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

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