Redemption in the Pursuit of Happyness

Often have I felt my grip loosening over the thing I have wanted the most for the moment. What we call as fate or destiny most often comes forth once the failure happens. Last one and a half years I had been living a life completely reliant on fate, but to be true with time your faith in yourself reduces so did mine. The things I thought I was much capable of were now turning to look alien to me. My outer self projected a confident personality but within I was a scared individual who was waiting for opportunities. Now opportunities mean results in the end, and what I was most scared of was failure as I am sure most of us are. While most of my colleagues at the b-school were reading through newspapers, magazines and economic journals I was preparing myself mentally. I did not hesitate in sharing this with anyone I knew in return for some general knowledge; the exercise was always good as the other party felt mentally strong while I had figures and numbers to talk of. When I saw motion pictures like "The Pursuit of Happyness" or "The Shawshank Redemption", I felt motivated but the truth was that I wasn't in the protagonists shoes.

One thing I had judged from my past experience in appearing for interviews was that the panel looked for smart talkers who could be trained and molded as per their requirements. The more I entered the room the more I knew what made a perfect disposition. I could pleasantly say no to things that I wasn’t aware of, and possibly diverting their interest to things that I was more confident with. One question I always asked myself before entering the interview room was “Am I supposed to know everything??...” If the answer ever came “Yes” then I told myself that I have no reason to be here….I came here to learn and will learn for days and times to come. I recalled what my boss during my summers always said “It’s not about putting forth the right answers, it about asking the right questions”. And to be truthful I stuck on to this, while my peers learnt answers I prepared myself for asking the right questions.

This alone did not mean that I wouldn’t ever lose. Infact to my utter dismay I finally wasn’t selected in my first application to one of the most coveted i-banks of the world after several rounds of selection process. The first response one gets from everyone he/she knows after the failure is “there are better things in store for you”…were there or not I wasn’t sure, but definitely I wasn’t dying and there was another day and another battle. This time around I was to appear for the strongest and the biggest bank in the world. I took a cue from the Director of the company who came for a brief talk, he said “Most of us can get away from the hardest situations if we know how to speak and how to react”…It was again learning till he said “but not here in our company”…. I wasn’t sure if I would succeed given this time the battle started with a situation where I considered myself weakest. None the less after 10 hours of process and constant pep talk by other interviewees I was able to convince myself to settle for nothing but the best. The announcement of success was not at all scintillating; I sat on my seat, no tears of joy or no shouts in excitement. The glitter was more felt in other's that in mine. Probably I was just numb, well I wouldn't say that I could not absorb the success…I had but certain times in life you just fail to equate what you lost to what you regained. Redemption is not all that easy…In my heart I thanked my family, I thanked my girl and I thanked all who believed in me but yet I guess there are there are more mountains to climb, more chasms to jump across and more dreams to relive before I rejoice this moment. Good luck to all my friends and peers who still await a worthy challenge…