The Cat In The Kennel [part 1 of 2]

I have the last of my series exams tomorrow, but the numerous requests by my regular readers have forced me to come up with a new page[...i wish :)] Hey, if i don't write my book who else will alle? So here's another page from my book.

This year's CAT exam falls on November 18th- this weekend. And college is abuzz with with greetings of 'machu, kannur expressil-il alle', 'ah, cat puli ethiyallo', 'neeyum cat ezhuthunnundo?', 'enna cheyyaana kaashu koduthu poyille', etc... And I'm also eagerly waiting to board the Kannur express this friday. No, its not the cat I'm after, but like most of the commuters that day, its the beach and the biriyanis that I'm looking forward to.

The prologue of my cat story falls sometime during 3rd sem, when i got bored of my subjects surprisingly early. Everyone knew of mba before, but it was from that time that terms like 'IIMs' and 'fat paychecks' and stuff began to enter our lexicon. Looking back, i smile at my naivety. I had next to zero understanding of what an mba really was. At home, the decision of my career was left to me, though my parents expected me to choose engineering( That was n is pretty much the order of the day). I didn't disappoint them and took mechanical engineering. But on a positive note, I thank my stars for not making me opt any other branch :). Anyways, it took only a year for me to come to terms with the fact that engg was not something that I loved very much. The subjects were boring and the classes were monotonous. And at that point of time, mba looked as much inviting as does a fire escape during an inferno.

Well, that's stretching things a bit too far. I didn't hate engg that much. But the point is that I saw mba as an escape route from engineering. I assossiated all the fun part of cet life with mba - the fests, the organizing stuff, extra cc reading,... Even bunking classes were soon linked with mba[not that anyone's complaining.. :)]. Soon 2nd year was over and 3rd was well on its way to being over. And it was time to turn all the talk into action.

I'm staying at YMCA( the only YMCA I've seen without a basketball ground), and IMS was quite near. TIME, the only other choice, was pretty far away. With all the built up beginner's enthusiasm, factors like 'not being late to class', 'staying back after class', 'discussing with the faculty', etc meant that the proximity of IMS cinched the deal in favor of it. So by the middle of the 6th sem, I joined IMS. They make you write a Preliminary Test (PT), and my score was real good. Surendrakumar sir calls up and says if i had gotten one more answer right, then I'd have aced that year's cat. ( Have you seen the ad for naukri.com where a guy is shown into a restroom marked VIPee and he swells up with pride... well I wasn't very different). I cheerfully lugged home the quite heavy 'reference material' and went for classes for bout two weeks. Then came the sem end rush and lets just say IMS cat didn't even cross my mind till the beginning of 7th sem.

As with all new sems, 7th also started with resolutions to jog daily, get to sleep on time, etc. There was an addition to the list this time - the cat ofcourse! So i went, straight to Surendrakumar's office, had a nice motivational chat with him. "Okay kris, how many hours a day do you spend for CAT?"..."Uh, zero?..".."Okay, how many sections have you completed in the ref material?".. "None...?"..and so it went. In the end he did convince me to start browsing through the reference material. I came straight to hostel and did two chapters from arithmetic &algebra. To date, they remain the only chapters I've gone through in the entire reference material.

(To be contd..)