the home coming !!!

Anand and his home coming went unnoticed in the hullabaloo of the alumni meet. After the initial pleasantries, he went straight to the auditorium where he sat with the other teachers who were not seemingly perturbed by the scant attendance of the alumni in the alumni meet.

Prof Ram was seen walking in between the front rows cracking jokes and pulling legs and big laughter was heard. I preferred to stay out, not because I didn’t want to be part of the fun, but because I was in the reception team and my place was at the huge portico, where Dr Joy’s large photograph hung, with a smile. There was not a big turn around to receive and when my team told me that totally 6 people had registered it was ten minute past 9 30 and the prayer song could be heard.

Dr Joy had nothing much to say except the things which he says everywhere he has a captive audience and every time he is given a mike,,,,,,

No wonder why people don’t turn out…. Said some one in my team and the rest of them giggled… I feigned to be deaf and preferred to walk up and down the long corridors of GIM……

Unfettered and unafraid I was for I was sure that the cameras were'nt seeing me, with the top brass locked in the hall where the King was waxing eloquent on how and why alumni should maintain good relations with its alma matter. Nothing, I heard about the other way round… Nothing I heard about why for any B school, its alumni was one of its building blocks… He would have known it, but it was his trait, and that ran in the entire family …. Outdated and arcane they may be for the others, but sacred and hallowed for him.

Lucky you… said an SMS from Anand… you are saved from this ordeal…..

I didn’t reply, I smiled and returned to the reception table where the girls in my team started reading some film magazine which they produced from no where (GIM taught this- planning to perfection) and the guys cruised in their mobile phones and other gadgets which they could use inside the campus only for that day just because they are in the organizing team.

Is this the alumni meet reception? ....asked some one suddenly, whom none of us had noticed walking in…

There stood a guy, small and lean with top-heavy lanky legs, and outsized specs occupying a large part of his small face. He looked tense and looked here and there with fear, suspicion and angst …

He sure was an alumnus of GIM!!!

Welcome …. I said with a smile, which he would never have seen at GIM….

He shook hands quite diffidently ….

My team got into action as a team of starved hyenas has got its prey… He gave me his business card which read

Abhimanyu Raj Mishra
Vice President-Operations
Barclays bankPLC
1 Churchill Place, London, E14 5HP
United Kingdom

I looked again into his face, the large specs trying to hide his large sparkling eyes but I could see success, a sea roaring inside the small frame of the guy who looked more like a comedian than a hero.

Please come in..................... I led him to the hall where Dr Joseph,the ED was behind the mike, laughing at his own joke and the audience as usual refusing to share his grubby giggle.

I took the guest to the two rows where the 6 or 7 alumni sat scattered and apparently jaded…

The programme had just started and yet!!! GIM was good at this again, to bore people to the core…

Seeing the guy, Dr Jesus came rushing from his seat, and hugged him as if he got back his long lost brother…
I saw the old guard of GIM hurrying to cuddle ,clasp and clinch the small frame of the visitor…
I noticed silence on the stage where Dr Joseph waited for the drama to be over to continue with his boring speech. Murmur spread in the crowd, largely students in their formal attire, blazers and ties and all the gear…..

I stood there unable to decide what to do next… leave the hapless guy to the merciless hugging crowd of GIM or take him to his seat so that moron on stage could resume his sermon….

It is his fate… I pacified myself as I walked out from the large intimidating hall to even large corridors of GIM …

The guys of my team joined me in my canteen trip while I asked the girls to stay back to receive some one incase they come…

Why is it sir, such a low turnout?..... One of the kids asked me in canteen…

I paused, took a break from my banana fry and hot tea… the question was simple but the answer was not… I mean, as a teacher at GIM I couldn’t and wouldn’t discuss with them the issues that really made people refuse to come back to their alma matter….

Would you come back if we call you..Say two years from now..? I asked him a counter question, in an attempt to pass the monkey….

He laughed and didn’t shrink as I thought he would… instead he chuckled…

To be frank Sukesh sir… said another guy …none of us want to…

I looked at the guys face where audacity ran amok… it was a rare sight in GIM …

We just want to leave this place, for whatever good that this place has done to us…said another one even as the first guy still cackled….

It wasn’t breaking news for me for sure… GIM was tough to its kids… discipline in a strange form ruled the place and was applied in disproportionate quantities among students… all were equal but some were more equal than others….

I guess, with me that day I had a group of just EQUAL guys;;;;

My mobile vibrated…

A message

Anand mohan

Suk… were ru… come and listen… alumni and their plain speak….

I didn’t want to sit and listen to discourses which had no sense of reality but now it seems the season of plain speaking had arrived…

Abhimanyu Raj Mishra was on stage when I went into the hall with my entire team….we stood at the darkness of the back rows… discipline and decorum largely never reached the dimness of the back rows…

I mean we hated this place so much so that we even had a count down calendar in our hostel rooms… the speaker said to a stunned audience… I didn’t know who all where there in the front rows but was sure shocked at the first sentence that fell on my ears. I could see sparkle in the eyes of the guys who had told me the same, in the canteen some five minutes back.

I mean the pressure that GIM put on us was so tremendous and so merciless that I was sure that GIM would never make it into my list of fond memories… he went on in a strange baritone that was a mix of all emotions… he choked, and yet he was smiling, he didn’t look the same weak frame that walked in to the GIM main building some time back….

