Coming back to life

It's ironic that I should be writing this now,when I feel exactly the opposite, but for the past week or so, I felt as though I was coming out of the stupor that has enveloped me for the last 3 years. I can't explain how it happened, but the first signs of it were when
I started getting angry again. I think I read somewhere that Anger is the most primal of human emotions and despite its destructive
connotations, it also carries in it the seed of revolution and change. I think every revolution, every advancement in human history
has occurred because someone somewhere was angry about something.
Anyway, I don't know what happened but for the past 3 years I have been under some kind of sedation, nothing seemed to make me angry.
Whatever would happen, I was resigned to accepting it. That's a dangerous slide into indifference. And I can feel that I slid from
being the disciplined, vivacious and active young man that I have always been and became trapped in a morass of inaction. I stopped
having any expectations from myself, and I feel that was the point where I started stagnating. I became the ultimate
self-defeatist, whatever task you gave me, I would have lost even before I tried.Anyway, the point is that in the past week,
somethings have happened that have been a kind of re-awakening. I won a paper contest in MDI (slightly fraudulent, but none the less),
cracked a CCCS case (that's a course taken by RaviC - imagine Hitler and Anne Robinson of the Weakest link having a love child and you
would get some idea of how hard a task master this guy is), got an Insight pitch after making a 28 slide ppt in 3 hours
singlehandedly, did well in a couple of courses last term and suddenly, the old Shubhang was back.
Concomitantly, I started getting angry, I no longer felt that everthing was futile, that my efforts would make no difference to any eventual outcome. I had standards and expectations, both from myself and from people around me, for the first time in 3 years, I felt that I had the power to determine what happens not just to me but to everytyhing around me. No longer was I moping, I was
almost cocky. I know it sounds terribly self-aggrandizing but try to appreciate what kind of a human doormat I had become, this was
like a nuclear bomb exploding. More importantly, I once again became the fierce independent spirit that I had always
been at least in my ideals. No longer was I content to crib about the system and how horrible and unfair it is. I now back myself
to play the game as per the rules and win. I also got thinking about what I had become after coming to this place. I always used to
have visions, not goals like the rest of my classmates. I remember as a school kid, when everyone would want to be a movie star or a
cricketer, I told my teacher that I wanted to be the Pime Minister of India. Later when I joined as a civil engineer in IIT Delhi, I
wanted to build massive irrigation projects to bring water and electricity to people, when I got a branch upgrade to electrical
engineering, I wanted to be involved in laying down massive transmission lines and setting up power stations to bring light to each and every home in India. It may sound corny but
that is truly the way I used to think. But the problem is that the IITs are grooming grounds for software clerks, hence in the last two
years it became clear to me that I would not be able to achieve my grandiose dreams through this avenue. So in a show of defiance, a sort of middle finger up to my teachers, I took the CAT and landed up here in IIMA.
It's funny how things turn out but after coming to this place, the bastion of greed and self-serving thought in India, I have refound the idealist Shubhang who had been suppressed
for so long. It took a lecture, one case discussion by RaviC to set the ball rolling. We were discussing the work of an NGO in
Bangladesh and in his typical caustic style, he taunted all 96 of us "you know, I just wanted to give you an experience of what it is
like to achieve a social objective like radicating poverty, because most of you will never think of this again in your life, you'll
be out there in the corporate world, making deals and selling stuff".Is this what I have become being among these people? I wanted to shout out in his class that that's not true, some of us did feel a lot of social responsibility.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that coming here, especially the second year here has rekindled a lot in me,
made me think once again of what do I want to achieve in the long term. Getting a job and all is important and fine, but if you think
that you are bright and capable enough, do you have the guts to do something that has a vision behind it? I am not implying that there
is a natural hierarchy of professions and vocations, but anything if done with the mindset of a vision behind it is more likely
to not just succeed, but leave you more contented at the end of it.

Hmmmm...it's good to write down stuff in this manner, I feel much better already.