Ganapati Bappa Morya!

We sat listening with rapt attention, mouth wide open, imagining in our minds at the story of Ganapati my father used to narrate at the end of the Ganesh Chaturthi puja. He would describe how Lord Shiva did not recognise the little boy who barred his entrance at the behest of Parvati who had given life to the sandal paste that she removed from her body. To assuage Parvati's grief Shiva sent his ganas to seek the head of the first creature that they come across. We were amused that Ganesha had overeaten so much on his birthday that he fell off his mouse and his tummy burst spilling all the sweets he had eaten causing the moon to laugh so much that Parvati cursed him that anyone who saw his face on Ganesh Chaturthi would invite accusations for which one is not responsible. As little children we were frightened to see the moon that day that we would shade our eyes and look through the corner of our eyes to check out if the moon was following us, bawling loudly if we saw the moon. We would then pray that the pot bellied Ganesha save us. 

#IamSPJIMR

Dear Dr Shrikant,

Salutations to you for all that I have learnt from you! An alumnus once pointed out much to my embarrassment that i was your worst critic and biggest fan. Most people notice the first, few the latter. But then it often glossed over the fact that it stemmed from a great expectation that you would be the instrument for a great transformation that might have been personal and also institutional and anything that belied that unrealistic expectation were grounds for criticism. I must admit that despite everything many of your critics like myself were deeply influenced by you and contributed much to their own sense of self worth, and understanding and few were perspicacious to see the grounds of what you were doing. The alumni were asked to write something about how SPJIMR influenced them on teachers day. I think it would be pertinent to observe that if it were not for you the college itself would not have been. To the multitudes who throng through its portals in the past, present and hereafter however intelligent or unwise, faculty, staff and students, deans and directors it is a place that has had its destiny shaped by your hands. To the many whose livelihoods, lives and inspirations have received a more secure standing you will be remembered for having touched their lives in ample measure. I thank you on behalf of them all.  

Prof Patel once narrated over lunch one of your earliest decision that you took in 1986 almost as soon as you joined, to permit some 10-15 students of a Rizvi college MMS degree which had shut down. The faculty were against it and one of them even provoked the student batch that it would threaten their placements. You did not posture sanctimoniously but pointed out that if the institute were bleeding and the variable costs of administering the new students were low it would bring the institute closer to break even. You promised that no placements would be affected and so it came to pass. In 1988 you sold us the residential programme which while it had its merits was really aimed at shoring up fees that the University had capped thereby alleviating the institute's losses. As faculty you made us do diverse things like conducting the DG Shipping exams, undertaking client researches for ASSOCHAM and many more things that bailed us over the red into a surplus that to date is unsurpassed among the Bhavans institutions and made us secure. But yet our best tales always narrate you as a teacher in the classroom as we listened with bated breath and even our heartbeats sounded loud.That we still cherish these tales and narrate them is that we hope that institutional memories which are evanescent will not forget to study its own history as it traces a current trajectory. The values that you had embedded in the place were aplenty, and began with a a spirit of enterprise in charting its course, a responsible competence in leadership, an unending dissatisfaction with the status quo, a sense of frugality and responsibility in expenditure, a discreetness and modesty in promotion and communications of the institute, cherishing the underprivileged, sensitive meritocracy in student admissions, an enormous administrative autonomy, a cherishing of a liberal strain with a respect for cultural ethos. I am sure the list is incomplete. We all fervently hope that these values will not be compromised as few will articulate these without reflecting upon history. 

I remember the number of times you made me write up reports till I was exasperated at the narcissism to minor detail. You would not compromise on the quality of the report until we imbibed it as a value. You had the knack of zooming in on a weak link in a report like a hawk undoing it entirely leaving us to reconstruct it all over again till we were proud of the final result. I remember very early in my career when you examined my course outline and told me that it was as close to Harvard as we could get and i slept on the compliment for years. You never again saw my course outlines (except once when you complained that my Business Policy outline seemed ponderous enough for a PhD level course). As i look back I drank deeply at being able to think critically and communicate the same  (I never learned however you sense of brevity). Of course i still have many complaints and some of them bitter but I guess to be entirely whole is to be divine and in the detail we all have shortcomings and you yours, which also shaped the institute in its own way. When i think of my teachers I shall always count you foremost among them and few are the days that go by without remembering you with gratitude (at times a curse)! 

