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B-schooled Episode # 5
Meanwhile back at home …
“The names of those who leave their lands for the hallowed grounds of a
bschool are revered, and mentioned in fables”, at least that’s what Joey
thought. All through childhood there were 5 words that echoed in Joey’s home
– ‘why can’t you be more like your Stan’.
Stan, the quintessential school going kid was everything Joey wasn’t – a
straight ‘A’ student and the hero of the fables of every mom in the
neighborhood. Half of Joey’s 20 something life was spent trying to become
Stan and the remainder spent realizing that he couldn’t.
But then things changed!!! About a year back Joey surprised everyone and
himself too, by securing a seat in one of the county’s top notch MBA
programs. Even though there were demons lurking inside Joey’s head that
reminded him of the blatant luck involved, Joey was smiling coz he had done
something Stan couldn’t. The landscape back at home had changed as well;
people flocked in their dozens (forgive the exaggeration) to catch a glimpse
of the new celeb in the making. Stardom was nothing new for Joey but stardom
of the non-fictional kind certainly was. Finally like those umpteen stories
architected inside his idle mind, his earthly life bore at least an iota of
semblance to the ‘skyscraperish’ feats of his story book existence. Basking
in the glory of his new found status Joey even flirted with the idea of
carrying this persona of his to the bschool – to state the obvious, episodes
1 to 4 have told you, in excruciating detail, that Joey gloriously failed at
this.
Now that Joey was well into his MBA program he was a bit alienated from the
world outside of the bschool campus. The attention seeking missile that his
existence was, every now and then Joey would delve into his realm of idle
imagination and ask himself, “Do they still talk about me??” – Let’s just
say “Once a Diva you can’t be anything less”. Anyhow, Joey didn’t really
have a clue about what was going on back at home. That was until he went
home for a couple of days.
Now, if you have been to any home in Joey's home town, you would know of
this. The mom’s of any family have a gala good time talking up the feats of
their offspring, across barbed wired fences, as the recipient on the other
side of the fence bides her time waiting for the that .5 second pause where
she could barge in with her very own offspring testimonial. It was like a
really contorted adaption of a ‘Yo Mamma’ standoff wherein the mothers would
don their hipster hats and go kamikaze on each other. “My son will earn at
least 2 lacs a month after his MBA” is what an eavesdropping Joey would hear
and cringe with embarrassment at those zeroes put with consummate ease. “Oh
my son already earns 2 lacs and that too without a MBA degree would be
neighbor’s response”. It would go on for a while before one of them would be
distracted by the sound of the pressure cooker going ‘pheeeeeee’. To make
matters worse there were murmurs echoing in Joey’s house, ones that were
stained with that one blasphemous word in Joey’s vocabulary – Marriage. His
potential MBA degree was being used as bait to draw suitable prospects. For
others his would have seemed like a favorable scenario, but for Joey it
meant that his world of ‘Atlantis’ would have to be shared.
Even with his grades skydiving and his bschool quotient nothing to be proud
about, there seemed to be quite a few developments taking place back at
home. Was Joey able to put these murmurs to rest?? Or did he give in?? Did
Joey’s growing cult status plateau??? Keep reading to find out.
Rakesh Malayattil
Class of 2015