I first heard of Hahvahd (Harvard) somewhere in 1967 or so. My cousin had joined this newly minted School of Management in Western India, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) and he told me about IIMA and Harvard. Never heard of Harvard till then, though I had been good at quiz programmes…Yale, yes…Harvard, no…
IIMA had been set up in collaboration with Harvard Business School (HBS) and not many people, in those days, knew what they taught out there. In fact, some of us, even forty years after we graduated from IIMA, don’t know what they taught. My cousin gave me the Institute handbook and I remember not understanding a word of the course outlines (Management of Change particularly foxed me. I thought that Management of Change was all about what to do if one had a hundred rupee note and needed a couple of fives and tens in change)…
When I asked my cousin as to what they taught he told me, “Don’t worry…you will get a salary of at least Rs800 per month after completing this course…” Considering the fact that the IAS (Indian Administrative Service, cream of the crop civil service career) probationer of those days got Rs600 per month after going through an arduous selection process, I thought that was enough incentive to embark on a course of studies that I did not have the vaguest idea about. Unlike today, the number of applicants to the IIMs was fairly low, and, so I got in.
There is another theory associated with my entry into IIMA. IIMA had just invested in a mainframe computer and all applications were processed through the computer…for those of you old enough to know these things, the earliest computers processed data using punched cards…the story is that a young girl (punch card operators, they called them) wearing stiletto heels stepped on a card that had my details, resulting in a combination of punch entries that admitted me to the Institute…I am the strongest supporter of this theory…having seen the high levels of academic brilliance among my classmates, there was no other way I could have made it…
I remember the first morning landing at IIMA in Vastrapur. Suddenly out of the desert that lay just beyond the what was the seat of the Gujarat Government in those days, one saw a clump of seemingly unfinished buildings with no exterior plaster…they had paid good money to this Amriki architect, Louis Kahn who designed the place, and, the story is that when they ran out of money to pay him, he just packed his bags and went back leaving the exterior unfinished…all that you have heard about the IIMA campus being modelled on the style of Nalanda is an after thought…
In those days, everything and everyone had to be approved by the alma mater, Harvard. All course material came from there, and, very early in my stay there, the name Soldiers’ Field, MA, etched itself into my brain as the address blurb on case material.
There were still resident white professors from Harvard, and, any desi professor who joined was packed off to the International Teachers’ Program (ITP) for baptism. So much so that when Chandulal, the barber who had set up shop under a tree within the IIMA premises, was away from his post for a few weeks everyone said, “Chandulal, ITP ma gayo…” “Chandulal has gone to do the ITP (at Harvard)…”
With this strong influence of Harvard I had always wanted to see the, what I call, (alma mater) ², alma mater of my alma mater…though I have lived in North America for several years now, this opportunity did not present itself to me till last week…when I went visiting my niece who lives close to Boston…
On the appointed day, after offering prayers in the fashion of a believer doing the once in a lifetime pilgrimage, I set out…Leaving my car at a local subway station, we took the Red Line to Harvard…
Getting out at of the subway, we got our first touch of what is essentially the characteristic of a University town…a middle aged man wearing a track suit with the words “Harvard Business School, Information Technology” saw us looking at the street map and said, “Can I help you ?” We told him that we were in search of the Holy Grail, Harvard Business School, and, he told us, “Over the bridge and to your left…”
Harvard is the quintessential University town…I saw more middle aged men wearing corduroy jackets and walking around in Harvard than I have seen in any other town in North America…(I now have the courage to defy my son who has stopped me, till now, from buying a corduroy jacket on the grounds that they are not ‘smart’)…I did see a few business suits as we walked through HBS, but, the per square mile density of corduroy jacket wearers in North America is perhaps the highest in Harvard…
We crossed the river Charles and came up to the road that had been etched in my mind from reading the address blurb on case material, Soldiers’ Field…I stopped for a minute as a mark of respect before crossing this road…
And then, I could see for myself the tower of the Baker Library building which we had seen on the cover of innumerable editions of the Harvard Business Review (HBR)…I have never visited Oxford or Cambridge in England, but, as I walked through the roads leading to HBS I had the distinct feeling that Oxford or Cambridge was where they got their inspiration from…interesting that so much cutting edge 21st century management thought seems to be being born in a town that has the ambience of a 19th century English university town…