When i called you early this morning I was happy to hear you as I imagine in a rocking chair poring over the book "I am That" by a great Master wondering about him at Khandala. 

May you see many many more Teacher's Days in good health and cheer!

With deep respect and affection

Srinivas

Mediocrity in Our Midst: A Lament

Mediocrity in Our Midst: A Lament

Mediocrity is our besetting national sin apart from being a deep personal character flaw. It is called by varied names myopia, apathy, complacence etc. We settled for the passable because the others also seem to do just the same. If we are accidentally called a genius it is because we are just a shade better. We know not what genius means for we have long buried it out of fear.  We design shoddy products and services, even displaying plans as performance and end up singing paeans to our intent, cleverly disguising mediocrity as accomplishment. We don’t even expect good quality and forget what it means. We prepare our children not for competition; forget globalisation, but just to keep the nose just an inch above the water mark; which is how to be a tiny stone in the ocean of mediocrity till it is engulfed and smothered just the same. Excellence is such a facile word for the mediocre; they would not wince to even a wee pang of doubt whether they are honest about their claim; a conscience long dead. Their justification is that we love local standards that set the benchmark values by the appalling ubiquity of the mediocre. What is more is that they like the emperor know that they bear no clothes and hope no one notices the complicity. The story of one person and institution is the story of every institution and person; I fail to see why it does not make us indignant to the destruction of immense possibilities as criminal waste. I say this with no malice and with the full acceptance that i belong to that same breed of the great unwashed mediocrity that fails to inspire and only talks about excellence.

Upon Entering a Gym for the First Time at 50!

Upon Entering a Gym for the First Time at 50!

I find that i write to seek solace when my mind seeks to salve its wounded self when it has nothing better to think. This week's piece is on my going to a gym which despite its quotidian reality has been a significant change in my lifestyle and work. I now look forward to its continuance and I am now enthusiastically evangelical about its benefits like a new convert preaching to the already converted!

I was told that 40 was the new twenties, and i wondered whether at 50 i was really 30 as i held myself in disbelief that i was old (enough) and much beyond the average life expectancy in the first half of the last century in India. People including those close to my age have been for a while calling me uncle or chacha (it is soon going to be nana and dada) and i dismiss it off as a displeasurable greeting.  Not that i have any illusions about my youthfulness or senescence whatever people attribute to my greying and much bald head and whiskers. At 50 i know my destiny but not the Truth and can still not follow my heart without wrongdoing. Having been single i have not had the pleasure of counting the years by ones children’s growth and their declarations of having ‘grown up’ regardless of what their parents thought. Their desire to grow up coupled with their ignorance of not knowing what it means to be grown up is heartbreaking. Being cerebral was merely an excuse to justify that i had paid little heed to my emaciated body and it conveniently reinforced stupid stereotypes of being a nerdy professor quite like Prof Calculus. I wore loose and oversized kurtas that made me look quite like a scarecrow outfitted on a hanger billowing in the wind and weighing about 48 kilos (mostly in my head ;-)) even into my late thirties. I was as a child barely allowed to play and would have fitted the Hollywood stereotype of a geeky Jewish boy who could recite the Torah whole and little else. I was good at no sport and wondered why people made such a fuss about it. To the way I was brought up, for a long while i believed that i am my head and that my body a mere appendage to keep that head afloat and in locomotion. I remember the nightmares that plagued me as a child when i would cry terrified like Calvin (and Hobbes) at seeing a spiky head of a demon which was only a ball covered with needles and limbs growing out of it, living beneath my bed. That probably was my own self image.  So with that self image i breezed into my fiftieth birthday and wondered at my impending mortality as a single man fated to sickness and in isolation to be noticed in my absence only when noses crinkle in disgust at the stench.

