by Kunal Sharma
IIT and then IIM
The rupee was falling at a stupendous rate. Indian exporters were happy, they could make hay for a while. For all others, the news bore grim tidings. The stock market declined as foreign institutions realized that their gains were now diminished. The corporate world realized that the impending policy rate cut would now be aborted even though inflation numbers demanded one. Fund raising became more challenging than it already was. Most of all, the job scene relapsed to the pre liberalization era with many of IIM and ISB grads crowding the job market. While there had always been scanty hope for new business at PanAsia, the employee retention rate suddenly looked vastly improved. It was the uncertainty of getting the next job that kept Nakul and others at this firm. If he had the leisure to remember the turn of events that brought him here to PanAsia, he would waste the remainder of the day trying to kick himself.
Nakul first came across a banker when he was still in school. His father's friend, Bhalla uncle, had moved to the UK to pursue Hotel Management. In the first year, half way through the food-processing course, Bhalla uncle had discovered that real money making lay elsewhere. He spoke to his professors, requesting them and talking them into letting him opt out of the hospitality course. He added many financial courses in lieu. Next, he targeted banks that had started coming to the Campus and made some contacts. Bhalla uncle finally got hired as an Analyst at a US based bank in London and then worked his way up right to the MD.
Nakul had thought that he hadn't come across a more successful person, never mind the fact that Bhalla uncle spoke in short, unrelated sentences that rarely made sense even when taken together. When he felt the need to interspace those sentences with a huge gush of air through his mouth, just like a fish, he still sounded convincing. Because of his bohemian kind of appearance and the nonchalant streak in almost everything he said, Nakul thought of him as Shambhu the Shikari, the fictitious hunter who inadvertently always succeeds in killing the man-eater.
“HARPHHH...,” said Bhalla uncle, taking in a fresh gush of air, “Screw hotel management. I did not want to be the guy in the background waiting to feed them. I wanted to be served.”
“Lucky you, while poor bastards like us were immersed in engineering and medical books, you were having fun back then...our parents used to point at you and tell us ‘this is exactly how not to be’ ...Hahaha,” Nakul’s father had said.
“I am still having fun,” Shambhu Shikari had remarked, “You know, to grow in life you need to think differently. In India, people who think differently are laughed upon. This sick, sick nation thrives on mediocrity in the guise of playing it safe. This is what has resulted in the herd mentality...and a counter-intuitive one at that! Just imagine the futility of the fact that most IITians shove the supposedly world class engineering studies up their institute’s ass and go to IIMs .” From the way he said that, Shambhu had moved towards something that really weighed heavy on his head. Otherwise, for most part of the evening, Shambhu had ranted on and on about his vacations in exotic places and the exclusive invitation only clubs and restaurants in New York and London.
“It’s just a mentality of valuing safety too much. You increase your risk averseness to such an extent that the society doesn’t do anything new, not even a little bit…..” said Dr. Bhid, a common friend who had cancelled his duty at surgery that evening, perhaps for the first time in years, just to meet with his childhood bumchum.
“This safety card is just an excuse for being too lazy...c'mon, if you don't get up and do things different then you will all be the same and you won't react to the changing world and then you will just fade away...and perhaps that is what all Indians want for some goddamn reason.” Shambhu was getting a bit peeved off by the doctor's textbook comments.
Nakul had picked his favorite in the fight. The Doctor was the society's mascot...the good beta coming first in class and getting through in AIIMs then settling down with the girl from the same cultural background. Shambhu Shikari was a rebel. He didn't care if others laughed at his back...he was the one who went straight at the man-eater notwithstanding the fact that his gun had no bullets. He would fling his gun at the tiger if he had to. No way could the tiger make a meal out of the good Shikari. And he didn’t want to be slowed down in life by getting tied down to someone in marriage. Shambhu was one reckless son of a gun, and Nakul wished every passing moment to be more like him.
“I anyways could never have become a banker here in India. My parents used to coax me into joining those stupid freaking coaching classes for IIT and Medical entrance exams. I vented my anger by spending tuition money on movies, you remember the first bilew fillim we saw,” said Shambhu, emphasizing the accent on blue film. After another round of laughter and a few more rounds of the vilaayati slow poison that the banker had brought especially for his bosom pals, they called it a night. The bachha party, of which Nakul was then a member of, were rounded up by their moms and shoved into cars as goodbyes were exchanged.
It’s been ages since that day, Nakul thought, and he still didn't think banking was any different from the fictitious Shambhu Shikari’s approach to a life of hunting. Amazing how he drew the parallel back then with the banker from London. Just a year ago when he graduated from one of best business schools in the nation, Nakul had set a simple criteria for the perfect job. He wanted to be a part of something lucrative and glamorous. No profession other than investment banking came close to achieving this. An M&A banker is the blue-eyed boy of the business world and every business graduate's dream. Once you get there, you are a certified success story. It’s a validation to society that your parent’s sacrifices and investments in the form of coaching classes and assisted trips to the examination centers across the nation was not in vain. Being a banker was akin to being in the final level of a video game that you’d been fanatically playing for years, an affirmation that you had successfully navigated to the pinnacle of that hallowed set of expectations that the society had constituted.