Starting it all

 

IIM, Bangalore was a decade old when we happened there but ours was the first batch to move into the new campus parts of which were still under construction then. Two of us edited all the literary outputs from our batch during those heady times. My co-editor (and partner-in-crime) was Rajendra Nargundkar, currently an acclaimed Professor of Marketing and Vice Chancellor of a University. This is what we wrote in the yearbook for our batch: 

 

STARTING IT ALL 

 

We were the lords and ladies of all we surveyed. A campus emerging, Sphinx-like, from the ruminating remnants of prehistoric stones, an open-air mess with cloistered smoke inside and a green nursery without, hundred percent compulsory attendance, a fragmented library providing ex-cases for bus journeys to the City, all this presaged a two-year sojourn that ends with quadrangled card games and bucket-bashes. It was a time for venturesome dreams, gigantic castles in the air, generous undercurrents of apprehension and excitement, for exchanging names and qualifications and identification details with a hundred others, remembering some, forgetting some, and then trying to remember some more. A time for forays into skits and songs. Talks about the Inter-IIM. And first, tentative attempts at beating the system. 

And soon there was a time for waking up. For wiping away the mists of gossamer dreams from one's eyes. For taking stock. For realising that, idyllic existence or otherwise, it's all over. The last card had been dealt. The last supper in what we call the mess, devoured. Tomorrow will be a different territory, an existence separate from Bannerghatta. No more deleterious last-night battles for the next morning's quiz. No longer the long walks to Uncle's at eleven in the night. Time to pack up and flaunt the M.B.A. degree in an evanescent world of corporate make-believe. 

And in between. In between lay a two-year stretch when a lot of dreams crashed, a lot were rewritten and some new ones born. Who wins and who loses- in exams, in Frisbee, in Cricket, in JAM, in Baddy. Who gets a better grade and who gets the rough end? Who is how what. Keeping count till the cows come home. 

Tragic interludes. Of Puneet and Salvo snatched away in their prime. Of visits to the Electric Crematorium. Of ashes. Of bitter butterflies in the stomach. Two who were living were now dead. We who were living were also to come to ashes, with a little patience. Bubbling moments. PJs bandied about with competitive zeal, Mural coming alive with yesterday's headliners. 

Mimicking the Profs. The inter-IIM trophy won in the first year and lost subsequently. Chorus chants of Beatles numbers and limericks to fill the darkness when the KEB calls the tune. Late-night efforts to bring out printed IIMBIBEs (our mags). Finding places of solace on MG and Brigade. And discovering the mysterious ways back to the hostel.

All this and a lot more were what those two years were all about. We will look back upon the memories of this unpremeditated past, we are bound to. 

The new growing campus may, on some distant or not-so-distant date, become the epitome of all that is best in the best possible of worlds, a meeting place for enlightened, avante-garde haute-management. Or it may degenerate into the stale nemesis of dreams relinquished, academic might-have-been. 

Whatever happens, we will have the consolation that we started it all.

 

Dash n' Gunds

March 1984.

[Also from the yearbook, IIMPRESSIONS. Creator: I.K. Gautam]