An Intimate History of Bengal

BOOK XX

 

Capital, Temples of Modern Bengal and the New Priests

(Reading of Footnotes obligatory)

 

Self Re-connecting the narrative timeline:

Within two months[1], I would complete six years [2002 – 2008] of living in Calcutta – for two years as an employee and the rest as a traveling scholar-businessman. In these years, I have also got married, attained fatherhood and as I look back, I find many changes – superficial as well as those which are quite profound in nature. Changes in my personal life enabled me to interact directly with many lies of the land which I would have missed otherwise.

 

Like few previous AIHB books, two books have triggered this book. One is Mark Tully’s most recent book – The Unending Journey of India and the other written some four decades back – Binoy Ghosh’s  মেট্রোপলিটান মন, মধ্যবিত্ত, বিদ্রোহ (Metropolitan Mind, Middle Class, Rebellion). Both the books are collection of essays. Authors of both have been observers-in-situ of the culture / community they are studying. Both of them, having quite different backgrounds share a profound disgust of certainties of any sort. Finally – both write a prose which is authentic, full of gravitas yet not archaic and occasionally reflect poetic qualities.

 

As the title suggests, we are entering into the Age beyond the issues of Singur-Nandigram in the history of Bengal. It is not to be understood that the issues of Nandigram-Singur are re-solved or exhausted itself. Rather, very strong efforts are underway to manage these issues. If those villages and the event centering them (but not controlled by them) are the up-start ghosts of the past, then people who manage those ghosts are exorcists and to become exorcists, very special skills are indeed required. These skills are in high demand in the market nowadays – almost everywhere and in Bengal to be specific. These skills are managerial skills. Pure managerial skills are like the skills of a pure mercenary and characteristically value-neutral. It is only decided by the earnings (that of present and of future) promised.  Until quite recently, an investment banker was considered a kind of a dalal, a kind of a stigma in learned societies because an i-banker is a trader, functionally quite like a roadside vendor in the market of money.  However, since the best lacks all conviction / the worst is full of passionate intensity. All learning, all culture, all civilizing influences now pale before these dalals as they seem to have some magical influence in our country now. Not least in IITs[2] and IIMs – our so called islands of excellence in the sea of squalor and degradation.

 

Seven years back, while planning the AIHB content, I had thought of a Book called The Sparkling Consumerism: Bengal and Free Market (2002)[3]. This was never written and hence not released. Because after seven years, situation had moved in different directions than what I anticipated. It remains the endeavour of this BOOK to tell those departures and diversions, circumlocutions and circumcisions, of dashed hopes and emerging characters.

 

Capital and the Land of Excess

Babur, the great empire-builder was operating at a time when there was nothing called merger or acquisitions. Hence M&A experts and their great clients can feel little sad that this man from a small village in Central Asia controlled a large segment of India – Gurgaon and Noida included, only some five centuries back without any amount of so called friction or agitation, trade-union etc. He was not dealing with any real-state boom or high cost but was the personified symbol of all the real-estate of the land. He has mentioned about Bengal in his Turkish chronicle – Bengal as Hell overflowing with Bread. To this great lover and character of Central Asia – the humid and rainy climate of Bengal but the phenomenal fertility of her soil. Little far away from Babur’s birthplace in the West and a man five centuries apart – Milan Kundera comments on the Literature of the East – literature of excess. I would like to draw a parallel – anything excess (in relative and general sense) of geography would reflect the same in some product coming off from the same geography. The task of an observer is to search for those aspects and tracking those consistencies throughout. I would argue that the reverse is also true and this is complimentary. This empirical hypothesis provides us a very powerful tool to manage a vast subject like this one, albeit on an empirical level. I would use this tool unabashedly to put forth my arguments and observations.

