Early Days
I was never a topper during my school days, even though I used to put in a lot of hard work. Maybe I was never a topper material. Class X results were below my expectations with English playing the spoilsport. The IIT bug had bitten me while I was in class X and so I didn't pay serious attention to the subjects taught in Class XI and XII. I used to bunk classes in order to study JEE level physics, chemistry and maths in the library. Somehow I managed to get a decent score (78% by 2001 ISC standards) in my Class XII exams despite getting 59% in English. There were rumors that the English paper had been checked by teachers at La Martinere:sneaky: and hence the scores were so low.
IIT JEEs
I managed to clear the screening (AIR 3000), but faltered in the mains (AIR 5200). I guess it was chemistry that played the devil's role. The next one year was spent brushing up the knowledge. I got enrolled in the one year programme at FIITJEE, Delhi , but had to leave the programme midway because of severe health problems. I sailed through the screening and was on course to get a good rank in mains. But then fate had other plans in store. A couple of weeks before the mains I got severe eye infection. The infection was so severe that I could barely open my eyes. They were bloody red with frequent discharges of pus from my eyes. My dad took me to the best eye specialists in town, but the infection didn't go away. I took the mains exam with very low vision and a severe headache (due to the infection). During those days the mains exam was comprised of three papers (Physics, Chemistry and maths) of two hours duration each. I managed to score well in Chemistry and Maths, but during the Physics paper, the headache was at its peak and I barely managed to cross the cutoff.
The results were declared in a week's time and I managed to scrape through with an AIR of 3782. I was happy but not delighted, because I knew that with three years of hard work, I deserved a much better rank. Anyways, I took admission in ISM and then later joined IIIT A (in second counseling).
The CAT bug
I wasn't always inclined to do an MBA. When I joined IIITA, I wanted to do an MS from some good university abroad. When I was in the second semester the results of CAT 2004 were declared and one of our seniors who was a 100%iler became the talk of the town. I said to myself "I also want to be famous like him". That is when I decided to crack CAT. Thus began my quest to conquer CAT in 2004. I bought WPME (word power made easy) and memorized it by heart. I bought a few other books and solved them. I didn't attend any classroom programme coz I felt that the classes won't be of much help.
Mocks and Mockery
By the time the mock tests for the finale started, I had mastered VA and DI. I was a bit slow in QA which brought down my overall percentile in the mocks. I managed to hover around the 95-99.xx mark in the mocks. I was stated to be the next one headed to IIMA from our college. Everyone around me was confident that I would crack CAT. Somewhere deep inside I knew that I could do it. Hence I took my placements very lightly, thinking that I anyways would be going to an IIM. I did not study a word for the placements (played AOE and CS) while other students revised DS and OS. Somehow after a few rejects I managed to get selected into Patni and Flextronics. I probably got selected because they asked very basic questions and for the tricky ones I confidently said "I haven't revised it". Anyways placements came and went away. I didn't sit for big firms like Google and Yahoo (I wouldn't have got selected given my level of preparation). Then came the D-day, I guess it was Nov 15/16 2006. I tried to get a good night sleep, but kept rolling over from one side to the other. With every passing minute, I became impatient to try and get some sleep. There are times when you feel sleepy but just can't sleep (it is very frustrating). Somehow I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep in the morning. I took a bath and left for the center with my friends. I was quite confident that I would crack it. Then came the paper. I used to start with VA, my stronghold and boy it was one of the hardest VA section in CAT's history

After the exam I knew that if I cleared VA cutoff, I stood a very good chance of getting calls from IIMs. The keys came out in the evening. There was a buzz around the campus with everyone comparing their answers with different keys. Most of my batch mates were missing the cutoff in VA. I started, said a small prayer and sat down to compare my keys. I started with VA and managed to get 28, which was well above the predicted cutoff. Then I moved to DI and a lightning struck me. I was getting only 32 while the predicted cut-off was 40+. I was dumbstruck, speechless

Days went by and I was hoping that somehow I would get two more questions right in DI so that I would clear the cutoff. I was hoping that the CAT guys would allow me to shift my extra marks from QA to DI (crazy idea). Meanwhile IIFT came and went and in December I completed my B.Tech (ours was a .5 batch). On 2nd jan, the CAT results were declared. My heart was thumping at the rates of knots when I entered my registration no. I will never forget what i saw. VA - 98.8 QA - 99.7 DI -71.6 OA -98.89
I sat in front on the computer screen, not knowing what had happened. My hopes of getting into the IIMs had dashed. Luck had betrayed me at the most important juncture. I could sense the grief in my parent's voice. Even they were hopeful that I would bell the CAT. XAT was on 4th Jan and I somehow managed to sit through the exam. Somehow I faltered in the VA section and missed the sectional cutoff by 1-2%. FMS came and went by. Meanwhile I joined Flextronics in Gurgaon as a S/w professional. Though I am an IT engineer, I never liked coding or any other similar geeky stuffs. I had no plans or interest in becoming a coder or a tester or whatever they call it.
Love Pangs and CAT 2008
During the training at Flextronics, I got into a one-sided affair with a girl. I kept CAT on the back-burner and took a deep plunge into the ocean of love:nono:. But then the ocean suddenly dried and I fell on my face. Apparently she had mastered in handling boys and was handling many other affairs simultaneously

Entrepreneurial bug and CAT 09
After two CAT failures, I realized that it was not in my destiny to study in an IIM. Meanwhile to take my mind away from the girl at my office (the one who was a multi-tasker

Contd....