Remembering Dr Manesh L Shrikant, the Institution

It is Dr Shrikant's first death anniversary tomorrow. I would like to pay my respects ,to him. I have been wary, given a train of eulogies and obituaries that I have penned over the past year, a prospect that I do not enjoy. I have been uneasy about a note that Dr Shrikant had sent me a few weeks before he died, wanting to discuss it before converting it into an article. Unfortunately we never met after that. It was at first glance undecipherable  (even banal) and people close to the dean to whom it was sent were also unable to make much sense out of it (I presume, as none replied). This is an attempt to incorporate the ideas therein, to weave it into this piece that argues that Dr Shrikant imagined the ideal of Vedanta at the heart of SPJIMR. The original  note stands appended to this article at the end. Fortunately I will not receive an early morning call from him asking me for my first draft, first thing at 8.00 am, hoping bleary eyed that he minimises his edits!The presumptions and errors in this article if any, would be entirely mine.

It was Friday 16^th October 2015, and the tithi, the third of the waxing half of the lunar month Ashwin, with Vishakha as the presiding nakshatra that Dr Manesh L Shrikant, our teacher cast off his mortal coil to be at one with all that exists, liberated from earthly fetters, in the Vedantic sense of his cosmology. It is his first death anniversary and in the traditional sense of shraddh (or barsi) we pay our respects unto him. I hesitate to pen any eulogy or mournfully reminiscence dirge like, notwithstanding the dark shadows that seem to haunt me this year. We thank him for the fruits of his labour that has given us our varied returns of personal fulfilment and economic wellbeing, especially from being part of an institution that has secured us not just a career but helped us possibly think better. I pray that his work which is his flesh embodied in the SP Jain Institute in the quaintly Christian sense be blessed with the success it deserves.

My Friend Sriram

A Srinivas Rao    26^th September 2016

He would have been 54 today and would have been as cheerful as always, for neither misfortune nor tempest would dampen his optimism. “A person must have a cheerful disposition by nature or a disposition made cheerful by art and knowledge” remarked Nietzsche and Sriram was doubly so. Yet rather than listening to the gurgling brook of his voice over the phone, I am met with silence, four months since his untimely demise. I haven’t deleted his number though, not that he might call, but that I might wake up. I miss his infectious and disarming smile that would put even Medusa lower her guard. This is a reminiscence of a person who was close to me and was my best friend. I have wondered what if any we had in common, I believe it wasn’t much, yet we liked each other’s company and it has intrigued me as much as onlookers. I can’t describe him in eulogistic terms; though he had much that was worthy of applause. Probably what fascinated me were the contradictions which we ever so unconsciously gloss over as we make much of a false sense of consistency as a virtue.  Most of us if not all are inconsistent creatures, inconstant and shifting in our motivations, fears, desires and aspirations, it is ‘human all too human’. Consistency I think is a narrative strategy of the mind that possibly highlights, represses, and interpolates in retrospect, creating a convenient fiction of the self. At a distance from one’s own self one might see the range of protean characteristics that really animates each of us; though we crave for that indubitable, mysterious, unchanging essence which might well be a figment of imagination.

S Sriram-Farewell My Friend!

A Srinivas Rao  2nd May 2016  

Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant (the ordinary instant) . You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. 

A single person is missing for you and the whole world is empty.

                                                    Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

I just returned fitfully from Chennai from the ceremonies where we possibly register our grief, take a last look at his face, possibly live it viscerally, or at the least legitimise our acknowledgement of a relationship that suffers a seeming closure with our presence. We wake up momentarily from our delusion that someone we love will outlive us and might die, reminding ourselves "for whom the bell tolls" making the uneasy truce with death. I lived in my own world which to me is magical. It is a world where even upon seeing Sriram's dead body, i still imagined he would wake up from slumber and smile chuckling "Swami what are you doing here?" as though nothing happened and he was not at all responsible for the huge brouhaha, much to my relief. But the reverie breaks just as certainly as a soap bubble. When someone told me i could get on the hearse and accompany his body i jumped before anyone changed their mind as the single vehicle cortege wended its way in front of the Ayodhya Mandapam where Lord Ram watched bemused as i kept reciting "Sriram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram" silently. A friend called to inform me that he was leaving and whether i was returning and i said "No I am going with Sriram" little realizing its grammatical if not metaphysical problem.

The Foundation Stone

The banyan tree noticed him from afar as he walked towards the temple in the measured pace and calm of a man in his seventies, surprisingly slim and little else but the grey of his hair would even give away his age. The old banyan in the centre of the Bhavan’s campus, standing in the corner acknowledged his familiar presence with a sway of her crown, home to several egrets, herons and water birds that fished in the Bhavan’s pond in that campus, that seemed less green with every passing year. She counted her years not by the locks of hair she let down to support her age but by the number of times women wrapped its girth with a circumambulating thread around on the day of Vata Savitri on Jyeshtha Poornima each year praying for their husband’s longevity. The young girls returning to Pallonji Sadan late evenings from college, imagined the tree to be a haunt of ghosts. The campus then was greener and the banyan hosted many more species of birds than its now manicured look and hodgepodge architecture; held many more secrets in the folds of her green shrubbery of love, learning and laughter. 