 

Let me come to the point straight now. What is the entity which is in excess (in relative terms with regards to timeline, say some thirty to forty years) right now in Bengal? Even though too simplistic and received-thinking is a close contender, but Capital and promise of it lead this list of excess. For the first time in the history of Bengal – inbound Capital is at its highest now.[4] What has been in excess before this new contender? – Land and most important fertile land. Since two such powerful and fundamental excesses cannot constitute a stable equilibrium, sanctioned by the laws of physics and verified by common sense – they are cannibalizing on each other.[5] All the business and political aspects of Contemporary Bengal can be generalized under this Law of Excess.

 

Let us put the Law of excess to the field of intellectuals, social commentators and people who create literature [6] in Contemporary Bengal. Previously, Bengal had an excess of intellectuals, radicals, revolutionaries, scholars and poets. Contemporary excess component consists of businessmen, media-owners and their cohorts – educated, semi, quarter and as my wife says – under metric normal, heads of trade organizations like CII, FII and of other acronyms, investment bankers or/and dalals, ad-gurus, literate voyeurs with a stomach also to fill, hundred media channels with time to fill, writers of soap-operas, sports writer and commentator, professors and teachers of Bengali origin but living abroad either for a long and short time[7]. Not to be forgotten are those writers who educate Bengali women in a strange Bengali what is manners and how to mathematize sneezing, coughing etc. Hence we find a cannibalizing effect here as well. For last seven years (360 x 7 = 2520) I have been reading two frontline dailies of Calcutta – one in Bengali and one in English[8] with almost the same attitude as that of an unofficial detective reading an official Coroner’s Report and my idea of cannibalization gets reinforced each day. One example: A leading novelist in Bengali provides – in a kind of a salivating prose as that of the experience of having a dinner in a recently opened restaurant.  Opposite: A journalist, must be a young one – writes in a strange prose style which is an effort to synthesize[9] the prose tradition of Bengal – from Hutum’s, Pyarichad, Teckchad, Iswar Gupta to the present. Then of course present is the land’s tremendous attraction for sensationalism and its excess – circumlocution of the unspeakable. Hence there is an overlapping of areas. Just like Call Centres have killed the day and night of Bengal (and India as well) and also the people who rule those times, the excess factors colliding are creating intellectual species which go a step beyond evolution, mutation or in-volution, they just morph. This is because; a process is underway, which I will call Convergence – a technical term, borrowing from my training in Telecommunication and is happening at a rapid pace.

 

 As we look at Contemporary Bengal, people who are at the forefront to manage these processes and are paid to do so are politicians (democratically elected – most likely in a fair manner in the technical sense) and their principal ally is Capitalists of all denominations and of all nationalities. Most politicians have in their team a MBA equivalent who are called IAS officers. Capitalists mostly deploy MBAs – which might also mean Man becoming Ass[10] in context something more than the hilarity of it. The core function of MBAs is to manage their capital most efficiently as well as minimizing all friction of that movement. It is not my intention to question their competence or intention and I check my temptation, thanks to Gibbon who had informed that men much worse than the present ones, even a horse or bear could be the Roman Emperor[11]when Rome was collapsing.  It is rather my intention to present certain scenarios unfolding – under these complex forces of present time which is not only the making of the present actors who are in the stage. For this, I would seek a writer’s break and tell something about a species I belong to and most of the practitioners belong to mine or two generation before me – the MBAs. The other species, equally important, IAS are separated more in space and time and cannot be dealt that intimately. However, I would offer a SMS kind of joke on them as well, told by my brother, working for Government of India – I am Sorry Officer. I have tried to explain why high public officials generally and as a rule behave so haughtily in India in the previous book.[12]

 

MBA in Bengal or A Bengali who is an MBA:

 

I forgot where I read a beautiful term – semantic deception which lies at the heart of making a survival-ready MBA of today.[13]Semantic deception means an artful way, marshaling all cognitive, psychological knowledge to tell something which in no way means what it is being told. Example: Lowest 3.77% interest on your card. It implies a whopping 39% per annum interest. The 3.77% is per month and without taking into account cumulative interest, late fee etc. This is deception and the purpose is to entrap and then making the exit cost higher and higher.

