Share of the Booty !!!

It was a cool morning…

Unusually cold for a summer day but it was.. it had rained all night soothing the hot earth which for days burned like a furnace…. the merciless sun that ruled till the last evening disappeared… clouds loomed as if the night wasn’t enough and it still drizzled, drops fell from no where into the cool gloomy terrain of GIM and made it wet….

GIM stood like an old man caught in the rain, drenched and quivering....

When the call from the top came, I was in the class teaching humour in advertising, the theory of it interspaced with video ads for which the kids waited than for the theory behind it. I left the class with an ad on air, half way through promising to return ……

Dr Joy and Jesus …. said the office boy who came to call me… and many others.. they are all waiting….

Waiting for me? Eh ?… now what was so pressing that I was called leaving behind a class that was in semi ecstasy…?

The enquiry report?

EMEP?

What was it…?

At the Kings Chamber it looked like the ‘who is who’ of GIM… the top brass and all the teachers… top to bottom…. The gossipers, the peeping toms, the complaint boxes, the oil wells, the drooling jacks, the FM radio’s, the fashion queens, the dare devils, the sexists ….

It looked like a village circus….

It was new… this assembly of the GIM intellectual capital at the Kings Chamber, big enough it was but that day it looked too small a place for all that ego to congregate…

Welcome friends…. announced Dr Joy sitting in his throne, flanked by his coterie left and right…..

Today is a special day for GIM…… he said spiritedly…

A hush of murmur went through the crowd….

Any guesses?..... He launched the question like a quiz master would do and the crowd sat there looking for clues to answer….

I didn’t need any clue and same was with Prof Ram who sat next to me in the back row….

The front rows threw answers, some of which bounced, some almost hit the target but not fully….

GIM is accredited by the national board for a period of 5 years and we have also become the largest B School in this part of the country…. declared the king, while the people around him flashed smiles and exchanged congratulations…

I couldn’t see the front rows, I mean the faces of the people seated at the front rows but could imagine how they would all look like…

Largest means more money…. said Ram… more money for the god damn spendthrift family… what is in it for others…?

I did smile but a faded one….

I was searching for Sri Laxmi…. Now that the great secret was out, and it didn’t happen to be my area of interest, my eyes wandered…

This has happened because of all of us .. all of you … said the VC with clean face lines that said that he didn't mean it, standing up , and adjusting his trousers which was oozing down….

In appreciation…. added Dr Joy… we have decided to institute a best faculty award and also give a stupendous salary rise to the ten best faculty members at GIM…

Now that was of interest to me… I’m here ……I’m here… my undisciplined mind cried…

Share of the booty… alibaba style.. said Ram…

Some people found fault in every thing… I thought even while I smiled, as if I agreed and I didn’t want the share….

The details of which will be communicated to you shortly…. said Dr Joy with delight dancing in his huge face….

They are confused between obesity and growth.... I pity them.. said Ram as we walked out... No one else seemed to pity at that point of time.

Smiles and hopes flew out of the room and spread like wild fire all across the faculty rooms and the common area, where under the camera, discussion began all out…

Sri Laxmi walked to me in the corner of the library where I found a refuge and sat with a renewed interest to be among the top ten.. You never know how the management at GIM arrived at the magical ranking…. What if the usage of library was one factor??

Missed you yesterday… she said as she sat opposite to me...

My stomach was empty; still I couldn’t digest what she just said….. I didn’t show it but, instead said…. I am sorry had that stupid enquiry….

You teach communication and advertising…. right sir?.. she asked me with sarcasm…

I didn’t reply…. I got the voice of the question and from my silence she got the answer…

How is Anand…? I asked…

He is fine… it’s the primary stage… curable… and you know him… he is quite brave,,,,, she laughed with energy that seemed fake to me…

Did she say YOU KNOW HIM>>>???

By now I knew everything about them, their love, and their families’ opposition and upon her insistence how he came and met Jesus to charm him and get an offer right away…..

Still..... did I know him?

I could see her pain, and her vain attempts to look courageous.. she was in love with a brave man for sure, but he possibly had to teach her more….

I will meet him today… I said after a long pause… I had hoped to ease the situation…

Her large eyes bloomed….

You could have given him a call …. She said

It is hard for me.. Sri Laxmi… I said with my voice drooping……. I cannot imagine Anand in his present state …

Clouds loomed in her face as the morning sky….drops fell but it burned me like a furnace….….

She tried to hide it from me…. After a moment of imprudence she gave up … may be she realised that hands don’t cover hearts…

I didn’t try to stop her…..

