Coming to Sloan is in many ways a large life transition, and it represents a stark contrast to my life in the previous months which I spent in India. Most MBAs take some time off to travel around the world before school starts, but I realized there was so much I wanted to do in India. One highlight was taking a Yoga teacher training course which met for 4 hours every day for a month and half – we not only learned in-depth about poses, and what poses to use for various therapies, but also studied vedic scriptures to incorporate the philosophy of yoga and ayurveda into our everyday lives. It completely transformed how I approach my mind and body – and now I can’t even start my day without doing some yoga in the morning! Another fun highlight was taking bollywood dance classes – it was actually quite demanding and I wound up rehearsing every other day. Our teacher really knew how to push us to our fullest potential and our group had so much fun - I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to continue with the team for future shows. The most personally rewarding experience during my time there was teaching personal finance and investing classes, especially to women. Even though so many women work now, it’s astonishing how few have the confidence to manage their own finances and invest their money; generally most women feel more comfortable leaving this domain to men. I divided my class into teams to develop their own stock portfolios, and was definitely wowed with their analysis and so glad that it gave them the opportunity to gain confidence in their own finance abilities. There is much work to be done in this area, and it’s definitely something I want to continue in the future.
In addition to the busy schedule of extra-curriculars, I was
working simultaneously on PK Clean and for the family business. I was managing
about 5 different projects for the business as well as trying to introduce some
operational changes, given that we had moved into a new office space and been
increasing headcount. I think until you work hands-on day-to-day on managing
people and growing a business, it’s hard to appreciate how much is involved. I
am so glad to have gotten the experience before starting business school in
order to know to hone in on the skills which I need to develop.
Finally, I’ll leave you with some pictures from my trip to
Kashmir, which was another major highlight of my time in India. This was the
first time in 20 years that my parents and I had visited the valley which is
our ancestral homeland and where they had grown up – due to the militancy in
the region, we had never considered it safe enough to return after the exodus
of our community in 1989. My previous visit to the state had been to visit the
Kashmiri Pandit refugee camps, but those are some distance from the valley (in
another post I’ll try to discuss further our social initiative to create
opportunities for the youth from these camps by creating jobs for them in our
family business).
The 2 pictures below are taken in our house boat – check out the
incredible décor …it is all done by hand - it takes at least 10 years to complete
one of these!
The manager of our houseboat posing with a signed letter from
Hillary Clinton, personally thanking him for some of the handicrafts the
Clintons had bought from them!
View from riding the shikara …it sounds trite, but the beauty is all too powerful to capture on camera
We had multiple bodyguards on us at all times …you can see the guy sitting right behind me here
Vegetarian learns to fish J
My parents and I taking it all in … J
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