Collateral Damage of the war has been high, says Military spokesman – means some bomb either deliberately or erroneously has gone off-target or killed civilians.

The strategy is to make a win-win situation for the investor and the people who lost their cultivatable land – implying eviction but the sentence marshals all the theories about strategy and game theory to tell something which has been going on since the Mahabharata.

Second trait that has been hammered is to practice a kind of moral apathy – an imbecility which projects a great smokescreen to hide. Contemporary MBA in India fights, in one hand the great inferiority of earnings and orderliness of living compared to their counterparts in developed (i.e., not emerging but emerged) world and in other hand the Government functionaries who are mostly IAS who control, by proxy the levers which provide the key drivers of growth and profit: land, labour and environmental laws and policing. Indian Industry (meaning those who are of Indian Origin but now buying companies abroad as Western Capitalism has entered its somewhat latent phase of distress selling), having more experience in dealing with the Indian situation (and its completely subterranean undercurrents which no foreigner knows and none will know until they will lose their soul) is divided in its opinion to tackle this challenge. A part of the industry believes that MBAs will win the fight with the IAS and they don’t value the connections of these that much and hence don’t try to recruit these officers. The other hand believes on their value quite a lot and gets them into their corporate board. A decade ago it was rare, virtually non-existent case of a senior IAS officer joining a private enterprise. Now its routine and in that way, MBAs are becoming bosses of these IAS officers. The incentive for the IAS is better pay, more autonomy and having a course correction in career.[14]

Another trait is more through training – of acquiring the incredible ability of speaking confidently on something completely unknown. This is called, by the leading Management Journal Harvard Business Review as Smart-Talk Syndrome (STS). STS affects almost all successful MBAs. In all other professions before MBA, people learn through the simple technique: Hear One, See One, Do One. Argumentative India, in MBA domain makes the sense like this: Talk one, Talk some, and Talk some more. I will narrate an anecdote – While I was looking for someone who would help me to market my organization’s[15] services into certain international markets. I finally locked onto an MBA from IIM with specialization in International Business and who also happened to be a Bengali. The ‘resource’ was in Gujrat I remember at that time, for some project, he told. Now, over phone I humbly told my purpose of calling him and ventured to explain what my nature of business and needs are. Being cash-poor and time-rich, I started to tell that I am in no urgency. But I was given barely anytime to finish. The ‘resource’[16] started a barrage of acronyms, codes, abbrebriation barely joined by loaded verbs and prepositions almost melting from the heat of the acronyms and self-glow. After a long silence, the ‘resource’ came to conversational style and obliged me for life by telling that he has no time right now but if I am lucky, I might find him a week after in Calcutta.  At no point, he cared to ask exactly what I need. This may be a particularly pathological case but even sane ones of MBA species quite forgetfully lapse into this kind of Smart Talk Syndrome. For Indian MBAs, why STS gets completely undetected at the source, I think I have found the reasons. Firstly, the entire orientation is a borrowed version of West (US and UK mainly) where the language is English and this being a second language, creates sufficient distance for the speakers to have a natural but palpable distance to lose the distinction between sense and gibberish. Secondly, since majority MBAs at the topmost institutes here are engineers by training, except exceptions, most have poor language, semantic and communication skills. They learn by rote and in a soulless technological way. Since argumentative Indian as we are, we tell this lack as engineering precision. These hide and seek and self-deception leaves a permanent scar in the intellectual and feeling apparatus. Hence, in spite of a decade of being in the market economy, we don’t have a Handy, or a Mintzberg, or an Argyris in India.  Our frontline media prints in the front page the salaries offered to our business school graduates but next day writes in a corner something disturbing – one of the lucky young things request not to publicize as his families are getting extortion calls !! 

