Friday, June 19, 2009

Strategic withdrawal !

It was the weekly counseling day. The students of the Finance specialisation had a very peculiar problem to rise in the counseling sessions.....(The new HOD had introduced this reform where each faculty was assigned a group of students whom they will spend a full session with inside the campus and COUNSEL them…. Often it ended up as complaint sessions where the faculty would just hear things that they could in no way control or change….. For me even that didn’t happen as there was a fear… after all I was the Management’s left hand man…

No faculty ever complained of this Tuglak style reform and no student too, for them it was like a paid holiday….

Very few of their faculty was permanent, said the kids of finance repeatedly ,and the core was mostly drawn from various companies locally and hence when others were in classes they dragged on in the awful canteen or in the students area and when others went back to hostels or with their girl/boy friends for some outing, they sat in classes pretending to be in love with all the jargons and high funda that flew left and right their heads but never into it...And those faculty who joined as full timers either didn’t knew what it meant when they joined and ran away in between( when they realised it) leaving their jobs ,leaving behind more names in the long list of faculty who quit GIM or simply continued defying all notions of a faculty's survival and existence being directly proportional to student likeability ........

The game went on and so did Dr Subhajit Agarwal ,who was with GIM for the past 7 months much to the chagrin of the 'being taught' students of the Finance stream but to the delight of the Management for having employed some one who had the right people in Delhi .....

When I was in the common area with Prof Ram and a host of others chatting about simple nothings in life he came in with a smile and joined us… Ram with his uncanny ability to drag unnecessary people into unnecessary conversation, pulled him into a debate about "why not all good researchers are good teachers or some crap like that".. Sensing danger, I escaped and was walking out when I could still hear loud debates as if at the end of this debate, the King will come down and reward the winner…. ...

For the students he and his like were a tragedy, and no debate could change it, they simply couldn’t understand what he was talking about, not the hard finance, but the simple English....

For the faculty colleagues of his he was a comedy,( me and Anand laughed like hell the first day we met him) .......they wanted some one to giggle at and about, and to prove their point that the HQ (of late) recruited with intentions other than teaching ability in mind....

For the business of business education he was a disgrace, for someone who has written 23 cases and published many a research papers, would look like an asset in paper but in practice he was an NPA... a non performing asset who soon, for GIM was becoming a liability....

You know something
… Asked Sri Laxmi who came opposite in the long corridor.. as I was walking out and my destination was the library…

I looked her enquiringly…

Library? .. she asked

I nodded in affirmation, and waited for her to open the news bulletin…

She kept mum as we walked down the stairs…. The classes were all in full swing and it reverberated in the quadrangles…

Demand and supply.. Inflation and deflation… Strategy and blue oceans…. The lessons echoed and created a funny ensemble

I feel hungry ..Sri Laxmy said with an unusual smile…. Heard that our canteen has some real good Chicken curry…

WTF?.............. I mumbled even while staring at her…

Library at GIM was a huge place…… partly HUGE by design but partly also because it was empty all the time, except when they took photos for the college brochure or promotion material when the kids in blazers were made to sit like robots and pretend to read from gigantic books that they never knew ever existed and would never again come in tryst with in life…

Will you listen to me if I tell you something?… she asked as I dragged a chair to sit and as she was already seated…

Women had this; they knew to ask the most unanswerable questions and yet asked them with all the innocence in their faces… How I hoped I could locate the FAQ genes in their brain and crush it…

I smiled, hoping she would understand that better than my spoken words…

Will you.. ? she insisted…

Depends… I said with anger brewed in apathy

Then I will not say….
She acted like a kid who was in her pre school…

Get lost..!!! I almost said but swallowed it when I saw the flutter in her eyes.. I could ignore her tantrums in exchange for the info that she seems to be having and was dying to divulge to me…

I will ..I said… You can trust me

She didn’t buy it …. It wasn’t her fault.. it always happened.. my eyes defeated my intentions too often than even I could imagine,,,,,

HOD thinks that you need to be axed… she said suddenly even while I was wondering what it would be…I heard him talking to Dr Jesus….

Ever since the enquiry report , which tried to shoot the suspected en masse, went back from my table to the HOD’s with a strong rejoinder and with no signature of mine, he hated me…

But axe?....... I sat bewildered…

I was with Jesus when this call came
… she told me in a hush tone…. I grasped the major part of the conversation from the way Jesus responded… it was you… your name… your behaviour….your arrogance.... your…

Excuse me… I stopped her… enough!!!…

Hello.. she laughed.. I’m not saying this… I’m just saying what I heard…

But how you know it was Prof Mathew Cherian… it could be any one… after all it’s the world of academics… every one hates everyone else… I argued

Oh no… Jesus hung the phone and asked me… How is Prof Mathew Cherian? Isn’t that proof enough…? ... she said as her eyes sparkled...

I had a larger than usual opening in place where till the other moment I had my mouth….

Exactly..she laughed… I had the same feeling....I also kept my mouth open… I didn’t know what to say…..

PLOTS… I garbled…. Bloody conspirators ….

Now the promise part… Will you? ..........She asked me nonchalantly and why not.. It was least of her problems that all this was happening to me….

Just play it cool… be normal… if you react this guys can smoke you out…. She advised. of course she didnt care whether I liked the advise....

I flashed a smile… It was competition and I taught Marketing …..

Strategic withdrawal is definitely and option!!!

I had to “give up weaker territories and reassign my resources to stronger territories” as per Kotler…

For me ,the next stop was Jesus… in crisis and in war who else but the good shepherd himself?

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