The Street Classroom

In 2002-3 I had spent time trying to help make a street school with a friend Aruna Burte. This write up chronicles those days which surfacing often in my thoughts. Those children have all grownup and many have even left. But their laughter and mischief fills my heart.

Twenty pairs of intense, sharp, clear eyes set in frail and small bodies, peering into your face trying to listen with concentration interrupted by restlessness and distraction can be unnerving for even a seasoned teacher not just an ill prepared one like me.  It was 2002 and I was a novice teacher unnerved with my little classroom impossibly filled with raucous children hell bent on doing anything but sit steady and listen.  But it was not that their restlessness was driven by ill intent, they seem animated by spirits stronger than their frail bodies could handle. But then those faces were in their own way remarkably diverse in colour and character and told me tales that I had never heard. Their little bodies were clothed with colours of playing in the dirt, some torn, few mended, few slipping to reveal tender limbs or shy bottoms, faces smeared with dust and tears or of the dried ice cream around chin and cheek, tousled hair, one pigtail with a missing ribbon, another with a broken clasp, one with sores on his feet, one who had waded in the gutter, many with a wide grin in an endless inventiveness of childhood pranks. Their satchels were as diverse as themselves and the state of their books and notes made me feel faint. The satchels’ real treasures were broken bits of coloured glass, some forgotten half eaten fruit, a feather, a drawing crumpled between books, chocolate wrappers, matchboxes, empty cigarette boxes, felt pens with missing caps, pencils with chewed ends, a magnet etc. They would give a sweet smile that would make one swoon at its innocence and resume their pranks of pulling a girl’s pigtail, or passing another’s pencil box across the room, or eating up someone’s tiffin box. I was helpless and crestfallen not knowing how to handle my little class.

Through the Bazaar With Mother

Many of my peers seem to not shop any longer in the traditional bazaars and prefer destination malls or dispatch their domestic help to do the shopping, or even order online or over the phone . I believe that they miss out interacting with common people and see their lives from close quarters, the warts, the smiles, the squalor and the immense human spirit. My mother introduced me several years ago to a bazaar of fresh vegetables and fish located at a good walk from home and oddly called the 11’O clock market located on either side of a road with vegetable, fruit and fish vendors by their large baskets calling their prices loudly with little space to navigate among shoppers. It was located next to a school where children with their sweet voices lustily sang the national anthem and a shloka on Sarawsati above the din of the bazaar. It was noisy, dirty, bright and beautiful with the air heavy with the aroma of greens and fresh bloom of all colours. It is an open bustling market that gets busy by 11 am and is deserted by 2.00pm. Of course it is often painful to see how they eke their living with their little basketful of wares. I have deferred to this idea because my mother insists that we must buy from the small vendors and support such livelihoods than the organised biggies.  Sometimes she picks up the smallest vendor and buys just to remind me of the same. 

Mamma Mia!

She never trusts me to buy fresh produce. She says it needs care and experience to pick the tender vegetable; that the tail of the ladyfinger ought to break under pressure, that the ridge gourd ridges should be wide spaced and shallow, that the drumstick should be sufficiently plump and the leafy bunch must look fresh and stiff, the stalk of the brinjal must not shrivel, and I switch off and refuse to heed further advise on fish or shrimp which i detest buying. I feel that rather than carry all these instructions it is easier to carry my mother to the market and stand silently in the corner watching the surging humanity transact. Slow in gait but steady like a tortoise my mother decked in her zari saree pressed crisp and in an ancient gold chain and bindi holding my hand is a familiar sight on a daily basis and some of the vendors seem to await her arrival. She knew exactly what a good bargain was and capitalised on it. Her head was full information on the day of the lunar calendar which made her calculate how fish might be cheaper on the 11th day of the moon (ekadashi) or in the month of Shravan, or Magha or based on the season which often bewildered me at such futility.

The Lord of the Rings

A few days back I received a call from an old student well over two decades ago. I remember him being the eldest of the batch and of my age. he said he called to let me know that he was leaving his present job at a multinational company which was itself going through the throes of downsizing and axing departments worldwide. He said he was not looking for another job but would pursue his lifelong interest in stocks and valuation of companies despite his career in supply chain. When i suggested that he could always get back to his interest at a later date and that in the interim he could take up some offers he already had and alleviate any anxiety his family might go through. He said he was firm about pursuing his interest and had given it considerable thought and had the consent if not blessings of his family. He also said he wished to take up a spare office and work not from home and maintain a continuity in his professional career. I exhausted some ready nostrums and finally told him that it seemed like a fine idea if he was sure of the risks were manageable given the relative age of his two children and their stages of education. He was certain that they were taken into account. I wondered what to say to him. He obviously did not call just to keep me abreast, though it was the ostensible reason. I winced being in that position and brought back to me my memories my own decision several years ago.