 

My Mentor’s Questions to the MBAs of Contemporary Bengal

            As I told in my previous footnote about my mentor, this paragraph has come, thanks to his help in unlocking my block that I suffered before this paragraph. Now, my mentor is the panwallah whom I knew for last six years. The beauty is this that he does not know that he is my mentor. Since there is no such awareness on his part, our relationship is free and learning channels open. Two years back, in one fine April morning, he revealed as my Mentor and that changed me forever. We discuss a lot of things and since he could only read Bengali, I will translate his teachings in English. His teachings are rather questions to me, because he considers me more knowledgeable and more experienced in the ways of the world. Since he never had the opportunity or money (from father or from loan from ravenous banks) to go to a business school, I would also take the liberty of supplying terms and terminologies into his speech for the benefit of fellow MBAs of Bengal / Bengali origin. His concerns are local (He has been living in the same place for some forty years and for last seven years, I have never found him missing from his seat in his small shop near a tea-shop, even during the great Calcutta bandhs when I secretly got delighted for having an occasion to miss office ) and being out of the ambit of management literature, self-help books, leadership talks and especially salaries and stock options, he leads a debt free life – both of housing as well as of credit cards. In stead he is a big time lender – his credited client runs into hundreds, sustained for some twenty years with very very low bad debt. He has been in business in a duration which has seen some five to six business cycles. He is a brand of more longevity than Mafatlal or DCM Daewoo without caring a moment or a paisa about brand. He has served three generations and sometimes simultaneously. He does not have a Call Centre. He is the Call Centre that helps to make users meet and add beta versions of everything – from social gossip to latest political debate. He recommends chocolates to my son and allows me to have better quality Navy Cut packets. He sells eggs while it rains and adds it with few potatoes. His wife manages the store while he goes to the Mela of Taraknath or goes to some village for fishing. He enjoys his food and sometimes cooks as a hobby. His suppliers use eco-friendly transport –cycles and he cross-sells his services – telling me that he repairs lighters and fills gas in gas-lighters. He has recently started another service: he charges his customer’s mobiles if anyone needs that. Free. I once had my laptop charged there in an urgent occasion. I think some thousand people will be directly impacted – real time, instantaneously if his business goes down. He gives me change if I have none and he is a permanent part of my everyday life. Life that is beyond our everyday tricks and trials.

         

          While I write the extract of our discussions[17], I am little concerned whether I would be able to retain his original flavour. But I will surely try. The striking issue is that of the directness of them and since he looks life with a devastating directness, I am all the more concerned whether my educated and cultivated language would communicate this aspect of the dialogue.

 

Question 1: What exactly you do in your huge, nice offices day and night all the time? I mean I sit here, in this dokan – sell all these and talk with you people. You must be doing something different? Since I did not study much (and you people did), please tell me some stories about your job.

 

[My response: I do lots of things but it will not make a story. It is mostly like a same story repeated each week. Since this boredom has become a habit, I don’t feel the boring part of it] 

 

Question 2: I find most of you all the time very busy. Can’t you tell your wife or friend to do your job for some day or say some hours while you feel that you would like to do something else, say having a day-time nap?

 

[My response: I can’t. The job is mine and mine only. It can neither be shared nor distributed except to those who are under similar contract of me-mine]

 

Question 3: Have you ever thought what is the reason for your salary being so high compared to other people?

[My response: Sure. I have worked hard. I have been such an intelligent and smart fellow]

 

Question 4: Why do you seem to talk over mobile all the time and mostly you talk about office, pressure etc.

[My response: Simple. I have been such an important and needed person for the world and time being limited; I do a great sacrifice by giving my time to the benefit of my organization which being global is a gift to humanity]

 

Question 5: In spite of having all such gifts of life compared to most people – good education, high salary, good car, why you are not that happy as I could make out ?

[Who said so…? I am quite happy. I even attend some yoga classes to gain happiness. My God! I am late for my yoga classes for today.. I have to hurry. I am getting late. Now, I will have traffic snarls and I am getting late.. Exeunt to Yoga! ]

 

Question 6: What are the things you plan to do after, say 15 years?

