This was only the second time I was visiting IIMC. My first visit many
years ago was when I had gone to recruit PGPs from IIMC. I was a young
"hot shot" venture capitalist then. In keeping with the
lifestyle and cockiness of young hot shots, I flew in and flew out the same day
with just a few hours to do the interviews. I allowed
myself no time for even a meal, let alone smell the flowers.
In comparison my second visit to IIMC was a much humbler event. And it was after only twenty six years. I was on my second last LTC vacation before I retire. Life had knocked me around quite a bit in this quarter of a century. Eventually, I had come to accept my station in life as a struggling academic, often wondering if I had not made a mistake in joining academe.
On this visit to IIMC I secured a place at the MDC for my family and myself thanks to the generosity of an administrative functionary at IIMB and his counterpart at IIMC.
Unlike many of my colleagues, I do not get called to these various institutions to speak. I do not publish. Nor am I connected enough among faculty counterparts in other institutions that I get invited by them for some reason or the other. The two administrative positions that I had held for seven years never really required me to travel much. Thus the huge gap between the two visits in terms of the time and the status in which I travelled. And hence the need for the generosity of an administrator.
There are many impressions about my travel to the city of Kolkata that I hope to record separately. In this post I just wish to capture some of the thoughts that crossed my mind as my family and I strolled through the campus.
First, the IIMC campus appears a lot more spacious. Lot more sparsely populated. That and its distance from the din of the city - and what a din that is, boy! - make it a very quiet place while IIMB constantly feels like a mela ground, what with countless vehicles literally screeching in and screeching out.
Second, quite a bit of IIMC's open space is accounted for by water bodies. That in itself provides a different natural ambience to the campus. On a more cynical note, the administration of the campus cannot build up on those vast open spaces - unless of course they choose to "reclaim" it by filling it up. And so they cannot go on this rapacious building spree that seems to rapidly have eaten quite most of the open spaces at IIMB.
Third, there is less of the manicured look that seems to have taken over whatever remains of the wild and open spaces at IIMB that were home to shrubs and deserted anthills that must once have been home to dreaded reptiles that must have been an ophiologist's delight.
Fourth, the buildings at IIMC all have a boring uniform, yellowish cream colour. Their large and imposing scale, their sharp lines and rectangular form impart an uncaring, impersonal Soviet character to the buildings, except that the sky over Joka is not a grim grey that blends gloomily into the grey haze of the Kolkata winter that has a very Gorky-esque air to it.
But then they all look like the buildings that one might expect to see in a government owned public institution that falls back on grants in aid for its capital expenditure, if not its operating expenses. It does not have the glitzy polished buildings that would be more typical of a private institution that wants to make a statement about its affluence through its opulent infrastructure. In some strange way I felt that is where the middle class me belonged!
And finally, I hardly saw any security personnel on the streets. I enjoy a great rapport with nearly all the guards at the various places at IIMB and I would feel bad if any of them had to be sent away from work because of my loose remark. But I do feel very self conscious when all those uniformed men - and now women too - salute me as if I was a highly decorated military general who had fought and won many a sanguinary war.
I have often wondered what is it that is so critical about what we do or have at IIMB or the people who work here that makes it so essential to have a guard at nearly every three hundred feet? But I could be wrong here. There is possibly a lot of intellectual activity going on at IIMB that might make a strategic difference to the society or nation at large. Or is it the general lack of security in civilian society in Bangalore that makes it necessary for us to be so carefully protected?
All of that is not to take away anything from the many good things about the IIMB campus. For starters we are far better maintained. A little too much so, possibly. Secondly, the infrastructure at IIMB is way better - multiple general purpose shops inside, far many more eateries that feed not just the campus residents but its huge floating population, the pharmacy, the health centre, the post office, the bank and so on. The houses we live in are a whole lot prettier. And then some of us luckier people live in independent houses, of which I saw none in IIMC. Above all, we are way, way we more green that makes one feel like one lives in a massive garden.
As I walked through the campus and as these thoughts raced through my mind I began to wonder if my attraction to the IIMC campus was also because of what I had heard about the life of the faculty there. Was it because I wondered if I might better socially into that community? That the teacher there is not so much under pressure from teaching ratings? That while being active in research would make one respectable at IIMC, not being an active researcher and being just a committed teacher and citizen might still not be viewed there as falling short of the mark of desirability as an academic? Or was it because all that I heard about academic life at IIMC added up to the romantic notions that I held before I joined IIMB: Academic life is all about reading, reflecting and writing out of one’s inner urge and not in response to investment bank style performance bean counting that was laid down by some productivity Nazi in a different context?
These are hard questions to answer. The human mind is too truant in its ways for one to know exactly what its subterranean motives are.
Whatever the fancies, whatever the motives, I know one thing for sure. This place, IIMB, would always be my home, no matter what anyone else thinks how much I belong here. This institution and I seem to be somehow tied at the waist through a bond of karma. How else does one explain the fact that I came to study here in the most unexpected circumstances and that I came to work here in even less expected circumstances, eighteen long years later? And why, the school and I share a date of birth. I do not know of anyone else here that does. That is one really cute karmic connection, isn't it?