Pallandu Pallandu!

On Late Dr ML Shrikant's 80th Birthday on 23rd Jauary 2016

A Vedantin never celebrates his birthday and neither did Dr Shrikant; for reasons I am not sure were entirely Vedantic. We were at times churlish enough to suggest that he shared his birthday with “Bal Thakeray” though we knew that ‘Netaji’ was the better comparison.  We were youthful and loved rebellion even converting the “shabad” of the holy Granth Sahib to say “Jo lade ‘dean’ (deen)  ke het shoora sohi”. That today would have been his 80th birthday is poignant. In the Tamil tradition they might have performed a ritual bathing ‘shatabhishekam” and probably in the spirit of the Alwars sang “Pallandu Pallandu” ...”May you live long” pronouncing the ironic blessing by a younger upon the elder! We cannot greet his corporeal self any longer but offer our prayers to that which we hold in esteem within ourselves that reflects his light.

I must acknowledge with gratitude that I am happy that Dr Bannerjee the new dean has been generous enough to announce on the eve of his birthday some things to honour his memory. I have been tickled by the idea of naming a state of the art auditorium after him. I remember once in exasperation telling him that the initials S and P in SP Jain really stood for Shrikant and Parab protesting their overwhelming oversight. Now I think he would be more at peace if his name graced a place that would lift the evening strains of Raag Marwa as elegantly as he carried himself. A chair position on spirituality and management is also quite in the right spirit as also memorial lectures. To these initiatives I am thankful.

Yet I would also wish that his spirit is vivified in the things that were implicit, unspoken, and wove into the fabric of the institute’s working.  Now that SPJIMR has charted a new research paradigm for the school (which is truly commendable) I would believe that those unarticulated ideas that made his contribution unique form a good subject too (among others) to study. I would hope the senior faculty there, especially who had their longest innings with him to take this study for the future of the institute itself (I worry about the ghost of George Santayana).  As an example I would believe that unlike many schools and its leaders Dr Shrikant held administrative ability as the very heart of management and very rightly so he would assert that it gets relegated into some insipid dusty place within the curriculum. He would make us wade through the tedium of Drucker to glean in the rich pickings of administrative thought and emerge with jewels that only pearl divers understood.  I remember being awestruck when i read “the objective of all control is not to build compliance but commitment”. He elaborated at length on the difference between control and controls and not all of us appreciated what he said. He cared not for the curriculum and its credits but would insert them wherever he thought was feasible. This priority for administration combined with the rather questionable “Competent Manager” research by Boyatzis (later discarded by Case Western) gave birth to that ill formed kid called ADMAP that was often exasperating despite its novelty.  It was this obsession with ‘getting things done’ that marked his leadership and he broke to rebuild even things considered good. There was the joke that would go around that early morning one of us found Dr Shrikant staring at a wall and in panic the jungle message spread that the life of that wall was marked for just a few more hours! He was a lifelong learner and found learning even in the most unexpected places. I remember him driving me down to a slum a Sunday morning to bundle out an old priestly looking elder gentleman into his car and insisting on a lesson on Vedanta (of course what also tickled me that day was the elder teacher admonishing him for placing books on the floor, during the course of his impressive exposition).

To say that we miss him would be an overwhelming understatement. I do know that the institute is trying very hard to keep up the good name of the institute and appreciate them for doing so. Yet i know it is not going to be easy. I believe he must be smiling kindly upon us all (and probably giving nightmares to those who conspired his ungracious exit). Just kidding.....;-)! 

"Pallandu Pallandu....!

pallANdu pallANdu pallAyiraththANdu

May you live countless years of the Brahma himself. May your divine beauty be protected forever!

A Lingering Absence

I haven't been able to bring myself to pen any further since Dr Shrikant's funeral. Probably it matters not any more as I can no longer wrestle with him nor seek his commendation. Yet I thought i must point out something to the people at the institute.

Dr Shrikant I remember would dislike any activity or process that is hinged upon an individual and shares his or her idiosyncrasy. Yet the quest for a process to be institutionalised shorn of all personality was often a guise for wanting to refuse to be hostage to the whims of the individual. But creativity cannot be institutionalised and those activities that can be institutionalised don’t hold the centre for too long- quite like Mullah Nasruddin’s lost key. When i think of the institution he has built I think it betrays this schizophrenia.  There is this assumption that the institution is being independently animated by its processes that have been institutionalised, with its flaws, But yet it is unmistakably in thrall of his ghostly presence.  It is not just that Dr Shrikant died, something deep within the heart of the institution also dies with him and we grieve not just his loss but that which is not nameable. There are those who would point out that he was anyway (un)graciously eased out more than a year ago and that the continuity of the institute it its imitated voices is testimony to its enduring character.  Besides it is not that some of us are unaware of his extremely complicated personality warts and all and in good measure have even been victims of his disquiet. Many (almost all) of his initiatives will continue in their variegated vigour or enervation and few can tell the difference, and some will say that such emulation is his best honour, which time will reveal.