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. 

That was the year 1981 that he came to the campus in his late thirties with the polished granite slab, the foundation stone that announced S P Jain institute of Management and Research where Mrs Thatcher braved the scorching sun to lay the slab with no building in front or behind and no plans and resources for it either.  He was a professor of economics imagining of being left but seized like Mrs Thatcher towards the right. He had heard all the old socialists and economists of his time, and marvelled at the simple men long buried in the pages of Indian economic history. His heart lay in the fields of India and was delighted when incessant rain invaded the sparse and ill protected classrooms above the chemistry laboratory, watching the banks of rain clouds in the horizon, muttering that it augured well for the economy. His two children played and ran around the trees, bountiful gardens and open spaces that blessed their presence. The banyan in the corner grew white with bird blessings and was a hiding place for their many secrets. Little children told tales that the banyan actually spoke if one heard intently with one’s heart.

He was considered young enough to do the many thankless jobs of scouring around Bombay University offices and pleading with haughty registrars for permissions that were grudgingly granted. He remained the sole survivor of that entire decade of floundering and kept tramping the offices of the University making petitions, pleading and wheedling extensions and compliances. He played a low key role that was unremarkable in the early years as he navigated the migration from being a teacher of economics to a professor of management to an able administrator. He remained the only thread of continuity around the banyan of the institute’s history uninterrupted from 1981 to 2004. He blossomed when he met his mentor the dean who took a special care if not affection to this enthusiastic faculty who was a wise counsel, who was practical, resourceful and negotiated the numerous offices of the Bhavan’s, the University, the AICTE, other institutes and perform many duties, some unspeakable so that the institute may survive. He with the others shifted to the new building on the other side of the banyan.

He came to wield considerable influence over the affairs of the institute with encouragement of the dean who roped him into prioritising a turnaround agenda that asserted the administrative autonomy of the institute. His principal contribution was really to execute the varied initiatives that would shore revenues at a time when the tuition fees were capped at loss making levels by the University. These included converting the programme to a residential one and charge hostel fees, help in executive development programmes to raise the profile and funds for the institute.  Yet most importantly he undertook a contract to conduct exams for a Government agency leveraging the extensive network of Bhavan’s institutions. This single activity over four or five years tided over the loss making institute to one of profit and unfurled the sails for a bigger adventure especially to go autonomous. He remained the most administratively able professor as his mentor the dean in his usual manner made a virtue out of necessity, often capitalising on a short term idea with an eye on the long term. He doted on the dean to a point of worship as he made meticulous notes of observations gleaned over the hours spent learning nuances of subjects or texts shared unstintingly. He became a better teacher, counsellor and administrator. Given his personal needs he in the late nineties became an adjunct faculty keeping up his daily concourse. Their relationship weathered many a blessed and stormy night until unwisely severed in 2004. It was stunning and something within the moral fabric of the college also frayed. He left becoming an editor of a magazine, a consultant, even heading a school, yet the divorce gnawed agonisingly at his broken heart.

The campus became less green and many of the old weathered and stately trees in the botanical garden withered from neglect and their absence papered over with neat rows of manicured hedges and painted brick. The banyan shed its leaves not just each autumn but as people who loved it left as did the scores of water birds. One no longer heard the banyan whisper. Nor did the dean who led a life in exile with little solace from those rows of manicured shrubs that yielded no shade. The gardens in the campus were a whole new generation that had no sense of history and no memory of its weathered past and fond dreams of community. The older trees held their silence, if not their peace. The dean before his great departure spoke with him and paused in awkward silence. The foundation stone was now embedded in the brickwork and duly commemorated. Its older significance painted over by a newer idea and a communication campaign. The stone hid her face from him as he hid his. The white banyan still smiles as she watches the old man quietly wend his way among the indifferent shrubs towards the temple to offer his obeisance from a distance. Dilipa mused the banyan, after all in myth and legend had founded the Raghu dynasty with his sacrifice.

To his many students he was called DD Patel and Dilipbhai to his colleagues.