The Goodbye Address……..

Asatho Maa Sad Gamaya

Thamaso Maa Jyothir Gamaya

Mrithyor Maa Amritham Gamaya

Lead me from untruth to truth;

Lead me from darkness to light;

Lead me from death to immortality

Today (the last day) does not mark the end of 18 months of a course but it is a culmination point. To most of us it is the completion of a quest which triggered in us about five to six years ago. It is like touching the highest point.

We have finished a journey of 2 years amassing abundance of knowledge. It is time now to shed our cocoon and enter the corporate world. We all came here with eyes full of dreams and we are about to take our first step towards fulfilling them.

We all came as individuals through those portals. Today when we leave, we find ourselves walking away as a batch, the Batch of 2008. We connected to one another due to several reasons need, security, admiration, friendship, hatred, force of the situation, timing, helplessness and so on. The important thing is whatever be the medium of connection we have always stood connected.

It is a tradition to mention nuances of our life in this address such as late hours of CS and movies, early morning Casa’s, trips to Fidalgo, sunrise at Chapora, late night case studies and projects, hunting for projects in Verna and Kundeim, late submissions, out-standing students etc etc. There is something beyond all this that needs our attention.

There is something unique in all of us. That aspect brought us towards or away from people. That aspect is natural to each one of us and it is an individual ability. Thanks to our stint here we have had the fortune to explore it and expose it. As we shed our shells and enter the corporate jungle we join 2 billion other professionals in the world trying to achieve similar ends as us. Let us halt at this moment and ask ourselves: “What is our objective now?”. Become the VP of a co., a comfortable home, settling down at a location of our choice, ability to feed and maintain our families etc etc….isn’t it? If I take a cue from our Chairman’s words there are about 1700 B-schools in our country. If we assume an average of 100 students then the addition to the professional line of business every year is about 0.17 million people with the same objectives in mind as afore mentioned. If you are one amongst them then it is simple. The only ability needed is to top competition.

Albert Einstein, Issac Newton, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong. Who are all these people? Most importantly what’s common to all of them? They were all the “firsts” to do something. At this juncture I want to urge you to focus on yourself for one minute. You are unique and have something that is unique that you want to give to this world. Yes, we need our financial security in life. The corporate life holds the wealth of new experiences. Let us join it and explore the same. But let us not stash our away our uniqueness in the due process.

If you join the race all you have to do is keep running. In the process you might have forgotten that you can fly. We have woken up once let us ensure that slumber doesn’t find its way in ever again.

Thank you one and all!!!