The Godavari: Syncretism in the Hindu Tradition

It had been an interesting fortnight where i found myself attempting to get back to teaching only to be rebuffed by purportedly my senior colleagues who claimed that i was intolerably ‘cynical’ if not incompetent, surprising even my previous dean. I was reminded of Sayre’s Law that “academic politics are vicious and bitter simply because the stakes are so low”. My mother insisted we close that chapter and that we go to the Godavari Kumbh that commenced on 14^th July 2015 and perform the obsequies for my father. This article traces the idea of the Godavari and why it stands as a symbol of the blending of disparate traditions within the Hindu fold. It is a rather lengthy and demanding read as it tries to gather the several strands of history and myth to weave a coherent narrative. The central thesis of the essay is the assimilation into the Vedic fold the Agamic traditions which were considered as beyond the pale of Aryan influence, The Godavari and Gautama one of the seven rivers and rishis has been used to anchor this pivotal moment that changed the course of Hindu faith.

Ramkund, Nashik, Banks of the Godavari

The rain beat down with some insistence, bathing me after a dip into the brown waters of the Godavari, muddy littered with flower offerings and possibly ashes, despite the proximity to its source. We were bathing in the rains at Ramkund on the banks of the river to fulfil my mother’s earnest desire to perform my father’s ‘shradh’ or propitiation to his spirit after his passing away at the time of the last Kumbh in 2003. Though the Kumbh 2015 had commenced, there were not the worryingly stampede inducing crowds at Nashik. The priest commenced his chants as i sat quaking like a leaf, bare except a small white cloth around my waist in the rain staring at the seat made of grass stalks for my ancestors, filled with sweetened rice balls colourfully in contrast with the grey day and worn flagstones decorated with flowers, turmeric, vermilion, sandal, black sesame, unhusked rice, swirling incense, and a sputtered lamp in that ancient ground. I was to make those offerings to the triads of paternal and maternal great grandparents ending with my father’s generation in a patriarchal sequence, and finally immerse them much to my relief in the swirling waters of the Godavari that had blessed my lands for generations of farmers lower down at the delta at Andhra Pradesh. My mother despite her arthritic pains had stood beside at the recitations, umbrella in hand drenched and solemn, breaking into tears.

Do Our Gods Hit the Gym?

Do our Gods hit the Gym?

I am not trying to be an agent provocateur (my friends would say i never had to try hard). Nor am i trying to incur the saffron wrath so fashionably feared by the fashionably liberal. I am not being disrespectful of our Gods, but have you seen them change? I somehow seem to think so. That sounds like blasphemy.

Parameswaran

“Life is bogus!” cried my elderly neighbour who just had his leg amputated owing to a diabetic foot, just the day my father died. His remark shook me up deeply at its unembellished truth and leaving me open mouthed, staring at him. He had also lost all his savings in a bust co-operative bank and was barely eking out his own rations. Yet I marvelled at his wide smile and a grin that betrayed his bad and severally missing teeth each time i knocked his door with trepidation. He would have crawled on the unrepaired floor dragging himself across the room, barely reaching the door latch. “Cheenu there you” are he would beam in his thin underpants and bare chest, plentifully covered by his sacred thread. “Come come, you must have coffee with me” and he would instruct his patient wife who would have been reciting the thousand names of Lalitha to prepare some coffee as i protested guiltily wondering whether i was drinking up the little milk he bought. With the small cup of coffee were also some biscuits or ‘Kozhukottai’ with ‘Moru Kozhumbu’ that i would eat sparingly as he eagerly urged me on.

Mandar

He had a strange knack of calling at the wrong time, sometimes just when i was boarding a bus or train, or sitting on the pot newspaper in hand or when i was knitting my brows with my lawyers at the cases i was saddled with. Moreover there was always a sense of urgency in his call. If i told him i would call back he would plead that i should do so without fail and till he unburdened his mind of what seemed to trouble him he would remain restless. My mother often annoyed at his lack of timing, dismissed him off like many others as crazy. But with the closure of each call he would pronounce his prayers that the good Lord keeps me in good cheer and how indebted he was to my listening to him. Embarrassed and amused i would ask him to reserve them for others. He suffered from Schizophrenia for more than three decades and to my mind was one of the most heroic people i have known. John Nash will be remembered for Game theory but a ‘beautiful mind’ is no euphemism for the state of mind of such a patient. Most of them live in the dark fringes where none notices their furtive movements, plagued by their own demons even at noontide.