Also I thought of the many young Indian professors who would have come here for baptism in the ‘60s…Seshan, Bala, Vora are some of the names that came to mind…how different the non diverse world of HBS must have been then…and what it must have taken to make the positive mark that they made…
After doing a parikrama (circumambulation, generally done of any temple) of HBS we went to Harvard Yard, where the statue of John Harvard sits…as you go near you will notice that his left shoe shines more than anything else in the surroundings…this comes from the belief that rubbing that left shoe fetches you luck, and, a lot of students must be using this approach to make up for the time spent partying when they should have been studying for their exams…
There is an unofficial tour of the Harvard campus conducted by students (the tour is called Hahvahd), and, I shall conclude with this story that the charming young girl who was conducting the tour told us standing at the feet of John Harvard…
Harvard has the practice of naming the buildings on the campus after the Harvard University Presidents…the word House is added to the President’s last name…so you have a Langdon House, a Quincy House, a Holyoke house and so on…the only exception is the President who was in office between l672-1675, Leonard Hore…try adding his last name to the word House and you will see why…
Friday, April 30, 2010
Of Jean and Jhumpa
When I first came to Canada some eighteen years ago and started doing road trips to the US, one thing that petrified me was missing an exit on the highway…and sometimes even when I did not miss the exit the equally petrifying problem was that the exit could be closed for road repairs or some other reason…
I remember a few months after coming to Canada making my first road trip to Pittsburgh to the Balaji temple there…coming back I missed the exit and landed up in a somewhat seedy looking town…with all the stories I had heard about shootings in the US before I came here, I was petrified driving around the town at dusk with bharya priyaa and two kidz in the car, searching for the route back…and then, one day coming back through Buffalo in the winter, I again missed an exit and experienced hell with freezing rain (different from the proverbial fires of hell, though just as fearful) trying to find my way to the Peace Bridge…
All that is now a thing of the past with the lovely Jenn perched between me and bharya priyaa, in the car, as we go driving in the US now…now, just in case some of you are wondering whether this is some ménage a trois that this ageing couple are getting into in their old age let me reassure you that Jenn is all satvic…she is my trusted GPS…
From the moment I switch on Jenn, I know I can trust her implicitly…in her lovely, reassuring voice she tells me ‘Keep to the right and exit ramp in one point five kilometres…’ and as I near the ramp and see that exit is closed for road repairs I do not panic anymore…I just calmly drive on pass the exit, and, the lovely Jenn waits for a few seconds after I have passed the exit and in a calm, measured voice almost like my mother talking to me after I missed a Math exam at school, ‘Recalculating…’ and like my mother again, in a few seconds, Jenn has found a solution, “Go seven point five kilometres and exit ramp left” she takes over and guides me back on to the correct route…and, if I decide that instead of going to a temple, as originally planned, I shall go to a mosque Jenn has no problems…I just need to tell her ‘find nearest mosque’ and all she says is ‘Recalculating’ and like ‘Open Sesame’ in the Alladin story, Jenn solves the problem…
Driving over eighteen hundred kilometres over the Easter break all around North Eastern US I never got the heebie-jeebies missing an exit…I remember how in the early days of my existence in the land of milk and honey (as it was then), the US, I would have to order ‘Triptiks’ from the automobile association and whoever was in the passenger seat would have to navigate…all that is gone now, bharya priyaa sleeps and/or puts on Mohammad Rafi’s songs on the iPod...all thanks to the lovely, Jenn, and, Jenn is one woman that bp (bharya priyaa) is not jealous about…
A large portion of my time over the Easter break was spent on the I90, aka, the New York State thruway which runs over 800 kilometres (somebody in the US please translate that into miles) from New York, NY to the Pennsylvania state line…talking of kilometres and miles, on this trip I got stuck because of a traffic accident and decided to phone our relative telling them that we would be late…when the relative at the other end asked me “How far are you from here ?” I, Canadian-conditioned that I am, said, “about a hundred and fifty kilometers away”…a somewhat quizzical silence at the other end…having lived in the USofA for over thirty five years, the only country that I know of that still uses ‘miles’ to measure distances, my relative could not figure out how far away I was, and, I, being quantitatively challenged, could not do the mental math to translate it into miles…realizing the problem I said, “about two hours away” and all was OK…
btw, the lovely Jenn can give her instructions in either miles or kilometres…you just have to tap her appropriate button…
Coming back to the I90 it is one of the more unexciting roadways I have travelled in my life…no buffaloes, autos or trucks as in the Motherland to keep you awake as you zip along…however, I now notice that all the service stations have Wi-Fi…so, I could regularly connect to the web through my iPod and catch up on the latest emails as I stopped at the service stations…cool, eh?
