The Secret - personal experiences

I want to talk about ‘the secret’ again today because of something that happened a couple of days back. When I had read the book ‘The secret’ and wrote the first blog on the same, I had wanted to watch the movie. I went to the website www.thesecret.tv and thought I could watch it. But, what I could do was watch a trailer only and for watching the movie online I had to pay some money through a credit card. I hesitated to pay and wished there was some other way by which I could watch it free. However cheap that thought may have been, I did linger with that thought for a while. And two days back, I got a copy of the movie from a Professor of a course called Managing and Creating Creativity. The professor is Krishnesh Mehta of NID (http://www.nid.edu/people_faculties_m.htm) and he gave us two movies to watch and one of them was ‘The Secret’. He has never talked about it and I don’t know how that became part of the course, but, the fact is that I have the movie.

This makes me talk about a few other things that I think are connected to ‘The Secret’. When I was studying in Roorkee (IIT Roorkee), I would travel through Kharagpur of West Bengal while going to Delhi or coming back from there. The tall tower of IIT Kharagpur used to be visible from the station. I would watch the tower and think to myself, wish I could study here. And the thoughts stayed with me for a while. When I was about to graduate from Roorkee, I had decided to join JNU at Delhi where I could do an MPhil in environmental geology and prepare for Civil services. I had given interview at IIT Kharagpur also and when I inquired about my selection there through a friend studying there, I was told that I was not selected. I spent the day in slight frustration, ordering the chef in the mess to make an Omelet of 12 eggs and all sorts of crazy things. Later, the friend called back to say that she had made a mistake and had checked the wrong department. I was selected. Somehow, the idea of staying in Delhi did not work out and I joined Kharagpur. The thoughts came true.

Similarly, it happened for IIM Ahmedabad. The iconic brick building and the idea of studying in the best B-school in India had always been with me. I had sat for CAT in 2000 for the 2 year program and had not got selected for IIMs. I had continued to work and for next seven years, never thought about MBA. Towards later half of 2006, I had started seriously considering doing MBA again and since I was in the USA, I was planning to do it from a US B-school. At that time, I realized that IIMA has started offering a one year program for executives. I wrote GMAT and applied for it. I was interviewed in New York and even though the interview went well, all the candidates were pretty good and I thought my chance was slim. The day the results were supposed to be out, I had not slept well at night and woke up early and opened mail. There was a mail from IIM A and I just closed my eyes and said let it be a ‘Yes’. It was ‘Yes’ of course and here I am at IIM A about to finish my course.

Now, it is time to talk about something negative that I perpetrated upon myself just by my own thoughts, I think now. I did my summer project (more like a winter project for us because it happens in December) in Hyderabad and one of the reasons for doing it there was that I could take possession of my flat that was getting ready there. For the whole month I was running after the builder, the supervisors and the engineers and though many ups and downs, at least I was hopeful that I would be able to get the flat handed over on the last Friday of my stay there. I had seen the flat on Thursday, some pending work was to be completed still but I had the assurance from the block engineer that it would be done by Friday morning. I started out for the site on my scooter after a good breakfast. I could not believe that all my dreams are finally coming true and even though there was a great deal of effort from my side in that month, I almost felt as if it was effortless. I almost started asking myself, how could everything work out so smooth? How come there is no trouble? And then my scooter sputtered for a while and stopped on the middle of the road. It would not start again. I thought I will find a mechanic nearby who could come and fix my scooter. I walked for about 1.5 km before I could find a mechanic but he refused to come to the site. I walked back and hauled the scooter to the mechanic. He fixed it in a few minutes and I was on my way. When I reached the flat, one of the main tasks was still pending and that was to change the door. In spite of my repeated pleadings, it was not making progress at all. Towards evening, the engineer got a door from the store but there were no carpenters to fix it. Upon my insistence, somehow he procured two carpenters and asked them to complete the work asap. I thought they would do it by night and after watching them for a while, I went down to have a cup of tea. By the time I returned, I was aghast to see that my original door had been taken down, new door was not fixed and there was no trace of the carpenters. I was really angry and frustrated. I called up the engineer and there was no response. I just informed the project manager about the situation and left for home. It was late in the evening and I was tired and while driving, the clutch wire of the scooter broke. It was like the last straw but luckily there was a mechanic nearby and he fixed a new wire. I reached home at 10 PM, tired and dejected. I did not speak to any one, ate my dinner in silence and went to sleep.

Could it have been caused by my thought ‘how could everything work out so smoothly’? I don’t know but it may have been.

PS: On Saturday I managed to get possession of the house after all other work got completed. Another interesting thing happened on Saturday too but it is a story for another day.