Archana & Rajaji (PGP 2005)

ON THE TRAIN TO IIM AHMEDABAD

We first met at Jamalpur in 1993. Many might not have heard of this small town in Bihar. A small tit-bit about Jamalpur, hopefully, will help register this place in your mind – in the movie “Sholay” there is an action sequence shot in a railway tunnel. That tunnel is located in Jamalpur.

Archana and I had made it through the 1992 Special Class Railway Apprentice Examination conducted by the UPSC and were batch mates. We studied together and when we graduated from the Indian Railway Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in 1997 we were pretty clear we wanted to be together. However Archana, topped the batch and got the Railway of her choice – Northern Railway and I was second and since my parents were in the south, I chose Sothern Railway. Both of us got busy with trains, locomotives, coaches etc. However, the 1250 kms between us was a bit of a bother. I decided to do something about it. I took CAT and in 2002 and got selected in IIM, Lucknow. She was posted in Lucknow. “Don’t join,” she said. “Let’s do this together.”

We studied together, through phone calls, did mock tests together and competed with each other. In 2003 CAT, we made it through all the IIMs. Joining IIM Ahmedabad was an obvious choice. As luck would have it, Archana and I were both allocated the same section. IIM Ahmedabad taught us that there was so much to learn outside the cocoon of the Indian Railways. The journey at IIMA was life changing for both of us. I decided to quit from Indian Railways and more importantly, after a long courtship of 12 years, we decided to marry. In 2005 we graduated and the same year we signed up for partnership of life with each other.