Sitting in Lakshmi’s aunt’s house waiting for bharya priyaa to get ready (the story of my life) I happened to notice a copy of Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Unaccustomed Earth’ lying around…Lakshmi’s aunt is an avid reader and also reviews books for several North American journals…started reading the book for ‘time pass’ as the Bombay train hawker would say…
‘Time pass’ turned into interest and absorption as I worked my way through the story and I was totally fascinated with the accuracy with with Jhumpa has captured the middle class immigrant ethic in that story…a sixty something man loses his wife of thirty some years when, totally unexpectedly, she does not come out of anaesthesia after a minor surgery…the suddenness of the event is caught so poignantly by Jhumpa…
And how that shakes up everyone’s life…how we take everyone who has been there for so long as granted…like most of us in that age group, the bereavement leaves the man stranded mid stream…the aloneness comes through and how his daughter struggles with her own feelings…what does she do with her mother's two hundred and eighteen saris, for example...the daughter wears only western clothes but she finds it difficult to throw the saris away...
We have all heard or read of such experiences through stories set in India and this is the first one I have read set in the immigrant ethos of North America that captures such an incident…and, then enters Meenakshi (Mrs Bagchi, no known relative of our Evergreen Hero) into our protagonist’s life…no, I won’t give away the ending…read the book to find out for yourself…
This was the first time I was reading Jhumpa (I saw the movie ‘Namesake’ but did not read the book)…I found so much of myself in Unaccustomed Earth…as I was driving up the Garden State Parkway I kept thinking of how I would respond if someone close to me were to suddenly die, and, what would be the response from my children…she made me get in touch with my feelings, and, that was good…
I remember a few months after coming to Canada making my first road trip to Pittsburgh to the Balaji temple there…coming back I missed the exit and landed up in a somewhat seedy looking town…with all the stories I had heard about shootings in the US before I came here, I was petrified driving around the town at dusk with bharya priyaa and two kidz in the car, searching for the route back…and then, one day coming back through Buffalo in the winter, I again missed an exit and experienced hell with freezing rain (different from the proverbial fires of hell, though just as fearful) trying to find my way to the Peace Bridge…
All that is now a thing of the past with the lovely Jenn perched between me and bharya priyaa, in the car, as we go driving in the US now…now, just in case some of you are wondering whether this is some ménage a trois that this ageing couple are getting into in their old age let me reassure you that Jenn is all satvic…she is my trusted GPS…
From the moment I switch on Jenn, I know I can trust her implicitly…in her lovely, reassuring voice she tells me ‘Keep to the right and exit ramp in one point five kilometres…’ and as I near the ramp and see that exit is closed for road repairs I do not panic anymore…I just calmly drive on pass the exit, and, the lovely Jenn waits for a few seconds after I have passed the exit and in a calm, measured voice almost like my mother talking to me after I missed a Math exam at school, ‘Recalculating…’ and like my mother again, in a few seconds, Jenn has found a solution, “Go seven point five kilometres and exit ramp left” she takes over and guides me back on to the correct route…and, if I decide that instead of going to a temple, as originally planned, I shall go to a mosque Jenn has no problems…I just need to tell her ‘find nearest mosque’ and all she says is ‘Recalculating’ and like ‘Open Sesame’ in the Alladin story, Jenn solves the problem…
Driving over eighteen hundred kilometres over the Easter break all around North Eastern US I never got the heebie-jeebies missing an exit…I remember how in the early days of my existence in the land of milk and honey (as it was then), the US, I would have to order ‘Triptiks’ from the automobile association and whoever was in the passenger seat would have to navigate…all that is gone now, bharya priyaa sleeps and/or puts on Mohammad Rafi’s songs on the iPod...all thanks to the lovely, Jenn, and, Jenn is one woman that bp (bharya priyaa) is not jealous about…
