After a few weeks of tentativeness it is now clear that my term as Chairperson NSRCEL will end in April 2015. I will have served my full term by then.
For a while I was hoping I might get off earlier than that. For an even shorter while it appeared that I might end up serving for longer than that.
I do not have any feeling of relief that I will soon not have that additional work of managing NSRCEL. Nor do I think that I will miss playing that part.
It is possible that for a few days after I hand over charge I will suddenly remember something that I feel I ought to be doing / have done at NSRCEL. And then I will have to remind myself that I no longer need to put it down on the To Do List to make up for my truant memory, as I would have always done for the three years that would have passed by then. That brief moment might possibly feel like a vacuum.
And then slowly my connection with the Centre will ebb away, as do many other memories and connections from our cognitive selves. They will be replaced by the daily struggles of producing 160 work points, dealing with student feedback and the many other things that engage or agitate us every day.
I accepted the offer to run NSRCEL readily, almost instantaneously. I was persuaded by two considerations. One, I thought it was one more opportunity to "give something back to the school", to use a disagreeable cliche. Further and more importantly I felt that I would be able to do something for the cause of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship is the only bit of capitalism that I have been able to accept unreservedly, as a former leftist. I like it because apart from solving problems for mankind it democratises the creation of wealth and delivers jobs - all of which, to an extent, square with the ideal of distributing the tools and means of production.
I was, and continue to remain, passionate about promoting entrepreneurship in whatever way I can. I will contribute to it as a faculty at IIMB through some forum or the other, inside IIMB or outside. Once I retire I will perhaps join a religious institution to set up an entrepreneurship support Centre, hoping to appease God and Mammon at the same time.
My passion for entrepreneurship kept me going for these past twenty eight months or so. I was not much concerned about whether I would earn plaudits for myself. I still remain unconcerned about that.
At my age plaudits cannot be "monetised", to use a metaphor from contemporary entrepreneurship. And what use are bragging rights, after all? They cannot pay my sons' school fees. Nor will they pay for a cardiac by-pass, should I need one, God forbid. As a budding pragmatist - yes, budding indeed - I do not see much sense or value in anything that cannot be monetised, other than of course the satisfaction of pursuing some larger social good.
I took up the responsibility with lots of hope and little forethought. I was looking forward to achieving a great deal.
As I approach the end of my term I am not sure I got very far with all that agenda. I apprehend that when I step down I will still ask myself if I leave the place any less respectable and stable than it was when I took over from Kumar. Did I destroy the edifice that had been built by the likes of Kalyani and Kumar, I often ask myself.
At a personal level I know for sure that I will leave with many emotional scars, that I brought upon myself and that I inflicted on others with my decisions that may have made me come across as unkind.
I have in my past life made harsher decisions, than I did at NSRCEL, that made one of my detractors describe me as a "cross between Timur the Lame and Attila the Hun". Even if she was somewhat drunk when she said that I knew she had been deeply hurt by what I had done to her as her reporting officer. (She went on to become a senior business leader at a global investment bank in London and stayed there till it was consumed by the 2008 turmoil.)
As I grow older I cannot seem to swallow all that emotional stress any more, as if it was all in a day's work. I ended up ploughing through difficult choices at NSRCEL with the conviction that they needed to be made to keep the show going.
That is certainly one good reason I will not miss that office once I step down. Those choices come with that territory, like it or not.
I learned a lot about the institution during this time. I leave the Centre, at least a trifle wiser than I was when I took charge. I am much grateful for support from quarters in the institute that I did not expect. Dean DT was one of them.
I can see that post April 2015, God willing, I will have many hours on hand every week that I would have spent on the Centre's work as its Chairperson. I am even hoping that I will be able to go on a Sababtical.
If that happens I will have to carefully choose what I do. Prepare for courses that I could not launch for the past three years? Go back to classes on Fin Economterics to equip myself better to try my hand at getting published? Read more of the Gita, in line with the quantity theory of spiritualism
that someone proposed to me a few weeks back? Complete the half finished novel in which a highly talented historian is trying to disentangle herself from an unlikely relationship and free herself from the violent Marxism on Kerala's campuses to be able to devote her energies to solve an obstinate puzzle in the ancient (pre Christ) history of Kerala? For all you know I might end up doing none of this, but simply indulge in a lot of desultory reading.
Anyway for now, this is the first weekend in sometime when I have started contemplating life after NSRCEL. Much more will unfold hopefully, Insha Allah, before I finally hand over.