[Once my EMI payment for the flat gets over, I would relax. But before that I need to earn money to get my son educated, all other commitments. ]

 

Question 7: What is an EMI?

[This is monthly payment for a loan I had taken for the house and the car as well as for the furnishing of the house.]

Question 8: Oh.. You mean this is a loan and you will pay for next 15 years.

[Yes. With interest]

Question 9: But why did you take that loan?

[What a question..! Simply because I did not have the money in my closet to buy this posh flat]

Question 10: What happens if you don’t pay the loan?

[ I will be thrown out of the house ]

Question 11: Do you have another place to stay in the city ?

[No…]

Question 12. How does this people who give loan decide whom to give loan and how much ?

[From the salary they get from the place where they work. Like me – who work for a large and big company, salary is high and hence they give easily ]

Question 13 : Oh…I understand… You mean they think that you will go on earning the same money for the next 15 years…

[What a fool…! I would grow, become a CEO within 15 years and then this will be peanuts for me. I will earn much more]

Question 14: Ok. You mean your company has given you a guarantee that you would go on earning like this for next 15 years and you will become a CEO after 15 years..

[ No… How can a company do that ? Its competition man.. Its drive, energy, intellect, connection, economy – all that are dependent. Its not guaranteed]

Question 15: But didn’t you tell that you gave the same guarantee to the people who gave you loan that you will pay the same for next 15 years?

[Yes. Sure. What’s the problem? I am young, confident and intelligent. I would surely grow. ]

Question 16: That is for sure. But you see, Life is uncertain. If something goes wrong, is it wise to give such a guarantee from your part – one person only whereas a big company like yours cannot afford to give such a guarantee?

[What an idea! Can the company remain competitive if it goes on giving guarantees like this? I don’t work in a sarkari office, my dear fellow]

Question 17: But pardon me, I know very little. But it seems to me that your best job is in a sarkari office where your job is at least guaranteed. ]

 

At this point, I was almost going to loose temper. I was getting very angry at his hint of pushing me into the deplorable, inefficient and sloth-like Government employee. In a split-second, finally the MBA training[18] flashed and I reasoned – He is talking of guarantee asymmetry.  My company has never given any guarantee of my employment and the income thereof

( instead I always lecture my people that jobs are not guaranteed anymore, its winner takes all) and I have given a guarantee  to the Bank that I would continue to pay-up the EMI for next 15 years without fail and in case of non-payment, I have signed an irrevocable mandate that the Bank reserves the right (legally and can be enforced legally) to evict me of my 9th floor south facing luxury flat and to sell to someone (may be the ugly fellow who is my competitor in my office) to recoup the loan. 

 

          I spent a sleep-less night and was very concerned about the asymmetry issue. I discussed this issue with my wife (a working woman – we don’t have kids as we plan to settle and then have one) over a weekend on this, secretly thinking that she might say something that will lighten this sinister situation. She, being a risk-analyst for a large corporation told me – matter of factly – yes, there is some risk. However, your risk gets much lesser under three conditions – I continue to work for next 15 years with  income appreciation, we continue to live in this city for next 15 years and we don’t have extra financial commitments and also – we don’t get separated in these years.

          ‘’What about our child?’’, I asked?

           ‘’ That complicates the matter. It means that I will be out of work for sometime at least and also – we have extra financial commitments. 

 

I have been trying to discuss this asymmetry paradox with my friends and colleagues in a more objective manner (i.e. not disclosing that this is my concern but as an intellectual problem) and the result has not been very encouraging.  None told me that my concerns are without basis but all told me that saab theek ho jayega, yaar Or  baad me dekha jayega. But, this baad or future is what I was concerned about.  Will I see the future or the Future will see me?

