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.

#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

Yuganta: End of an Epoch

A Srinivas Rao 

23rd August 2014

Dr Manesh L Shrikant

With a cockiness that only an unthinking youth could state, i said that the verse of the chariot analogy was from the Kathopanishad and not the Gita and that the Gita had borrowed it from there, as he had asserted. I wondered if that answer would have disqualified me at the admissions interview at an ungenial interest in obscure subjects to gain attention at my dimunitive frame. But then neither could i shake off a fascination with the questioner, a middle aged gentleman elegantly dressed and urbane despite the unmistakable Gujarati accent, rumored to be an industry tycoon with a strange interest in academics with a string of venerable degrees like trophies that crowned his thinning pate. I had heard some horror tales of his qualifications and his decimation of candidates in the anteroom as i waited for my turn at the admissions interview. Ever since then and for a very long time i shadowed his work and was charmed by this fascinating man consciously or unconsciously. I think I obsessively sought his approval which impelled me towards a standard of work and thought that he would regard as good. As his student i imagined that his classes were the most inspiring ones, that were remarkably insightful, creative, pointed, and unusual and indeed changed the course of my life. It left us breathless long after his lecture ruminating on the scattered lessons we gleaned from the rich learning. He instilled in us a confidence to question the thought of a remarkable array of thinkers, Gunnar Myrdal, Naisbitt, Porter, Mao Tse Tung, Roosevelt, Chester Barnard, Herbert Simon, Drucker (his favourite though our most dry thinker) apart from engaging case discussions on administrative issues which he thought as at the heart of management. His assignments were to me the most precious as  they were unusual and i sought his attention in strange ways. He wore his genius lightly though he never was quite recognised for his abilities in public. Few peers if any had the same combination of alacrity of intellect and managerial experience that he had that balanced the many softer aspects of administrative judgement. It is a pity that he was overlooked so often by so many. Having seen many such leaders of business schools some of who have been honoured by the Padma awards by the President and other such public recognition, he remains a towering giant amongst a gaggle of dwarves, known to a few and cherished by them all.