I don't belong here

As far as I can remember, this feeling has been a significant contributor to my life. When I look back and try to look for its origins, I am reasonably sure that it was born during my college days.
Passing out from the grand 'Saint Xavier School' of Jaipur and entering the 'Rajasthan University Commerce college' was definitely something that gave birth to this 'I don't belong here' feeling. And the rest is history, we really have come a long way now.

After the college, I started working for GE Capital now known as Genpact. BPO was the big thing back then and GE was famous for sending its employees to USA, so I joined. After working for 14 months I just managed to go till Gurgaon and my accent was half American. My friends called me 'Dale Roberts' (my alias name for calling US customers) and not Devesh and I knew more about Wisconsin and Nevada than Rajasthan and Delhi. The feeling in me was nurturing in this all the more hostile place. When I looked around there were these people all around me who were happy with living in someother time-zones, who still have the Indian version of 'the American Dream' alive in them and who were intellectually excited about the part-time MBA programmes at office. Everyone around me was happy with the job, excited about the 'samosas and maggi' that we had outside office at 3 Am and enjoying the money (and swearwords) they were getting for making calls. My disinterest was showing on my face and also on my monthly evaluations. May be I wasn't good at my job and I just wanted to escape whatever the reasons might be, the feeling was getting its daily dose of nutrition.

I don't belong here, I once told it to my boss at GE. And he approved my study leaves for CAT (the MBA entrance test). So here was a call centre employee, trying hard to reclaim his identity and biological clock. The feeling did drive me hard and I managed to clear the test. The result was not too great, but enough to take me to a decent business school of India. I managed to get into K.J.Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research (SIMSR), it was consistently rated amongst the top 20 B-schools of country. I was happy with the effort and the result.

The year was 2004, the city was Mumbai and my exact location was SIMSR (Near Ghatkopar East). In the initial months, I met some really intelligent people from all around the country and I was feeling better. I could however, feel the competition and pressure to perform right after the first month. There were lectures, classes, group projects, assigments, tests, books, journals, library, lecturers, laptops, notes, computer labs, guest lectures, seminars, events, spread sheets, mathematics and so many other things that I didn't like. Well I am sorry to say, but the feeling was coming back to me.

I have just finished the first trimester with average grade. I want to finish the course and the 'I don't belong here' feeling is setting up in my mind. I managed to run away from my job but this is a professional course and I can't run from here. So what do we do now? In such times you take some decisions that change the entire course of your life. Let's buy a camera. A camera ? Yes a Nikon film SLR, was my answer to this dilemma.

To be continued ....
I don't belong here - The feeling reaches Adolescence