 

Few weeks after this dialogue with my Mentor, I was sitting in a park in the afternoon, waiting for my wife to pick me up in one of the city parks near my office. I saw a six year old boy, walking with his father. His two three year old sister was running behind. The father was almost my age. I remembered, some quarter a century back, in one sleepy town in the North East, I used to go with my father to the field to just walk around. My father was a school-teacher and while returning, we used to buy vegetables from the market. In winter, I used to get cauliflower, my favorite, tied in a jute rope and my sister used to carry tomatoes – green ones. My mother – a non-working woman used to be by the kitchen, frying the dal and the glow from the fire making her face brighter and beautiful. It never crossed my mind that my mother has ever felt stressed, bored or needed yoga to feed us, to keep our little formaesh fulfilled. At least, I never felt that way. We eat home-cooked food nowadays in Sundays as my wife comes quite late and it is humanely not possible to cook. I understand that.

 

Suddenly, in the shabbily dressed father in the park without any branded clothes, not surely a MNC employee like me, I found the face of my school-teacher father of the small town morphing.  Then, it struck me – my father was having two children – a family of four while he was of my age. He was a Government employee. He used to house a family of four in a tin-roof house and it has been one of the great misses of my life of not sleeping in a night while it rains and the sound on the tin roof. We played not in the park but in the uthan of the house.

 

I, after quarter of a century, in the same country, I earn his two years income, perhaps in a month. That enables me to live in this metro-polis in one of the luxurious apartments. I drive a car which my father could not see even in a movie. I travel to places on regular basis which my father used to read me in books – Europe Yathrir Diary. My father, in the evening, after work, used to play with us first and then to his bridge-party. I play, if I do at all with the latest video games.

 

Dream within a dream[19]

All the events of the previous chapter, as you might have anticipated by now were a dream, after all. Interestingly, it was a dream within a dream. As I awoke, my power to verbalize returned and I could see how defenseless I have been in my dream. After all, it’s the consumer spending that drives the economy, leading to more money flow, more credit and more income. Women are not supposed to be housewives, chefs, or baby-sitters only. They need to join all walks of life and only economic freedom guarantees the true sense of freedom as we understand. It is stupidity to compare one’s mother with one’s wife. Children need to be planned properly. Don’t get romantic about the past. Remember the increase in the cost of living and improvement in the Quality of Li….

 

Before I could say quality of life, my mobile rang. It was one of my colleagues telling – Sorry to call you so early. Something very serious has happened. Ajoy, you know the guy who has been the growth driver in the last mega project has suffered a heart attack and is in a hospital. By the way, company has put him in the very best hospital and best doctors are treating him.

 

Contact Editor-at-Large Pritam at wordsmith.bengal@gmail.com or at + 91 9748289580. For previous books, please go to the index page here at AIHB Preface


[1] This Book in a way is to celebrate the on passing of the most recent writer’s block. I could observe that as and when I suffered from the block of writing, another channel opened – which is disinterested reading, i.e. reading without any purpose – 12th January 2008.

[2] I made frequent visits to IIT-Kharagpur to meet friends and also to breathe in a spread-out campus  environment at a cost of INR 42 – to an fro  in a local train from Howarh. I meet Management students and from their talk, I find that most of them are naïve and un-informed about the real work of these i-bankers and investment institutions. Quite a few have told that they are least bothered what they would do but you see, Sir (you stupid, poor idiot) there is lot of money. I would like to believe that I have landed into some particular cases and this is not the general trend.

[3] The Link is still there, only its dead – there is nowhere to go by following this, only a bent and floating arrow over the blue words.

[4] Outbound Capital was siphoned off since 1757 and as it was argued in the second book – this surplus was the venture or risk Capital of the Industrial Revolution of England in a significant proportion. Another was from the Krsihna-Godavari basin. No wonder why East India Company chose to have their Trade posts in Madras and Hoogly to begin with. 

[5] I remembered some quote of an English observer of Calcutta – where East and the West cannibalize on each other – culturally.

[6] A note of caution: there are two types of people who create literature. One type create this just like we play street cricket and another type write for a market in mind which has nothing to do with literature. This is the world of foreign publication, foreign readers and a minority of domestic readers.  Time will bury them as it always did.

