Building Management Skills

There is no limit to education. There is also no limit to ambition.
No surprise that my ambition driven sabbatical brought me to this place. It is important for me from more than two points of view. A background in Finance will be useful in my future assignments. Then I wanted to associate the only remaining ‘I’ of the three most prominent ‘I’s’ in this country to my profile. And when my dream project, a book on Food security programmes, manages to see the day light; it would rock the world. But till then I had to manage the much feared First Term at the IIMA.
The courses were more useful for the Management Graduates but as a Student in Fellow Programme, I found that the Economics course and the Organizational Behaviour Course had their utility for me too. To begin with I was worried if I would be able to stand the onslaught of the best talent of the nation. But having done my first year at IITD in Mathematics and Computer Applications, I found that there is nothing comparable or even close to the batch of ‘Compu Science’ of SG, KM etc at IITD. It’s sad we still cannot retain those guys in our country.
To my convenience I still could manage to pass the examinations after studying the night before but again there is no AM here and so I miss his notes. I would love to go through his notes in the last 20 minutes before the exam and then help him copy any thing from my copy in return. Any way people slog here a lot and deserve credit for that. I believe I have managed with ‘B’s’ and ‘C’s’ and would get a decent overall score.
The other things that I am learning fast are the management skills from some of the grads. The other day I went to the cricket practice session before the arrival of the IIMB sports team. I loved batting on the net and managed to play some good shots. A gentleman ‘in power’ however was floundering on the pitch after me and was bowled, pardoned stumping chances and was LBW a number of times. I was impressed with bowling of a first year and one second year was impressive in his bowling and batting. However, the next day I didn’t even get a batting session on the net. I took the clue and realized there would be no place for me in the team. Unluckily, the other two guys I mentioned above also did not get a chance to play. As I had expected, our team lost.
This reminds me of my first year in the Aravali hostel, the ‘men’s hostel’ at IIT. Our hostel had won the sports trophy the last year with crossing a record 100 points in the first semester itself. But this time during the election for the post of Sports Secy, our stud boy DT was boasting that he had a team of captains in his wing and he would break all previous records. He won the election but we lost the trophy, we couldn’t even cross the 20 points in total. I wish we had searched for players and captains beyond the sports secy’s wing.
Cricket haunts me, it pushes a lot of adrenalin in my blood. I started playing as a three year old in my elder brother’s team with cork ball as we used to call. And by fourth class we were playing with duce ball and I was the team captain for years to come. So I had little honour of playing the 'Tennis Ball cricket'.
Luckily as PKS used to say I had the blessings of ‘Brahma’ so I could not be got out. The same was the realization of my ASP’s and SP’s when we used to play the DM/SP 11 or the SDO/ASP 11 matches on the 26th of January. People in the Khakee dress have a sense of arrogance about their cricket team which mostly consists of young boys who are selected in the police only for their sports talent. They might have enjoyed toying with the teams of Babu’s in the past. But our SP at Uttar Dinajpur went beyond when he borrowed players from the BSF to supplement his own team and they still lost. At the end of the match he was seen shouting at the umpires that they could not give me out even once.
I agree that the younger players should have better reflexes for cricket and I am older to most of the graduate students here, but I still don’t want to retire myself as a sportsman as players older than I am are playing internationally across the world. So without suspecting anything I went to play for my section (I thoroughly repent my decision) only to see some 20 players lining up to play with the tennis ball. (There were three from our section who went to play with the duce ball). There was a person with keen eyes observing us perform. His own ‘Full toss’ ball went to hit the first floor balcony some 40 feet beyond the keeper.
After having played some 25 balls with only one ball beating me on the off stump and that too missing the stump, wisdom dawned upon me that I was not supposed to be selected. As a response of an opening batsman to the leading fast bowler of the opponent, I hung the ball on the tree beyond the straight boundary, an ultimate humiliation for any fast bowler. I remember that this was also my response to AB in 1999 who was throwing the bowl to me to make it flatter and restricting me to play straight over his head. I still had managed to dig the ball off the wrist and dispatch him over the indoor badminton court and the ball was lost for ever. Even this time the ball could not be traced but the selector caught the opportunity hungrily, ‘such shots are out here’. As expected I could not make it into team which consisted of players who could touch one out of five practice balls, only to throw a loose catch in the gully.
What impress me at this place is the management skills of some of the students which my previous opponents lacked.
First, if you can’t beat a rival, don’t let him play. (Only if Abraham Lincoln had such wisdom, he wouldn’t have kept his major rivals to his left and right so as to have an eye on them. Sadly Indians continue to be pathetic team builders).
And second, randomizations are ‘truly random’.

I wish PKS, AB, DT and Sikandara had such skills, then ‘Brahma’ wouldn’t have been so benefic to me.