XLRI Garden of Business & Human Resources
January brings familiar tidings to XLRI—the MAXI Fair (45th edition) and the final placement season. Classes have been off for more than a week to accommodate placements. While it has been a bittersweet moment for many this time, for others, it may not have turned out how they hoped it would. 'Cyclicity,' the papers call it. The time post one is 'signed out of the process' leaves one with ample free time that is not precisely spent prioritizing the final semester subjects but mostly planning grad trips. The choice for the past few seasons has been South East Asia. In this pause between academic life and what comes next, I chose to stay back. Perhaps a trip to Kashmir? But, for now, I am on campus, and winters in XLRI are beautiful. I've watched these seasonal changes for two years and have meant to write about them ever since.
Every winter, the XLRI campus transforms into a patchwork quilt of colors, where dahlias, petunias, marigolds, and bougainvilleas paint the campus in brilliant hues. From November through February, the little gardens in front of LC1 and Admin Block come alive with splashes of red, yellow, and violet – bringing a small smile to the faces of those going through placement processes, which sometimes doesn’t leave a lot of cheer around. The Jamshedpur winter with the bluest skies, the Christmas decorations, and the complementing rows of elegant chrysanthemums create a small pocket of joy for the campus residents and visitors.
I first came across the title in a YouTube video uploaded 15 years ago in 2010 by a former XLRI Professor, Dr. Madhukar Shukla, who attributed this to a student when the college was still known as XLRI School of Business & Human Resource. The gardens of the school are maintained with love and care by the gardeners and helpers who are seldom seen but can be found tending to the saplings in the nursery somewhere on the campus, carrying on a legacy tradition of winning the Annual Jamshedpur Flower Show in a row.
One of the things I heard the most from my first year joining in June was how small the campus is. Indeed, there is no denying that. Yet, it manages to pack so much in it and delight those who walk down these paths, holding their dreams, joys, and tears. As my time here draws to a close, sharing a few moments of XLRI Jamshedpur in winter - a gentle thought that sometimes the smallest of places can hold the most beautiful surprises.
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