My guys flashed a smile.. See- we- told- you grin, I must say …

But when we went on to face life, I must now admit that the pressures that we got used to here made life look simple… no bias was a bias, sleep less nights weren’t enough, no shouting was a shouting and surprises usually didn’t work with us…. and no waiting was waiting we have done it enough outside the directors rooms here,,,…. Thanks to GIM,,,,

............He said even as a half reluctant crowd semi applauded as if they didn’t quite knew what to do…

I have not come back to praise GIM… it could go a long way… this meet may be the first step…and with my appreciation let me also share my admiration to whoever has conceived this impossibility….

when I am back here I remember the old song which said....

You're that innocence
That serenity.....That long lost part of me
You're like a Sunday morning, pleasin' my eyes...
You're a mid-summer's dream under a star-soaked sky...
That peaceful, easy feelin' at the end of a long, long road..
Oh, you're like comin' home

The words were simple but had tremendous power.. it went around the hall, reverberated and landed like an atom bomb....

The crowd applauded, this time in full measure as I walked out and saw Anand in the corridor….

Appreciation, admiration… ahem ahem… I said as I hugged him…

How I hope..he said looking at the large smiling image of the king…. this guys realized that it is not brick and mortar that makes organizations…

The Sound of Silence !

Anand , called me when I came out of the Kings Chamber to inform of his plan to come back to GIM .I saluted the man for his spirit for I knew that he still had traces of the disease that dreaded him, left on his face and body. His hair had all gone, his skin lost its texture, but he was Anand, as gleeful and spirited as ever,,,, he still had time to recuperate but he wanted to join back.

Back in the faculty room when frowning faces flowed with a strange silence setting the tone as if announcing an impending disaster and I still smiling and walking around in confidence having defeated the other team in the first round, Sri Laxmi called me to the canteen….I could see ED and the HOD closeted, and regrouping as would a group of injured animals. I preferred not to see it when I walked out but the my eyes captured the image before I joined Sri Laxmi who was waiting…

She was looking too very feminine that day.. she always had it -the effeminate effulgence but her vibrancy often hid it… That day but she wore timidity over her beauty and stood in the garden waiting for me….

Your man is coming back… I said with glee… you should be jumping with joy….

She didn’t smile, instead she told me how sad she was for his new looks…

The charm of a man is in his character… I said as if I really believed it... I knew that for some one like her, his looks also mattered…Why her? Looks did matter….

I know that Sukesh sir… she said as we got into the canteen hall which was empty and lifeless.

We sat in a corner table after ordering our regular stuff.

Then what is it that you don’t know?... I asked…

My parents now want me to marry some one else… she said with a drop of tear oozing out of her eyes that spoke volumes…

And what do you want to do..? I didn’t wait to ask….

I value my relations more than anything else… she said…

I still didn’t get my answer… not that I didn’t know that when wanted, women had this unique ability to talk symbolisms but then I wanted her to tell me directly…

She didn’t….

Don’t tell me that it’s your parents who decide… I said sarcastically

I do it … and Anand is mine..she said smiling even when her eyes drizzled…

Uffff … I sighed… then what is the problem….?

She went into silence again…I preferred to remain the same..

When I couldn’t understand her silence, what will I do with her words…?

I am the new alumni relationship co ordinator… she told me as I gobbled banana fries that was one of the very few experiences that people at GIM would love to come back for.


May be they know how much you VALUE your relations… I said with a laugh…. Right person for the right job....personality job fit theory…

She showed her naughty face…

And for the alumni meet next week they have made you the co coordinator now… I got amused… with just a week to go…?

And you didn’t ask why me?... she laughed… I haven’t completed even a batch of teaching and I am the chosen one,,,
May be the King and co thinks its good that way… you don’t know them and they don’t know you… it’s a great way to kick start a relation… I said…

She beamed ,her clean and well placed rows of teeth in display … She could have been in acting, I thought….

I kept wondering at this ability of women to swing their mood as they pleased…

I also kept thinking that if for the alumni meet, the former students didn’t turn up in expected numbers; will she be plotted against?

May be it was just a paradox that Anand came back to GIM, the day when GIM at last decided to hold its first Alumni meet. It was Anand’s brain child that the meet finally took shape and against all odds and 101 reasons that the eccentric management of GIM had against such an idea. I remember how tough it was for the guy with denim smell to go from cabin to cabin and convince every jug head as to how and why it is important for a B School to cultivate its alumni and have good relations with them…

Anand walked slowly from his car and I ran towards him at the first sight. I was in the reception committee of the alumni meet and our job was to stand at the portico and register the names of the alumnus who will grace the occasion. The guys and girls of my team were all well set, well dressed and well behaved… roses and incense were in place, sweets to honour the guests who came back to their alma matter hence nostalgic, and a lot of smiles glittered… Every one smiled, even the ED and the HOD (God knows WHY!!!!)

It looked perfect and every single element was there except the alumni… None of them turned up and it was about 9 30, just half an hour to the show where Dr Joy will light the lamp and tell the GATHERING how important for GIM its ALUMNUS were…

With no one to receive, garland and give sweets to, my team got tired, their smiles disappeared .. the girls in particular seemed regretting for all the efforts that they have taken in improving their looks, having gone vain…

That was the moment when I saw Anand, walking from the canteen side, after parking his car. He wasn’t the same in elegance, he walked frail, looked thinner than I saw him last at his home and wore a cap to keep away glaring eyes from his bald head. When he shook hands and when I hugged him but, I felt relieved… a lot of my pressure oozed out…. He still had the smell of denim and the smell of a winner…

How’s the operation applecart going? He asked me with a smile that had all the charm that was entirely his…

I guess I have upset the whole applecart.. I said even as we walked to the main building of GIM….

He stood there for a minute and said… hey Suk....the key to change,is to let go of your fear….

I stood there even as he walked, and by the time I realised that I was standing there alone, the music had begun ….

So much of sound and yet a lot of silence ....

The show had begun ….