In Search of The Guru

The Indian tradition describes the supreme Guru Dakshinamurthy, as seated in front of his pupils in a profound silence that is itself the highest teaching (mouna vyakhya). Yet there are instances when silence is not golden. I was amused to read “Schumpeter’s” column in ‘The Economist’ (whose subscription was gifted by an old student) “Twilight of the gurus” (25^thApril 2015) claiming that ‘the management pundit industry is a shadow of its former self’. Indeed i assent vigorously and also wonder whether it is a good thing. Yet Schumpeter is too dismissive rather than trying to understand the phenomenon. This is a most loquacious industry trying to outshout other gurus quite like competing guru akharas in their grating microphones at the Kumbha Mela. Competing gurus might be in good humour analogous to management gurus in that they are voluble, mystically wooly, elliptical in quotation also economical with the truth of their research and methodology, giving away gyan to the great unwashed willing to buy their cure all snake oil panaceas. Yet not all gurus are quacks.

The Flower Pickers

I used to make fun of my boss and old teacher who would tell me how he woke at 4.00 am and commenced his day with some deep study. Young as i was, i mocked his insomnia and even suggested that he probably begins to plot against his many minions in those wee hours to gain a ‘Competitive Advantage’. Nothing brought me as much amusement as the anecdote that this gentleman who graduated from Harvard once received a call at about 2.00 am claiming that the caller was Prof Michael Porter from HBS wanting to discuss Industry Structure. Obviously the prankster was some student much inebriated and vexed by his assignments or studies at the cheap bar called Raj Palace just outside the college.  Given that sometimes i was found there too, i was viewed with as much suspicion. As i myself age and take refuge in the same strange and ineffable silence that pervades the early morning hours between 3.00 and 4.30 am, I feel guilty at my childish jokes of youth gone by. But the sounds of the summer silence are soon broken by cuckoo calls to mate before the crows unravel their devious designs to mix their eggs with those of crows. I might even chuckle; no wonder cuckoos lend their name to adultery and are not the only ones horny so early in the day. As i sit in the silence i fathom the stirrings and the sounds, which by 5.oo am is a grating ringtone of the gardener trying to wake up and start his day or that of some rickshaw driver asleep with a hangover after drinking a quarter of whiskey whose evidence is just beside his vehicle. Soon the ragpickers would arrive with large Santa Claus plastic sacks, some Tamil speaking women who move furtively scouring the edges of the road picking up bottles and sometimes booty that conferred oblivion to some after a tiring day or quench the thirst of many a scorched soul through the day in plastic bottles. They speak in hushed voices though their harsh tongue betrays them sooner than their feet. Their feet don’t shuffle but move fast and with agility that only calculation and illegality can confer.

An Open Letter to Dr Ranjan Banerjee the New Dean

I am an alumnus of S P Jain Institute of Management and Research. We alumni were sent a message by the institute announcing the new dean, outlining his resume. The new dean joins in early June the alumni newsletter announced. I thought i would share my musings even if they have less value for the effort. Maybe you too could write to the new dean or could add or subtract from the same. 

Dear Dr Ranjan Banerjee,

I write as an alumnus of the school that you are going to lead and we bear with us our best wishes in your new appointment. We from the alumni have been sent your resume in advance, about a month back and are guardedly delighted that it sounds promising. We wish you the very best and pray for success that you lead the place we cherish as our alma mater. 

We stand outside the ring placing our trust that the faculty and student body that you will lead is successful in its entirely new chapter, after a long and fairly successful first innings. An innings that will be also difficult to match given its singular accomplishment of retrieving a mofussil and nondescript institute in a tiny chemistry lab, to a place among the respected institutes among business schools in India. 