Daggers and sheaths...part II

GIM was near to the sea, not the red one but the one which some one somewhere named as Arabian sea and the sight from the GIM building was simply stupendous. The central courtyard gave a panoramic view and as one went up in the lift, one side of which was open to the outdoors with a fibre wall, would get mesmerized by the sheer beauty..

It looked boundless, the vast expanse of green earth with ease merging with the blue sea….

Endless and eternal… as time…

Good Morning sir… some one said and I came back to life, I was in the lift going to the 5 th floor where an MDP meeting was scheduled and I was one of the invitees….

Hi… Good morning…. I said with a hangdog expression of having seen by a student in my dream world.

Suhail Khan … he said with an arm extended…second year MBA

Ohhh yes… I said with a smile… I knew only the guys who took Marketing .. this one was not one among them…

I am into Operations and HR sir… he said as if he too was a mind reader…

Too many of this tribe in GIM.... I thought…

I guess I miss some good lectures in Marketing… he said with a smile… that is what I hear from my folks…

I flashed my uneven row of teeth at the free appreciation that was coming on my way and that too from some one who never had attended my classes.

It was debatable whether he would have had the same opinion if had attended !!

Ha! ….I said…. you made my day Khan… I said with a beam and I meant it… Praise was something I liked, and that too about my teaching skills which I was not that convinced about.

Anand Mohan sat next to me at the MDP room where some corporate clients had come and where presenting their case, some sales issue which the think tank of GIM was trying to make look as a strategy issue with an intention of selling more of their expertise than to solve the client’s issue.

I now had to keep away from this new dare devil as well… Ram was a head ache always but it was easy to avoid him and take distant seats and in meetings like this one he would always prefer the front row and will be there discussing and debating quoting from the GE story and the like…Anand seemed adamant and stuck on to me, wanting to look like thick friends who had met some 15 years after graduation. I liked his presence but not his gallantry which he seemed to be putting on display even at the most inapt spaces….

The Delhi team has recommended for a seat raise …he told me in a hush tone

I stared at him for the outdated news that he was sharing… I mean it was an inevitable finale which all knew particularly after the meeting which ended up as a sham.

The Delhi team (who had come and gone) had been in a fix after the infringement from Anand and the high hopes that he raised in the process. I assumed that Prof ram would jump in the fray, outperform Anand and explain why the FACES were not telling it all…and why as a professional committee who had taken the PAINS to come all the way from Delhi ,how unprofessional it was to depend face reading as a tool to assess employee satisfaction of an institution.

Anand Mohan sat after the intrusion, pleased as his job was done, and possibly expecting veteran mouths to carry on .Ram was the alternative( at least as I saw it) but strangely he did not and bingo the VC stood up. Subramanian Iyer the shrewd tactician was on his legs when I wrote in my note pad…

THE GAME IS OVER!!!!

Let the faculty also speak… he said in a careful tone with an American accent that came naturally to him …. But since everyone cannot speak,due to the time factor, let us have one to represent us….

The chosen one was one of the loyals, who feigned surprise but it showed like the pre practiced expressions of wonder and marvel that the Miss world’s display when the crown is announced….

After the astute move, the master stroke by the VC it all went haywire… I found Ram dumb, Anand still smiling, some others fuming and most of the others falling back to reality after the brief and short lived hope… I always knew why Dr Joy and his team like mad depended on this old man…

I did not know the game here…Anand told me as if in a confession box and I came back to the MDP room.. Some one was still in argument with some one over something that was petty……. I did not know that the one who was asked to speak would sing praises and make it easy for the Delhi team

I smiled, with a ridicule at his ingenuousness.. I saw that the charisma and aura which was the other name of this man was failing but was the dirty mind in me sunny and gleeful at it ?

But you know what Sukesh…. Anand Mohan is a winner….. he said, in what if others would have said would have sounded like an empty audacity but for him suited well…. And the game has just begun…

He didn’t scratch thighs but left deeper lines in my mind…

Ram was better, he never carried himself into my thought and most of the time with him, I heard him, but rarely listened to him. Anand was different… he looked fearless, sounded bravo and up to the point…

That evening when I was about to leave and had just kept my bag and a fat copy of some business book( to give the serious intellectual look most prof’s carry one or two books home and back everyday) in the back seat of my car, a voice interrupted …

Can I get a lift sir…? Said Sri Laxmi as she stood just back to me, with her long flock of hair waving in the soft sea breeze and her large dreamy eyes in full flicker … she looked like she was carved out fresh from the setting sun…

A splash of denim fragrance out of the blue spread in the air… I hadn’t put any denim for a long time and it was for sure not from her either…

The game has just begun… some one whispered into my ears…

Teach the teacher !!!