A large portion of my time over the Easter break was spent on the I90, aka, the New York State thruway which runs over 800 kilometres (somebody in the US please translate that into miles) from New York, NY to the Pennsylvania state line…talking of kilometres and miles, on this trip I got stuck because of a traffic accident and decided to phone our relative telling them that we would be late…when the relative at the other end asked me “How far are you from here ?” I, Canadian-conditioned that I am, said, “about a hundred and fifty kilometers away”…a somewhat quizzical silence at the other end…having lived in the USofA for over thirty five years, the only country that I know of that still uses ‘miles’ to measure distances, my relative could not figure out how far away I was, and, I, being quantitatively challenged, could not do the mental math to translate it into miles…realizing the problem I said, “about two hours away” and all was OK…
btw, the lovely Jenn can give her instructions in either miles or kilometres…you just have to tap her appropriate button…
Coming back to the I90 it is one of the more unexciting roadways I have travelled in my life…no buffaloes, autos or trucks as in the Motherland to keep you awake as you zip along…however, I now notice that all the service stations have Wi-Fi…so, I could regularly connect to the web through my iPod and catch up on the latest emails as I stopped at the service stations…cool, eh?
Sitting in Lakshmi’s aunt’s house waiting for bharya priyaa to get ready (the story of my life) I happened to notice a copy of Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘Unaccustomed Earth’ lying around…Lakshmi’s aunt is an avid reader and also reviews books for several North American journals…started reading the book for ‘time pass’ as the Bombay train hawker would say…
‘Time pass’ turned into interest and absorption as I worked my way through the story and I was totally fascinated with the accuracy with with Jhumpa has captured the middle class immigrant ethic in that story…a sixty something man loses his wife of thirty some years when, totally unexpectedly, she does not come out of anaesthesia after a minor surgery…the suddenness of the event is caught so poignantly by Jhumpa…
And how that shakes up everyone’s life…how we take everyone who has been there for so long as granted…like most of us in that age group, the bereavement leaves the man stranded mid stream…the aloneness comes through and how his daughter struggles with her own feelings…what does she do with her mother's two hundred and eighteen saris, for example...the daughter wears only western clothes but she finds it difficult to throw the saris away...
We have all heard or read of such experiences through stories set in India and this is the first one I have read set in the immigrant ethos of North America that captures such an incident…and, then enters Meenakshi (Mrs Bagchi, no known relative of our Evergreen Hero) into our protagonist’s life…no, I won’t give away the ending…read the book to find out for yourself…
This was the first time I was reading Jhumpa (I saw the movie ‘Namesake’ but did not read the book)…I found so much of myself in Unaccustomed Earth…as I was driving up the Garden State Parkway I kept thinking of how I would respond if someone close to me were to suddenly die, and, what would be the response from my children…she made me get in touch with my feelings, and, that was good…
Confessions of a Buddhist atheist
Lakshmi comes home from work quite late these days…I reach home earlier, spend some time cooking, then surf around aimlessly on the computer… Facebook, the Hindu, the latest on Paramahamsa Nityananda and his growing coterie of film star companions…then, often I do a sit, and, by around 8pm, drop off to sleep with the Comedy Channel lulling me to sleep…
Given this schedule, it was only natural that Lakshmi was quite shocked/surprised to see me sitting up and quite chirpy at 9pm, yesterday…after having made sure that all was OK, she inquired as to what was the cause for this somewhat rare occurrence…
In previous scribblings I had made reference to Stephen Batchelor’s recent book, “Confession of a Buddhist Atheist”…I had ordered the book and it was there in the mailbox when I came home, and, I started reading it…by 9pm I had finished 145 of the book’s 240 pages getting up just once to attend to bio needs…
Now, I know this is not the sort of attention that I normally give to anything in life…so, why the difference ?
