Question: Starting right at the beginning, how did first year Abhyudaya imagine life would be like at IIT Kharagpur? How similarly or differently has it turned out now?
That is quite an interesting question. To be honest, I didn’t have many expectations. For me, high school was pretty unidirectional. I was only involved in studies and focussed on clearing JEE. College was a totally different ball game. It made me have totally different social experiences. I experienced friendships, I saw fights, I experienced love and intimacy but also heartbreak and insecurity. All of this was new, which I as a first year could not have foreseen. In my first year, I learned to respect seniors immensely. But when it came to the third year, I learned that there were also times when I had to politely reject seniors if I didn’t think they were fit for a role in a play that I was directing. In my first year, I learned that it was okay to ask for help from amazing seniors, seeking direction, guidance, or counsel. And later, I learned that it’s also great when an amazing junior comes to your doorstep crying at 2 AM. So it’s been a journey where everything that I have taken from this college, I myself have been put in a position where I had to give back. Throughout college, I used to pursue these highly coveted internships, and I even ended up securing some. But I learned that it’s also okay to be kicked out of a startup internship because your priorities lie towards a college PoR. I learned this in my first year from two seniors. However, when it actually came to me doing it, it was a different ball game altogether. It’s great to be department rank 1, but it’s also okay to have a drop in your CGPA once in a while if you’re focusing on extracurricular activities. College life gives a new dimension to things. It made the gray area visible between the black and the white. A few days ago, I was talking to a friend, and I said that before college, I thought that stupidity and stubbornness were really undesirable traits. But in college, I learned that it’s okay to be stupid if you’re being stupid in love. It’s okay to be stubborn when it comes to getting the best out of your team. Long story short, college brought about a holistic, top-to-bottom remodel of my personality. It made me believe in things like faith, destiny and empathy and helped me accept failure and differences in a new way.
Question: That’s a really great poetic answer. Given your very diverse range of extra-curriculars, all of which you have done very well in, can you take us through how your interests evolved through the years?
I think in my first year, apart from academics, I was only involved with the dramatics. It wasn’t something I had planned on doing. I just happened to attend the auditions, and I got through, so I didn’t try for any other auditions. That’s how I got into Pravah. I learned a lot of things in Pravah and I had a lot of fun. I discovered that I really enjoyed storytelling and dramatics, and this realisation would also help shape my career. It influenced many things I did later in college. After the first year, I joined two other societies, the Debating Society and ShARE, IIT Kharagpur. I learned a lot through debating. I participated in international competitions and represented my college. As a part of ShARE, I was able to improve the organisation and make it more successful. I think that happened in my second year. After that, I started focusing more on my career. Until then, I wasn’t particularly driven toward any specific career option. Coding was something I hated, right from the beginning. So, I went out of my way to explore other career options. That’s how I learned about consulting. Over the years, consulting became my go-to choice because of my love for storytelling. I realised that consulting, in a sense, was storytelling, and it allowed me to do various other things. Moreover, I had a strong skill set that was well-suited for consulting. So, that’s how I ended up pursuing a career in consulting and yeah, I was always involved in a lot of other activities in college. I was deeply involved in social and cultural activities, be it music, dramatics, or elocution. So yeah, I really enjoyed my diverse set of social and cultural experiences.
Question: As you mentioned your PoRs, from being the Governor of Pravah to the President of ShARE, while also fulfilling commitments to your hall, how has that leadership role shaped your perspective?
Immensely. Even now, when I look back and consider the best things I’ve done in college, my governorship tenure at Pravah stands out. It marked the beginning of my journey of accepting positions of responsibility. Through these experiences, I learned the significance of leadership. It’s not a term that should be taken lightly. You want to do something that you and others can be proud of. There’s pressure as well that you don’t want to screw up and definitely not make it worse than how you got it. Regarding leadership, particularly in Pravah and hall activities, I was always someone who focused on innovation. I never accepted things the way they were done before my tenure. I was always striving to come up with new ideas and approaches.I attempted to create a musical production in my hall, which was the first of its kind. I also attempted similar innovation in ShARE. We created the first-ever radio play in Pravah. All of these endeavours presented numerous challenges. However, it was my passion for innovation that kept me motivated and determined to overcome these challenges.
Love how your innovation and love for storytelling helped you get into consulting. Was there ever a moment where you realised that yes, consulting is what you want to do?