Nanni. Namaskaaram.
For a while I was hoping I might get off earlier than that. For an even shorter while it appeared that I might end up serving for longer than that.
I do not have any feeling of relief that I will soon not have that additional work of managing NSRCEL. Nor do I think that I will miss playing that part.
It is possible that for a few days after I hand over charge I will suddenly remember something that I feel I ought to be doing / have done at NSRCEL. And then I will have to remind myself that I no longer need to put it down on the To Do List to make up for my truant memory, as I would have always done for the three years that would have passed by then. That brief moment might possibly feel like a vacuum.
And then slowly my connection with the Centre will ebb away, as do many other memories and connections from our cognitive selves. They will be replaced by the daily struggles of producing 160 work points, dealing with student feedback and the many other things that engage or agitate us every day.
I accepted the offer to run NSRCEL readily, almost instantaneously. I was persuaded by two considerations. One, I thought it was one more opportunity to "give something back to the school", to use a disagreeable cliche. Further and more importantly I felt that I would be able to do something for the cause of entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship is the only bit of capitalism that I have been able to accept unreservedly, as a former leftist. I like it because apart from solving problems for mankind it democratises the creation of wealth and delivers jobs - all of which, to an extent, square with the ideal of distributing the tools and means of production.
I was, and continue to remain, passionate about promoting entrepreneurship in whatever way I can. I will contribute to it as a faculty at IIMB through some forum or the other, inside IIMB or outside. Once I retire I will perhaps join a religious institution to set up an entrepreneurship support Centre, hoping to appease God and Mammon at the same time.
My passion for entrepreneurship kept me going for these past twenty eight months or so. I was not much concerned about whether I would earn plaudits for myself. I still remain unconcerned about that.
At my age plaudits cannot be "monetised", to use a metaphor from contemporary entrepreneurship. And what use are bragging rights, after all? They cannot pay my sons' school fees. Nor will they pay for a cardiac by-pass, should I need one, God forbid. As a budding pragmatist - yes, budding indeed - I do not see much sense or value in anything that cannot be monetised, other than of course the satisfaction of pursuing some larger social good.
I took up the responsibility with lots of hope and little forethought. I was looking forward to achieving a great deal.
As I approach the end of my term I am not sure I got very far with all that agenda. I apprehend that when I step down I will still ask myself if I leave the place any less respectable and stable than it was when I took over from Kumar. Did I destroy the edifice that had been built by the likes of Kalyani and Kumar, I often ask myself.
At a personal level I know for sure that I will leave with many emotional scars, that I brought upon myself and that I inflicted on others with my decisions that may have made me come across as unkind.
I have in my past life made harsher decisions, than I did at NSRCEL, that made one of my detractors describe me as a "cross between Timur the Lame and Attila the Hun". Even if she was somewhat drunk when she said that I knew she had been deeply hurt by what I had done to her as her reporting officer. (She went on to become a senior business leader at a global investment bank in London and stayed there till it was consumed by the 2008 turmoil.)
As I grow older I cannot seem to swallow all that emotional stress any more, as if it was all in a day's work. I ended up ploughing through difficult choices at NSRCEL with the conviction that they needed to be made to keep the show going.
That is certainly one good reason I will not miss that office once I step down. Those choices come with that territory, like it or not.
I learned a lot about the institution during this time. I leave the Centre, at least a trifle wiser than I was when I took charge. I am much grateful for support from quarters in the institute that I did not expect. Dean DT was one of them.
I can see that post April 2015, God willing, I will have many hours on hand every week that I would have spent on the Centre's work as its Chairperson. I am even hoping that I will be able to go on a Sababtical.
If that happens I will have to carefully choose what I do. Prepare for courses that I could not launch for the past three years? Go back to classes on Fin Economterics to equip myself better to try my hand at getting published? Read more of the Gita, in line with the quantity theory of spiritualism
that someone proposed to me a few weeks back? Complete the half finished novel in which a highly talented historian is trying to disentangle herself from an unlikely relationship and free herself from the violent Marxism on Kerala's campuses to be able to devote her energies to solve an obstinate puzzle in the ancient (pre Christ) history of Kerala? For all you know I might end up doing none of this, but simply indulge in a lot of desultory reading.
Anyway for now, this is the first weekend in sometime when I have started contemplating life after NSRCEL. Much more will unfold hopefully, Insha Allah, before I finally hand over.
Nanni. Namaskaaram.
No comments:
Post a Comment