Stephen Batchelor, is a self confessed flower child of the ‘60s…that does not by itself make him worth missing ‘Corner Gas’…
After dropping out of school, and, trekking across Europe and Afghanistan, sampling different psyhotropic drug combinations, he lands in Dharmsala where, around the time I was graduating from IIMA, he was getting initiated into Tibetan Buddhism. Circa this period, the Dalai Lama had ‘authorized’ SN Goenka to conduct a Vipassana course for monks of his order…very interestingly, I noted that Stephen Batchelor was one of the monks who ‘sat’ this course.
From Dharmsala, Stephen goes to Switzerland to work with one of the seniormost abbots of the tradition, and, it is there that I can see the origins of his earlier book, ‘Buddhism without Beliefs…’ The questioning starts within…what are the myths, what is the reality ? And from there he moves to becoming a Zen student in South Korea…while his Vajrayana preceptor is sorry to see him leave the Vajrayana practice, he does nothing to stop him…
The first person Stephen meets as he steps off the plane on landing in South Korea, is the French Buddhist nun who will be subsequently become his wife…but before that very human relationship matures into a partnership there is a very interesting introduction to the practice of South Korean Zen…and a few references to his growing involvement with the French Buddhist nun…,he also talks of how the lack of a heterosexual companionship was making him attracted to men (no problem with that, at least in Canada, not sure in other places)…
But, the real action in the book for me starts after he and the French nun (I forget her monastic name, she is now his wife, Martine) leave the monastery after the death of the preceptor…
With the resulting dissolution following the preceptor’s death, Stephen talks of how he was faced with the task of making a living…the Sangha had provided him the wherewithal for life since the age of eighteen…now, with his and Martine’s decision to make it into the world of samsara the task of making a living was quite daunting…while both of them were steeped in the knowledge of the Buddhist texts, they had no formal qualifications, and, that made it so much more difficult for them to find a job…His mother’s fears when he dropped out of school seemed to be coming true…till the end, like a lot of mothers, she kept gently questioning his career choice, or lack thereof, from a practical point of view…
Stephen’s search to understand the historical Buddha is the cornerstone of the book…an extension of the Zen question he was taught to ponder over ‘What is this ? Where did it come from ?’…he makes references to Marxist interpretations of the Buddha’s life, and, finally brings out the historical Buddha in as realistic a light as possible…
The picture he paints of Siddhatha Gotama is of a very human being, much involved in the day to day hustle and bustle of politics and life…
Based on his research he has come to the conclusion that the four sightings (the sick person, the dead body, the old person and the hermit) which we have all heard of as the cause for Siddhatha Gotama’s renunciation do not have any historical basis…the texts, according to Batchelor, say that these sightings happened to another Buddha, Vipassi, by name…and have been incorporated into Siddhatha Gotama’s life as one more of the embellishing myths…
Batchelor’s interpretation of the Great Renunciation is more around ennui and deep angst experienced by a very sensitive young man…
I have reached the stage in the book where Batchelor is talking of the First Mahasangha after the Buddha’s death…Ananda, the Buddha’s companion and principal batman, had a photographic memory of everything the Buddha had said…however, there was much debate over whether he should join the Mahasangha…I have heard Goenkaji give his interpretation of this incident…Batchelor talks of it, very differently, in the context of the power politics between the Buddha’s principal disciples, on his death…
The book grips me like very few books have in the recent past…however, as I read Stephen Batchelor’s interpretation of the Buddha’s life, and, compare it with what I have heard from Goenkaji and read from Thich Nhat Hahn, a story attributed to the Buddha and several other teachers comes to my mind…
A group of blind men one day came across an elephant and started describing it. One of them who was near the tail said the elephant was like a rope, another who was near the legs said that it was like a pillar, a third who was near the trunk said it was like a water spout, a fourth who was near the ear said it was like a fan…
experiencing the Truth is somewhat similar…
in our current shape and form it will always be a part, not the Whole…for the Whole we have to go beyond the mind and its limitations…till then, everything is entertainment…
Given this schedule, it was only natural that Lakshmi was quite shocked/surprised to see me sitting up and quite chirpy at 9pm, yesterday…after having made sure that all was OK, she inquired as to what was the cause for this somewhat rare occurrence…
In previous scribblings I had made reference to Stephen Batchelor’s recent book, “Confession of a Buddhist Atheist”…I had ordered the book and it was there in the mailbox when I came home, and, I started reading it…by 9pm I had finished 145 of the book’s 240 pages getting up just once to attend to bio needs…
Now, I know this is not the sort of attention that I normally give to anything in life…so, why the difference ?