[7] Prof Amartya Sen included. One of the last representatives of the fractured Renaissance of Bengal.  But his comments on the Nandigram etc tell me that due to his quite frequent visits, post Nobel prize, has also made him contract the the virus of excess of the land. 

[8] ABP and ToI

[9] Chandril Bhattacharyya in ABP

[10] I had courage while I read, via Mr. Tully the prescription of Mintzberg – a great authority on Strategy on MBAs – they should have skull and crossbones in their forehead telling that they cannot manage. This becomes a self-crticism and self-analysis as well. But as Vedanta tells us, its is only the awareness that distinguishes a sheep from a lion – so this awareness might benefit me someway – or may be in the next birth.

[11] This is the reason why I get amusement while I find comments on the President of Pax Americana but condone because who knows the past smiles a weary smile on the present.  

[12] I had to once meet one of the petty officials in SDF building at Calcutta to ask whether they have any space to rent for my office. While dealing with Government officers of petty denominations in Calcutta, one should bear in  mind two things – firstly, he considers this post as his birth-right, secondly, anything unrelated to his office, his power-circle is considered something that can be dealt anyway he pleases.

[13] My letter of brotherhood to all those MBAs or those who are in the making that retain their critical faculties intact and suffer continuously on moral grounds. Also to those who after a decade of experience in industry find themselves questioned by imbecile-MBAs – Where is your MBA?  Also to those women who cannot have children or have to enter into a soulless marriage of convenience, having undergone the process and the campus selection. My advice: Read Handy’s The Empty Raincoat.

[14] Read more on this phenomenon in BOOK 19 where I pose this question: Why does a senior Police Commissioner in Bengal want to head the Policy Making Body of Cricket in the state?

[15] Wordsmith Communication – A language and cultural consultancy.

This has been my attempt to earn my bread and butter and support a family of three in Calcutta, after being ejected out from the redtooth of corporate solar system.  (not blue). My cometic existence remained for quite sometime, not helped in any way by my British MBA until I met my mentor. The rise has not been meteoric but I would not be immodest. Being a business-owner, I have been quite successful to the effect that, I have a capitalist’s surplus (time) when I write AIHB books. I have also developed in my surplus time a metric which is Cash multiplied by  Time_of_Man. For most Indian MBAs, this metric is large due to the first factor but the second one – Time_of_Man (i.e time needed to remain a man – a thinking being with healthy body) being infinitesimally small, the product is very low and while I place them in a list with other professionals in India, MBAs come at 30th in a list of 40. The profession immediately above is that of  a successful sex worker and immediately below is that of a PA of a Bollywood superstar. The 40th entry is that of a Call Centre executive in a Call Centre working in graveyard shift in Bangalore.

My mentor – to my surprise initially  but now as simple and natural  as warm sun in winter morning  - the roadside panwallah, my service provider for 0.002 ppm of  gaseous nicotine. I would share my mentor’s teaching in some other book. He needs a complete volume. 

[16] I was informed that after the Beatles spilt, it seems where the partners and later wives of Lenon and McCartney might have had under-cover roles, McCartney used to call Lenon’s wife not by name but  ‘it’. A kind of verbal de-personalization and de-humanization. I use resource instead which MBAs deal everyday with and hence they wont feel any hurt while being bracketed there.

[17] I am not forgetting that in most of Socratic dialogues, Plato is the major tone. But there are exceptions. The Gospel of Sree Ramakrishna   by M

[18] Same thing I remember happened to Siddartha in Herman Hesse’s Siddartha – the sound of Om while he was going to commit suicide.

[19] One of the greatest leaps of much maligned and criticized modernity and post-modernity has been their attempt to weave dream and reality into a seamless string of consciousness.  The tradition started with Baudelaire in 1857 in France. Later, novels of Russia and of Central Europe taught us why Art always anticipates better than Science. Kafka’s butterfly has entered our concerns – metaphorically and literally. It is guided by this tradition that I have tried to combine two separate narrative forms – The Essay and The Novelistic Monologue.