Why An MBA???

This is the question which may have very well costed me a seat at IIMB. This is the question which most of the people preparing for their B school interviews/admission essays dread answering. This is the question which maybe the most clichéd question in any interview. This is the question which all aspirants prepare the best yet this is the question which nobody can answer perfectly.  

I may have gotten an admission to one of the IIMs, I may have worked for 2 years but I am still not very sure about the answer to this question. What I dread is that even after doing an MBA I might not be able to answer this question. And this fear is amplified after I read the book “Snapshots from hell, The making of an MBA”. The book is about the first year at Stanford Business School, a school among the top 3 business schools worldwide. The book is about the struggle to cope up with the academic rigor, to get used to the cut-throat competition, to worry of not getting a job and more importantly the struggle to survive. And finally it also tries to answer the question and it would be a lie if I say that I don’t agree with it. We will come to the answer later. First of all lets see what an MBA is and what an MBA actually is. 

So what does an MBA from XYZ school provide the graduates with? Is an MBA more of a fancy degree than some real stuff? Is the school matters more than the education itself? Will the graduates end up being at the same position 5 years down the line had they played Golf and boozed instead of learning how to run a company at the school? Will it be fair to say that all a business school does is put a higher price tag on its graduates? The answer to all these questions is YES and NO. What I feel is that an MBA is both. It makes you sellable, it creates demand for you but that demand is also right. An MBA student learns 100s of different things during the course of 2 years. He is among the crème-de-la-crème when he enters a prestigious business school. He is already one of the better brains around, so he deserves all that he gets after his graduation, every penny of it. But it is also true that an MBA is a bit overrated. It’s the experience and sweating out in the corporate battlefield which ultimately separates chaff from the wheat. Its just that the odds of an MBA being the grain are higher than being the chaff. 

Coming back to the question, Why MBA. I still don’t have an answer but I would like to quote from the book itself.  It diversifies the outlook of an individual, forces people to learn about everything ranging from IT to OB to marketing, gives people poise and self-confidence, and more than everything gives the power of networking. The contacts made during the two years last lifelong and reap rewards continuously. A business school gives an opportunity to mingle with bright, business minded classmates and to give serious thoughts to all kinds of business careers. A business school doesn’t take anyone to paradise; in fact it teaches that there isn’t a paradise.

So now, is a business school worth the effort and the investment? I have already taken a decision and till now not repenting it. So, decide for yourself…

The NameSake, story of ABCDs

A Bengali academician moves to US to study and work on advice by a fellow passenger on an ill-fated train, comes back to marry a Bengali girl and then grows up two children in US who struggle for their identities as ABCDs. This is THE NAMESAKE, a book and a movie. I watched the movie after reading the book, deliberately though. Once again the belief that a movie cannot do justice to a piece of literature reinforced itself as I continued through the adaptation by Mira Nair who tries her best to capture the essence of a 300 page book in a 2 hr movie. She is successful to an extent that the film is able to showcase the emotions flowing though the main characters. But she fails to get the strength and power of the characters totally out on the screen. Jhumpa Lahiri’s characters are stronger, her story more gripping and more beautifully written.

The story is about Ashoke Ganguli and his family. He names his son as Gogol, the namesake being a Russian author Nikolai Gogol. Gogol grows up hating his name and the Indian culture forced onto him by his family. The story has a twist here. After Gogol’s father dies, Gogol is reminded of his responsibilities towards his mother and sister. He shaves off his head in respect of his dead father, becomes emotional and sentimental and to an extent less confused and less frustrated. Suddenly he becomes a darling son in the eyes of the audience. This transition is very subtly yet very beautifully crafted by the author. He even marries a Bengali girl, well not because his mother fixed his first date but because he fells in love with her. It’s a different thing that he is divorced in two years because of adultery on his wife’s part.

The book very well captures the struggle for identity in an alien land, fought everyday by expatriates seeking solace in the company of fellow countrymen. These are people who feel nostalgic about their homeland every now and then, who are concerned about the culture their children are growing up in, who want their children to marry an Indian, who read a letter from their near and dear ones hundreds of times crying every time nonetheless, who have learnt to celebrate Christmas with the same fanfare as they once celebrated Diwali. The problem arises when their children, born in the land of opportunities face this dilemma between the land they belong to and the land their parents belong to. They are not able to understand why their parents invite Indians every weekend, serve samosas and want to go back to India at the first possible opportunity. They want to be Americans; hanging out at MacD’s, kissing in the open, and not wanting to be an Engineer or a doctor. Well, one cannot blame them for they have always seen this only. It is unfair to even expect that they can behave like an Indian. This struggle leads to frustration and confusion in these kids. They become detached to their families and try to be an American, sometimes overdoing things.

For people who are still wondering why actually Gogol was named Gogol, I would advice watching the movie if not reading the book. The movie is passé but maybe because I saw the movie after reading the book with high expectations. I can guarantee that this story will be liked more by someone who has lived outside India at some point in his life. Don’t watch the movie if you are expecting a typical masala movie, watch it for Tabu and Irfan Khan. But as always there is nothing better than reading the book and feeling the emotions through the words.