Thursday, February 10, 2011

The subject expert - part I

Dr Joseph the ED , the VC, the family (the father, the son and the Holy Spirit) and some of the top most of the GIM team were huddled together on the first day of re-opening… The entire junior batch was there in attendance in their new role as seniors. I found almost every face- and why not?.... GIM didn’t allow leave letters and no grand mothers could die and no uncles could be hospitalized when GIM had work…

Ram came frantically to me as I stood in the main portico exchanging pleasantries with the kids who came back after some life- most of them looking their age and refreshed.

Have you got a copy of the time table? .... Ram crash landed near me….

I didn’t have and I didn’t bother… You mean the new semester?..... Was my immediate response…

Yeah the one beginning today – said Ram, suddenly smiling at the boys and girls standing around me , as if he hadn’t seen them before the sudden flight he took down to the portico.

May be the meeting is all about that …. I said ... and in any case I don’t think they will have classes today….

Ram gave me a HAVE YOU GONE BONKERS look!!!........ GIM and NO CLASSES? ….Impossible..!

Finally by 9 30 am the time table came out  , the papers were more or less the same ( children who insist in crying gets the milk- and hence my papers weren’t touched) and then by 10 am the auditorium was full with welcome speeches , experience sharing and the stuff….. I kept off from most of them except when the situation demanded my presence… Like for instance when Jesus called me to the meeting room inside the HQ which happened to be in the ice cold North Pole.

Some things had changed in GIM like the Madam secretary who now learned to smile at people, particularly me as I walked in and out of the HQ..(when I was with Jesus the Smile went even broader) .  ( to make a confession) I used to walk into HQ just for the heck of it and then walk out just to see her smile- not that it was one great smile  which a man like me would walk up and down for, but then it was great to see a moron queen coming down to smile at lesser mortals….

Back to Jesus and his call… When I walked in we had the HOD Prof Cherian .. Huh..! I hate to call him a Prof, just Cherian would do, the VC who was long missing in action, and Dr Joseph – the ED …. Again it looked like a blame storming session or even some enquiry commission or whatever the hell… My heart went a torpedo dive until the evangelists voice woke me up….

Here we have the subject expert ........said Jesus quite animatedly…

One thing was clear… the subject cannot be women or bitching as Dr Joseph was there already , It couldn’t be politics or back stabbing as the oil faced HOD was there in full glory, it couldn’t be hiring and firing either as the ace VC was there as well… The subject expert sat down in a chair given to him…

Jesus laid down a file before me…. 

GIM is going for a repositioning .. he told me like a Marketing expert…. ( now that is the 'subject' in question !!! I sighed as I relaxed in the chair )

I didn’t get a thing from the file.......may be I was too much of an expert or may be my expertise was only a piece of fiction…

Mixed pieces of roughly made ad copies were arranged in the file in some random order.. Each one looked different and had various conflicting tones and hues but three things were common in all the 5 ad copies that I saw in the file… 

The BIG GIM building, crammed full copy, and an endless parade of bullet points ….

I didn’t read it, as I threw the file in disgust.. well almost in disgust I must say... … It couldn’t be true for me… at least you can’t call it 'repositioning' – saying the same stuff that you had been saying for ages and that too making it even more grubbier ….

The idea is to make a mark above the rest.. said the VC in his Oxford English ( I guessed that he would have written the copy of the ads as well) …

Dealing with competition.. said the HOD and even before he could finish it the VC shot into his mouth…

You cant call it competition Cherian, WE do not have any ...... we lead and the rest just follow…

Jesus had a smile which showed a tint of arrogance, a very rare one for the evangelist ..

Emboldened by the smiley approval of the Prince, the old man continued.. I pity those guys if they suppose that they are competing with us… he talked liked a medieval noble whom I have seen in plenty in English drama…

I sat silent reminded of the lessons on competition that we taught the kids at GIM.. They knew better than these grand oldies, but then that was the rule of nature- the one who know wouldn’t be the one who decide…

Cherian sat silent as well, having got his mouth full, and the ED sat looking at me as if he finally had agreed that I was a subject expert indeed.

Why are we thinking of a repositioning? …..I asked Jesus breaking the deadlock…

Times have changed,… said Jesus quite confidently and then......... he dragged… … or may be I can.. errr ummm uhhhh … I guess it’s time to have a new image for GIM …

The three musketeers nodded their heads… I even heard some sounds from my HOD’s head, could be that it’s because it was the emptiest of them all..!

What’s the current image of GIM in that case sir? … I asked the panel and for the first time in this meeting I felt to be on the winning side….

Silence in competition with even more silence…

Among whom is the question… the ED tried to complicate….

That is simple..... sir…. among whom do you want to reposition, among them what is the current image of GIM ?… I said sitting straight and looking into the devilish eyes of the VC.. He never looked at men eye to eye and whenever some one locks eyes with his, he will look up and down…This time I was but sure that he will not… wherever he went, I followed…

Is that very important and information for this exercise?....... Cherian asked a smart question …

The Marketing 'HOD' that he was, I would have slapped his face for his “knowledge” of Marketing had I been sitting in the chair that Jesus so very prince fully adorned…

It is not very important sir – I said dramatically….. I would say it is the only important thing at this juncture as far as this repositioning 'exercise' is concerned..