So, I’ve always been of the opinion that we’re not always sure about exactly what we want to do. While I may not have found my true calling, I was certain about what I didn’t like at all. It has been more of a process of rejecting other alternatives rather than actively selecting a specific path. It started with me not enjoying computer science, and then realising that data science wasn’t the right fit for me either. However, I also came to the realisation that finance and consulting are areas that I didn’t really hate.
Engineering cause you don’t like Bio?
Yes. Engineering cause I didn’t like Bio. I didn’t like research so I knew I had to get into corporate. All of these were experiments which failed. Being Ok with them failing and then realising what your true calling is. There wasn’t one clear moment where I knew this is what I had to do. There were some people whom I really liked and they got into consulting and that is what motivated me to go ahead. Then I thought I could really do well in it.
How did you maintain a work-life balance, or in KGP an acads-socult balance?
I realised in my first year that I cannot be a person who really did only a few things. In my second semester, I tried to focus on academics and a 10. That semester has been the worst so far academically. In no other semester did I try for a 10 and I did a lot better. In my second semester I tried to cut off all other activities and that didn’t work out so well. After that I realised that it is important to go out and keep myself engaged in activities that I liked. So that once I got back I was more motivated to study and more happy. Naturally the way was to find things that made me happy. And whatever I found, I tried to leave a mark there. Through all of these activities I was able to make a lot of friends, and friends make academics really easy. You can ask them to teach you stuff one night before the exam, you can teach them stuff one night before the exam.
On that note any advice for juniors?
To be honest, I am not really good at work-life balance myself. I am usually completely involved and immersed in one thing that I am doing. If I really like something, I can do it around the clock, and I won’t be tired. For advice, there are two things which KGP life taught me. The first thing is a phenomena called Tails You Win, as discussed in the book Psychology of Money. It says you can be wrong half the time and still make a fortune. As college students we are a little afraid of taking risks. We don’t go out of our comfort zone and try a lot of new things, especially when it comes to our careers. I think I took a big risk in my career, when I rejected a PPO and sat for a different company that I really liked. That worked out in my favour, but it doesn’t always. I have seen failures too. Second thing is believing in destiny. I realised that a lot of things in college life and also in life, in general, are out of your control. You can’t possibly seem to control what happens in your career, you can’t possibly seem to control what happens in your personal life. And so, a lot of times, that causes panic. I think what helps in such situations is two things — A. Focus on the controllable, B. Focus on the positives. So, if you are someone who is managing to do both of these things right, most things will work out, and it will make it seem like a lot easier. There are only like 4 or 5 things that are controllable, and millions uncontrollable ones.
Question: Any life lessons or realisations that you have had in hindsight?
The biggest life lesson that I have learnt is that …. From the sitcom Office, there is a line that Michael Scott says — “You miss hundred per cent of the shots you don’t take”. My life lesson is similar to that. I know that now in life, I need to always continuously keep on trying and be okay with failures and try to do something new. Because, as long as you are doing something new, you are doing something needful. That gives you a sense of satisfaction in yourself.
Question: Would you say that becoming prom king is a Netflix-worthy moment?
(Laughs) I would like to request SF to give the recording of that moment. I don’t know how it happened. Becoming Prom King was probably one of the most unexpected and interesting things about me. I wasn’t even planning on going to Prom until two days ago. It ended up happening all too soon, and it was my placement semester. I would like to see that slight pinch of happiness in a guy who is burdened with a lot of stress of placements coming in ten days.
Question: Since you are leaving KGP now, which would you say was your favourite place in KGP?
I would say, in the first year, my favourite place was Tagore Open Air Theatre, because I really liked the view. And we can sit on top of the projection room at the back. So that was nice. Later, Kalidas Auditorium became very special too. One place that I really liked, that a lot of people don’t know about, is near Nalanda. It’s like a hut. It’s a great place to be.
You know, I once tried to create a late-night talk show in KGP.
Please tell us about it.
The context was that when we just made it into campus, back in the day, a lot of people were not still on campus. We were fourth and fifth years. The major reasons I wanted to start with this were — 70 years after establishing IIT KGP, the main way of consumption of news is still through print. So I wanted to see if we could innovate and make a talk show, which at that time would have gotten a lot of attention since almost everyone consumes content through mobile phones on the internet. And we could serve as a body that asks relevant questions to people involved in administration, and create more visibility in certain administrative actions. So the idea was nice, and we had scripts written for 2–3 episodes as well. But then the second lockdown happened in January, where we wouldn’t be allowed to roam out of our hostels anymore. That’s where the idea died down because, by the time it was lifted, most of us had to take on a lot of hall responsibilities.