Mutual Benefits Agreement

A hallmark day! We finally finished with our internal evaluations. it was a time when ideally, I should have gone out partying but one when I actually sat down thinking. With no impending assignments, this was a day i had been eagerly waiting for because I needed a much-needed break from studying. This, coming from me is quite rich. So I sat in my room which overlooks the Sahyadri Mountains with Yesudas crooning to some of the sweetest of tunes and thought at bay.

My life has turned upside down over the past few months, least for good. This has been perhaps one of the toughest and most challenging periods of my life wherein I seem to have matured dramatically fast. I see more logic than before and even though this era has not been high in terms of contentment, it is so in terms of learning.

One of the most different things I have learnt over a couple of months is the concept of Mutual Benefits Agreement (read: MBA). Not that I was earlier totally unaware of it, but seeing it here and living right in the middle of it is altogether a different ball-game. It’s very complex in implementation and yet so very simplistic in its approach. Allow me to enlighten the ignorant lot, if any. According to this concept, two or people mutually agree to be in each other’s company because:

i. They have no other company because of whatever is the reason.

ii. They each see some benefit in being with each other. This could be platonic, romantic, academic or simply because they like being with each other.

iii. They need a climber (know what I mean?)

iv. They are comfortable with each other because somewhere their thought is at the same plane and their thinking matches.

It can be easily assumed that almost everyone adopts this concept, more so in a B-school. This might easily be prevalent elsewhere also but because I am in one, I can see and relate to it better. This is not friendship as some of you might want to argue, this is merely a way to survive the two year imprisonment each one of us has granted ourselves willingly.

You are very lucky if you find a true friend in a B-school. It happens to very few. Most of the people I live around go by the philosophy of selective interaction. They talk to each other if and only if they need a job done, an errand run or if they are in the same assignment/presentation group. They’ll have a plastic smile fixed on their face, almost as irritating as the stewardesses of Jet Airways. They’ll strategize and put any politician to shame, screw people left and right; without so much of even batting an eyelid. You have got to see the finesse. You have to admire the thinking, the devotion given to planning and the smooth, sleek execution of a perfectly crafted plan. What is perhaps the disturbing fact here is the fact that many innocent people fall a prey to this and do not come out of the Utopian world, till the very end. Anyways, I am no social worker, so all I can realistically do, is to empathize with their plight, for they know not, what doom actually beckons them.

There are two ways of surviving these two years. First and the simpler way is to be what people want you to be and the second one is to be what you actually are. Till date I fail to understand the aura, the magic behind acting as something or someone you actually are not. I mean, how difficult is to be your real self? Each one of us is born special, different from the rest and better than the best. Still people crave to be what they actually are not and I have not been able to find any rhyme to that. This is a decision each one takes for himself and I have no qualms about it. But I do wonder whether it actually is worth the efforts.

You have got to be smart enough to know and realize what is right and what is wrong, you have to have the courage of not running behind the mirage. You have to be bold enough to be what you are and face the world. And if you can’t then I fail to see the purpose behind your degree, your education. Yes, you might land up with a great job, a great salary but what about your peace of mind? It may sound downright philosophical and straight out of an Ayn Rand novel but it’s a question each one of us faces at some point of time. Is a pretentious life what you came here for? Are you made for running behind elusive and absolutely worthless baubles? Is this your quest, your ultimate goal?

It’s easy to fall a prey to circumstances and hurdles that come your way but as Rabindranath Tagore said, the mind should be led forward by ever-widening thought and action. It is difficult, not to trod along a path that has already been traversed by millions but if you cannot dare to be different, if you cannot stand up to your own beliefs, if you do not have a philosophy for you life, what a waste of a great life!

In the end, the decision is ours, to be what others want us to or to be what we are. Education is not supposed to ruin us. It is supposed to give us a clarity of thought and to enable us to determine what is wrong and what is right. At the end, you should be able to stand up for your own self, for your own beliefs, for your own principles. What is right for me, may not be right for you. Find out what is right for you. Education is an endless pursuit, an ongoing quest to know yourself and your horizons.

So, I end the day, sipping a coke with the select few people whose thought matches mine, instead of painting the town red. That’s because I have found that it’s right for me and I have a quest for life. And as I walk back towards my room, Tagore’s words come floating by again.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free ;( and not according to MBA)

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action;

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father,

Let my fellow-men awake.

Cheers!