Srilaxmi walked around in GIM dawdling & dragging, as if she was a new bride lost at the newness of her groom's house….

The large place threatened her.... a topper in her MBA
which she passed just a year back, she had no clue of what her career should be… May be teach at a business school, she had thought somewhere.. but neither for the admiration for the profession nor for the ardor to contribute to the development of it, but simply because her tradition bound parents would not allow her to work otherwise.
She send an application with a one page CV attached, when GIM had called last time for faculty recruitments (another regular drama that GIM undertook, foolish as per the critics but a smart way of Brand building as per Dr Joy), the VC called her for interview and because she looked good and could speak english, was appointed as a faculty in the Marketing area of GIM....

The characters in the faculty office tried their level best to make her uncomfortable, as they did with every new entrant.....telling her spiced tales of how the ever-over expecting crowd, whom they call 'students', in GIM would behave with you......how this piece of paper which the student gets to fill at the end of every course, which they call 'faculty feed back' would behead you....how thankless the deadly devils, whom everyone called 'the management' would suck your blood out and leave you empty and alone in the vast sea where everyone was a pirate or a sea wasp ...

I for one didn’t enjoy torturing her but to confess- was never very comfortable at the idea of a 20 something girl teaching Marketing to a set of over zealous 20 something’s…

Can you give me some tips..? She asked me one day while I was in the library trying to make sense of some heavy article in some international marketing journal…(those really help me when I was in deep problem.. I sit with one of them, try to read it and then get some peace of mind that my problems are far simple…. at least explicable and hence dealable) …

That was the first time she talked to me, that is after the formal introduction round where I was the chosen one… She rarely looked pleasant, when she moved around ,smiled once a while and that too faintly as if there was some thorn stuck to her permanently, somewhere …and I was surprised when she came and sat opposite to me and asked for TIPS…

Tips? …I cried… for what??

The Vice chairman told me that you are one popular teacher in Marketing… As you know I am new … I mean… I have no teaching experience… I mean I have no experience at all…so ..you know… I mean… She mumbled in inarticulate stream of utterances where words came out in an asymmetrical chain, the tone went up and down, the pitch was less than discernable but her eyes said it all….

she was petrified and needed help…

Well Madam… I said with humility that I wore as a decoration, when I felt elated…

Elated for what ?( later I kept wondering)…

The VC has told her that I AM popular as a teacher”……Hmmmm…. so he has noted it…
So…
So what ? nothing ….I knew the answer but the fact that the second top man in the GIM management knew it and has in fact recommended some one to take tips from me was worth to be jubilant…

I told her things which I was in no doubt that she didn’t understand… she was impervious not because she was arrogant but because she was ignorant… I felt pity at her plight, as I knew that her evident gullibility may turn expensive for her…

Never use the text book in the class, for instance… I said with her mouth open, suggesting to me that she was planning that, exactly that…

Cases, deep analysis of brands and issues, updated information about Markets and marketing…the sites, the blogs... the books that I read... I went on and she sat there showing me mixed expressions of fear, angst, loath, scorn and disbelief … her beautiful face was in radiance, her big eyes glittered like blue diamonds in spite of her dreary expressions ….

Come back you bloody flirt… my mind warned my wandering self…... Hey Sukesh you are a professor….

She smiled at me the next day and the comfort, for me looked like the handiwork of my TIPS….That was the day when she had to launch herself….the prospect of walking into a class which is a semi theatre with almost 100 young boys and girls sitting there with skepticism freely circulated along with the cold air from the Air Conditioners made her upset but her new friend was there to boost her morale… who else..? ME…only me....!!!......

The moment she introduced herself and Sales Management-the course which she was to 'teach them’, hands went up in the air.....

Mam do you have experience in sales..?
Mam you are just one year senior to us, how can you teach us the complexities of sales as a subject and practice..?
Mam.. Mam…Mam do you...
how?
what? Mam...

It was a semi dark room, and even other wise she wouldn’t be able to see anything.......She wanted to tell them that the VC of GIM has prejudiced her that as long as she is beautiful (which she is) and she has the command over the language, she could teach anything.....

She, but didn’t want to tell them that for her this was a stop gap arrangement, when someone comes asking for her hand in marriage, this job will make her more saleable....

Sales management was the issue, selling her in the marriage market to be precise and alas I had no TIPS to offer in that domain !!!