Nanni...Namaskaaram...
In comparison my second visit to IIMC was a much humbler event. And it was after only twenty six years. I was on my second last LTC vacation before I retire. Life had knocked me around quite a bit in this quarter of a century. Eventually, I had come to accept my station in life as a struggling academic, often wondering if I had not made a mistake in joining academe.
On this visit to IIMC I secured a place at the MDC for my family and myself thanks to the generosity of an administrative functionary at IIMB and his counterpart at IIMC.
Unlike many of my colleagues, I do not get called to these various institutions to speak. I do not publish. Nor am I connected enough among faculty counterparts in other institutions that I get invited by them for some reason or the other. The two administrative positions that I had held for seven years never really required me to travel much. Thus the huge gap between the two visits in terms of the time and the status in which I travelled. And hence the need for the generosity of an administrator.
There are many impressions about my travel to the city of Kolkata that I hope to record separately. In this post I just wish to capture some of the thoughts that crossed my mind as my family and I strolled through the campus.
First, the IIMC campus appears a lot more spacious. Lot more sparsely populated. That and its distance from the din of the city - and what a din that is, boy! - make it a very quiet place while IIMB constantly feels like a mela ground, what with countless vehicles literally screeching in and screeching out.
Second, quite a bit of IIMC's open space is accounted for by water bodies. That in itself provides a different natural ambience to the campus. On a more cynical note, the administration of the campus cannot build up on those vast open spaces - unless of course they choose to "reclaim" it by filling it up. And so they cannot go on this rapacious building spree that seems to rapidly have eaten quite most of the open spaces at IIMB.
Third, there is less of the manicured look that seems to have taken over whatever remains of the wild and open spaces at IIMB that were home to shrubs and deserted anthills that must once have been home to dreaded reptiles that must have been an ophiologist's delight.
Fourth, the buildings at IIMC all have a boring uniform, yellowish cream colour. Their large and imposing scale, their sharp lines and rectangular form impart an uncaring, impersonal Soviet character to the buildings, except that the sky over Joka is not a grim grey that blends gloomily into the grey haze of the Kolkata winter that has a very Gorky-esque air to it.
But then they all look like the buildings that one might expect to see in a government owned public institution that falls back on grants in aid for its capital expenditure, if not its operating expenses. It does not have the glitzy polished buildings that would be more typical of a private institution that wants to make a statement about its affluence through its opulent infrastructure. In some strange way I felt that is where the middle class me belonged!
And finally, I hardly saw any security personnel on the streets. I enjoy a great rapport with nearly all the guards at the various places at IIMB and I would feel bad if any of them had to be sent away from work because of my loose remark. But I do feel very self conscious when all those uniformed men - and now women too - salute me as if I was a highly decorated military general who had fought and won many a sanguinary war.
I have often wondered what is it that is so critical about what we do or have at IIMB or the people who work here that makes it so essential to have a guard at nearly every three hundred feet? But I could be wrong here. There is possibly a lot of intellectual activity going on at IIMB that might make a strategic difference to the society or nation at large. Or is it the general lack of security in civilian society in Bangalore that makes it necessary for us to be so carefully protected?
All of that is not to take away anything from the many good things about the IIMB campus. For starters we are far better maintained. A little too much so, possibly. Secondly, the infrastructure at IIMB is way better - multiple general purpose shops inside, far many more eateries that feed not just the campus residents but its huge floating population, the pharmacy, the health centre, the post office, the bank and so on. The houses we live in are a whole lot prettier. And then some of us luckier people live in independent houses, of which I saw none in IIMC. Above all, we are way, way we more green that makes one feel like one lives in a massive garden.
As I walked through the campus and as these thoughts raced through my mind I began to wonder if my attraction to the IIMC campus was also because of what I had heard about the life of the faculty there. Was it because I wondered if I might better socially into that community? That the teacher there is not so much under pressure from teaching ratings? That while being active in research would make one respectable at IIMC, not being an active researcher and being just a committed teacher and citizen might still not be viewed there as falling short of the mark of desirability as an academic? Or was it because all that I heard about academic life at IIMC added up to the romantic notions that I held before I joined IIMB: Academic life is all about reading, reflecting and writing out of one’s inner urge and not in response to investment bank style performance bean counting that was laid down by some productivity Nazi in a different context?
These are hard questions to answer. The human mind is too truant in its ways for one to know exactly what its subterranean motives are.
Whatever the fancies, whatever the motives, I know one thing for sure. This place, IIMB, would always be my home, no matter what anyone else thinks how much I belong here. This institution and I seem to be somehow tied at the waist through a bond of karma. How else does one explain the fact that I came to study here in the most unexpected circumstances and that I came to work here in even less expected circumstances, eighteen long years later? And why, the school and I share a date of birth. I do not know of anyone else here that does. That is one really cute karmic connection, isn't it?
Nanni...Namaskaaram...
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