Stephen Batchelor, is a self confessed flower child of the ‘60s…that does not by itself make him worth missing ‘Corner Gas’…
After dropping out of school, and, trekking across Europe and Afghanistan, sampling different psyhotropic drug combinations, he lands in Dharmsala where, around the time I was graduating from IIMA, he was getting initiated into Tibetan Buddhism. Circa this period, the Dalai Lama had ‘authorized’ SN Goenka to conduct a Vipassana course for monks of his order…very interestingly, I noted that Stephen Batchelor was one of the monks who ‘sat’ this course.
From Dharmsala, Stephen goes to Switzerland to work with one of the seniormost abbots of the tradition, and, it is there that I can see the origins of his earlier book, ‘Buddhism without Beliefs…’ The questioning starts within…what are the myths, what is the reality ? And from there he moves to becoming a Zen student in South Korea…while his Vajrayana preceptor is sorry to see him leave the Vajrayana practice, he does nothing to stop him…
The first person Stephen meets as he steps off the plane on landing in South Korea, is the French Buddhist nun who will be subsequently become his wife…but before that very human relationship matures into a partnership there is a very interesting introduction to the practice of South Korean Zen…and a few references to his growing involvement with the French Buddhist nun…,he also talks of how the lack of a heterosexual companionship was making him attracted to men (no problem with that, at least in Canada, not sure in other places)…
But, the real action in the book for me starts after he and the French nun (I forget her monastic name, she is now his wife, Martine) leave the monastery after the death of the preceptor…
With the resulting dissolution following the preceptor’s death, Stephen talks of how he was faced with the task of making a living…the Sangha had provided him the wherewithal for life since the age of eighteen…now, with his and Martine’s decision to make it into the world of samsara the task of making a living was quite daunting…while both of them were steeped in the knowledge of the Buddhist texts, they had no formal qualifications, and, that made it so much more difficult for them to find a job…His mother’s fears when he dropped out of school seemed to be coming true…till the end, like a lot of mothers, she kept gently questioning his career choice, or lack thereof, from a practical point of view…
Stephen’s search to understand the historical Buddha is the cornerstone of the book…an extension of the Zen question he was taught to ponder over ‘What is this ? Where did it come from ?’…he makes references to Marxist interpretations of the Buddha’s life, and, finally brings out the historical Buddha in as realistic a light as possible…
The picture he paints of Siddhatha Gotama is of a very human being, much involved in the day to day hustle and bustle of politics and life…
Based on his research he has come to the conclusion that the four sightings (the sick person, the dead body, the old person and the hermit) which we have all heard of as the cause for Siddhatha Gotama’s renunciation do not have any historical basis…the texts, according to Batchelor, say that these sightings happened to another Buddha, Vipassi, by name…and have been incorporated into Siddhatha Gotama’s life as one more of the embellishing myths…
Batchelor’s interpretation of the Great Renunciation is more around ennui and deep angst experienced by a very sensitive young man…
I have reached the stage in the book where Batchelor is talking of the First Mahasangha after the Buddha’s death…Ananda, the Buddha’s companion and principal batman, had a photographic memory of everything the Buddha had said…however, there was much debate over whether he should join the Mahasangha…I have heard Goenkaji give his interpretation of this incident…Batchelor talks of it, very differently, in the context of the power politics between the Buddha’s principal disciples, on his death…
The book grips me like very few books have in the recent past…however, as I read Stephen Batchelor’s interpretation of the Buddha’s life, and, compare it with what I have heard from Goenkaji and read from Thich Nhat Hahn, a story attributed to the Buddha and several other teachers comes to my mind…
A group of blind men one day came across an elephant and started describing it. One of them who was near the tail said the elephant was like a rope, another who was near the legs said that it was like a pillar, a third who was near the trunk said it was like a water spout, a fourth who was near the ear said it was like a fan…
experiencing the Truth is somewhat similar…
in our current shape and form it will always be a part, not the Whole…for the Whole we have to go beyond the mind and its limitations…till then, everything is entertainment…
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