concrete to always be associated with the philanthropic world. If nothing then I can at least try to bridge the gap between what they have and what they should have.

One day I see the fresh ground Earth being dug to make heaps of dust and another to make it into something else. The dusty path which previously bore our footprints was slowly getting tiled and the walls which were like a huge blank canvas were now filling up with colors. The transformations were incredible in a short span of time.

It was an adventure and it is an adventure even today. The plush hotel turned into a modest room of my college hostel. The old subjects were replaced with new ones at the outset of the new module. Every day is a new feat, a new surprise, a new issue, new love, and the discovery of an absolutely new dimension of life. If you get bothered by small issues in life then you are probably sitting in your room and cribbing right now. I always have a pair of red-tinted glasses on to embrace this Hybrid Highway world. Guess what? It’s perfect!

Written by: Ms. Tanushree Srivastava. ( MBA)