What I did not learn...

While I remain truly indebted to IIMA where I "learned to learn". I wish we learned more about people and how we can build on happiness brick by brick

- Pushkaraj Shenai

A wishlist … of the small but significant things we should have been taught alongside business. How to be happy and make people happy, that it’s no less to know less, celebrating failures and caring for your health and that of the planet.

While I have been fortunate to study business management at IIM Ahmedabad, the acronym MBA (Master of Business Administration) for me, most accurately expands to “Manager by Accident”. Smitten by architect Louis Kahn’s insightful design, the translucent arched corridors and structured brick walls punctuated by imposing arches casting poetic shadows, I was obsessed with the idea of belonging to IIMA by studying “something” they taught. A little pluck and lots of luck later, I found myself with admissions to both—the doctoral Fellows Programme (PhD) and the two-year PGP (MBA).

I opted for the latter. While an MBA from IIMA was a gateway to the “corporate world” for many of my friends who came from the IITs, RECs, SRCCs, and Stephen’s, for me, an architect, it was the heaven I sought in terms of the sheer design sensibility—monumental modernism. That IIMA also was a sought-after institution in terms of career was pure serendipity for me.