One faculty member described the institute more than two decades ago as a fragile ecosystem, a combustible mixture of ideas, ideals, impossible people all of who are learning, improvising and reinventing all that seems worthy of cherishing. That certainly is the vision and often even with the best of leadership is not easy to accomplish. We would be less informed and wise than the faculty body to highlight the institutes pressing concerns but we might certainly ruminate on what we thought made the institute good if not great. I  also humbly state that this might not entirely be what the alumni body think or even agree, so I would not be presumptuous to stake a claim as their voice. This a mere attempt however flawed. I may also accused of having a biased view which in the interests of full disclosure state, that i also served as faculty there. Yet in humility this may be treated as a mere observation that could be viewed as caution at worst or at best unsolicited advice. Your appearance on the stage is a follow up on a great act with a brilliant performance by a masterful player Dr ML Shrikant (though some might stay marred by its extended tenure). All such second acts are difficult to follow as your onlookers may unfairly have a high set of expectations.

The Missed Bus

Missing the bus is an expression commonly used to indicate a failure to capitalise on an opportunity that was available in clear sight. However I believe it more pejoratively seems to blame the person for either being slow or even stupid; it blames the person for not seeing an obvious wave that sweeps everyone who is in its vicinity regardless of their station or competence.

Being a fresh engineer at a business school the world looks humane and years of wrangling with the mechanical at workshops, labs, books filled with equations than English, it is an overpowering humanising experience. Unless of course you gallivanted through college barely attending or studying; and it does seem so to be true for quite a few of my peers (and several students) that i have known. Suddenly your books are written in lucid prose and you don’t knit your brows page after page chasing the tail of some derivation almost entirely written in Greek that even Greeks would fail to fathom (remember heat transfer equations for a thick cylinder or Nyquist diagrams and Fourier transformations). Here the teachers seem to speak the Queen’s tongue with a lyrical lilt, making us feel like urchins at a dinner banquet at Balmoral Hall. We had in our first term an earnest professor S R Ganesh who spoke softly with a string of venerable degrees from MIT and other august portals; who made me awe struck; who taught us an indecipherable subject (which i still wonder what it was meant to convey) called Perspective Management (never mind the obvious oxymoron there). He was a gentleman and was very imaginative and wanted us to read a book a week (which to us engineering students was a quota for a year or even four) and submit an executive summary. Many of my peers just read the introduction and the blurbs and imaginatively reconstructed the summaries and he scarcely noticed the difference, even sagely nodding to some bogus analogies.  He then gave us one day an assignment to write our life story. Yes he meant a short story of our yet chrysalis like life.  The engineers were convinced that it was an exercise in futility and scratched their heads in bewilderment, lamenting that this was what was precisely wrong with business education. The closet liberal minded ones like me were deeply impressed at what seemed like a profound experiment to build an imaginary narrative that would capture our deepest yearning.  I reconstruct from memory those stories from what transpired more than 25 years ago. I am surprised at what seemed prescient and also remember being deeply hurt by that episode.

Narayani

She was always found pottering about the old garden and seemed ancient and changeless. It seemed to me that she was there even before the building was built. So when she decided to sell her house and leave the house for good in 2010 the jack-fruit tree in her garden was so overwhelmed that she yielded 23 jack-fruits in a single season and astonished all the onlookers at the bounty. She distributed all the fruits to people who had been kind to her and left as soon as she gave away her last jack-fruit. The tree itself died from its tip down the middle and few knew what ailed her. It was a strange sight as the lower branches were green though it stopped yielding any fruit. A few years later when we tried to pull down the top half it had to be sawed off as it was tougher than we imagined and the woodcutter threatened to climb down if we did not double his wage as he panted. This year many years later a single fruit was borne all knobbed and strange.  

The Lost Compound

The buildings around which i grew up are being redeveloped (except my own) eclipsing a precious small compound which bore me like my own mother. The developer vacates the buildings and encloses the compound in a wall, the building walls are now punctured gaping holes with balcony windows stripped of glass and grill and bring to my mind personal memories of laughter and joy, little sorrows and the patter of so many children's naked feet on flagstones around the compound, invoking deeply hidden memories stashed away like jewels in a granny's wooden box. This write up is just a recollection of some of those times. Read it if you wish and have the time to revisit the past. A lament if you may.