Jesus seemed to agree, not fully though…. I wasn’t sure of the copy writers and pen pullers and I didn’t care either about their state of faces…

The meeting was dispersed even before tea and hot banana fry made appearance and that was highly untypical of a GIM meeting…

I am taking this file sir.. I told Jesus before walking out.. It may take a whole night to read all these ads…

Jesus got the message pretty fast.. I looked back while closing his cabin door and he flashed a smile - this time a plain one with no tone or tint of arrogance.....

Monday, January 24, 2011

The begining of the end !!!

Vacation time was more than normal for me.. I was the only one senior (?) faculty in GIM who worked (??) through the two weeks when others stayed off and probably lived life…

I sat jaded with morons and oil faces instead…. Missed Anand and Sri Laxmi, Missed Ram (Strange but true!!!) and missed the cacophony that made the GIM faculty room….

Every day I would come, report to Jesus who will take me around for a walk, occasionally to the sea side where he will take a fag and then a walk to the canteen … we looked like lovers who had just got proposed some hours back, as we walked together, laughed and was seen blissful in the company of the other.. Jesus kept telling me the ‘you are like my brother’ thing, I knew it’s a lie and yet as the principle of Joseph Goebbels goes, the more he repeated it the more I fell in love with it.. I even saw a dream where I was driving a BMW X 5 and was received with a salute at the GIM portico .. (You should have seen my arrogance and pomp as I walked with a laugh )and suddenly a huge piece of meat roll, from nowhere, fell with a thud on to my proud and thus held high head …. I woke up violently and with a huge cry in my bed… The flesh mass had resemblance to the face of the KING….

Early morning dreams, they say will come true… HUH !

Prof Cherian called me to his cabin through the intercom as I sat in mine fighting darkness at the 3-I cell in the ground floor. HOD used to keep away from me for the last few months ever since the big quarrel with me and Anand and hence the call came as a shocker…

His cabin has this large HOD board ‘declaring’ that this guy didn’t expect it and when he got this bonus of a tag, he simply couldn’t resist but keep announcing it…

I visualized him moving around the campus with a huge tag around his neck with “HOD” written large and bold in it as I walked in and had a funny smile on my face..

So you didn’t get a vacation … he asked me as if he didn’t know of it…

And I guess you didn’t get one as well.. I asked poking him for the fact that he still came in every day in spite of 'being on vacation'…

He didn’t hang on that……. Did I want him to? I guess I did… huh….!. How I hoped that he did wage a war with me- the oil faced pseudo academic jerk!!!!

There are certain important changes that the management is envisaging … he told me without connecting to my eyes.. He looked every where except my eyes as if my face was something which he cannot tolerate..

If I could sit there seeing his horrible oily face, he very well could look into mine and talk….. HUH again!!!

There is an MBA course coming up.. he said… a university affiliated program unlike our current PGDM batches…

In GIM? … I asked cutting him short…

Would I talk to you about some neighbouring college? …….He kind of mocked me.. Since the bugger had a point there , I stayed put…… Stupid me !
There is a group of KEY faculty that the management is planning to allocate to form the core team of the new course.. Words fell off him, and a special emphasis on the KEY word…

I sensed trouble and could feel a rush of adrenalin on me.. drum beats and some sort of a wild roar…. I knew I shouldn’t panic…. Why should I ?......There was no reason to panic -I told a sweating myself and had to tell a bit loud as my heart beats grew large, like the growing sounds of the college band..

Come to the point you ass.. I kept repeating like a mantra (to myself) and he said…… Needless to say Sukesh, you are one among the key people who will set up the new GIM-SOB

GIM what? …I dropped my jaws… more than the news of my moving to set up some new God damn enterprise under the GIM flag, its name pierced my ears..

GIM School of Business … Cherian clarified… that is what they would be calling the new entity.. they are starting it right across the garden, next to the canteen building..

Thanks sir.. Let me see what I can do…..I said and stood up abruptly, sending a shiver down the oil tanker…

If I could obey my mind, I would have spit on his board outside his cabin..

HOD - Head of all Dickheads……it trumpeted……

Ding… my chat box threw a pop up as I sat in the spruced up 3 I cell. (Did I tell you how I got rid of the grumpiness of the institute industry interaction cell by ordering….err  requesting….. for some lighting up, new painting and some new furniture…That was my major or  the only work during the vacation…. I wanted to throw away the morons (as well) who sat there supposedly to assist me but in real to eavesdrop and tittle-tattle. Now that is my plans for the second round of reforms in the 3 I cell…) ..

Now back to the chat box…..

Anand said…. Hey Suk … Congrats….

For what? … I typed some how even as the wild roar sounded to me again and drum beats went to an ugly crescendo …

Oh.... as if you don’t know…. Typed the ass^%&* and added a smiley …:)

I knew it was the SOB thing…. Now the world is going to laugh and I am going to SOB…  SOB?..... I asked

WTF? .. he replied….

Well ... guess he hadn’t heard of SOB and I had no intention to discuss it with him until I met Jesus….

GIM becomes the first ever Business school to have provided a car each to its teachers… said Anand…

A car each? When ? where? … for a moment I thought that Joy and co had decided to go liberal and gift a car each as loyalty bonus to the academic herd of GIM…

I forgot SOB; now that I was getting a free car I was ready to SOB or even to be taken for any God damn ride!!!

Back again..!!!

Its been almost 6 months that I haven't cooked the chicken curry ...... Work, health and family all had its role in my inertia but it was the same old laziness that kept me off from the spicy world of Chicken curry.. Hope to be here till its over !!!!