Of time and untime

Punctuality is something which was almost literally beaten into me by the good Irish Christian Brothers at St. Columba's School, Delhi. It was reinforced in his own quiet way, more by example than by precept, by my father.

This, over my almost sixty five years, has led to my becoming almost paranoid about not being on time. Now that I've stopped being a full-time teacher, I can safely say that I have never been late for a single class. My practice was to reach the venue at least five minutes before the start of the class, arrange my effects the way I wanted it - folder of papers in the center of the table, bottle of water to the right of the folder and marker pens and the duster neatly in parallel to the north of the folder (oh yes - I have borderline OCD too!) and then wait outside. I would walk in again when it was time and start my session on the dot.

The lack of punctuality in many others is one of my pet peeves. As one of my elderly ex-colleagues used to say, "I cannot respect a person who does not respect another person's time and money'. In that organisation, we could not complain much because it was the boss who was the biggest culprit - he would call us for a meeting and invariably walk in 10 minutes later! Why do people get late? Is it lack of planning, lack of self-discipline, disrespect for others, an urge to show one's importance? Maybe it is any or all of these factors. The sad part is that this is one of the easiest aspects to correct in oneself.

There was an exercise which we used as an ice-breaker in an MBA course for working executives, which could help. One of the concerns many students had was on how they would fit in the the rigour of learning into their already cramped schedule. To address this, we would ask each to make a list of their activities on a normal working day. Once this was done, they were encouraged to categorise these activities by slotting them into the four quadrants of this grid:

Invariably each person would be able to identify practices / activities which were eating into their time and reducing their productivity. By doing what this grid advocates, they were able to improve their time management. I myself have used this grid once in a while to account better for my time. I firmly believe that the three most important skills which need to be picked up by an MBA student are prioritising, scheduling and networking. Exercises like these are the first step to getting a grip over the first two. At the end of the day, however, it depends on the individual whether he ore she wants to change and improve or not.

This is why people are not often on time but 'untime'. Untime is a peculiar usage in Chennai's brand of Tanglish (Tamil + English) which actually is used to denote something which happens at odd hours e.g. an international flight which leaves at 3 a.m. It fits here into what I have in mind perfectly, though !

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Blowing in the wind!

You and I are exposed to a lot of violence today - in the news, in movies, on social media, almost everywhere but if you sit down and reflect, hardly any of us has really faced violent situations face- to- face, fortunately. I talk here of two situations which I faced, separated in time by more than three decades which were quite scary when they happened and are chilling even today when I think of them. This was despite the fact that in one situation, the violence was just a rumble in the background.

The first incident happened when I was doing my PGDBM in the early '70s. It was a balmy wintry afternoon and we were basking in the sun, sipping adhrak ki chaai at the tea stall just outside the hostel gate when we suddenly heard a commotion. We saw an armed mob charging and had just enough time to skip across a small lane and get into the sanctuary of our institute's compound. Fortunately it transpired that they weren't gunning for us.There was another college down the road and apparently, some of the students there had got into a fracas with some Transport Corporation employees the previous day in which one employee had died. His colleagues had come to extract revenge, armed with wooden staffs, iron rods, machetes and even bows and arrows. We watched the destruction the mob wrought on the other college's campus from the top of our hostel building. On the way they didn't spare any of the vehicles parked outside our hostel wall either. I still remember vividly a beautiful black Studebaker car which one of the associates used to bring and the damage caused to it in about thirty seconds. It was just scary.

The other incident took place much later after three and a half decades and spanned a series of events which took place over three days across the length of India. It started innocuously, but tragically, with a phone call. I was teaching in a B-school in Chennai at that time. A new academic year had just started and the new batch of students, in a bid to get to know each other better, organised by themselves a day trip to Pondicherry, down the east coast of India, about 150 km from Chennai. It all went fine till some of them attempted to go into the sea. Unfortunately, the notorious undertow in the Bay of Bengal pulled two of them away from land and this was the subject of the telephone call to me from one of the student group.

Since I was the person who got the call, I felt duty-bound to be part of the small management team handling this crisis and the next two days were a whirl of many activities and much physical, mental and emotional strain. The sea threw back one of the boys immediately and thus liaising with the police and the hospital to collect the remains was added to the list of tasks. Next day, a couple of our team went to Pondicherry to take care of the formalities while the head and I stayed back at Chennai. The recovered body was sent back to Chennai to send it further to the family based at Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, not far from Lucknow. Since the airlines insisted that somebody should accompany the coffin on the flight, I was requested to do so - and this is where the murmurs of possible violence started. Some students who hailed from that area advised me to be careful on this trip especially at the destination as the death was of a youngster and was sudden and emotions would be running high. Fortunately, the organisation had an office at Lucknow and we kept the people there in the loop. The immediate advice was that I should not go beyond UP's capital.

Next day, a relative of the boy, who was working in the South and I took the flight to Lucknow with transit at Delhi. I was under tremendous tension, not only because I had been involved for more than 48 hours in this incident and my nerves were already frayed but also because my senior colleagues at Chennai and the Head Office and my family were tense about my physical safety and continuously told me to take care. We landed in Lucknow and before I could even identify and meet my colleagues, I was swarmed by a group of about fifty people at the terminal, who had come to collect the boy's remains - and they were insistent that I accompany them then and there to Rae Bareli. I first somehow excused myself and met my colleagues who helped me avoid this danger by suggesting to the group that all of us would drive down next morning. They helped them to load the coffin on to a van they had arranged and waited till the Rae Bareli party drove away.

I was just talking with the two colleagues about my arrangement to return to Chennai when another gentleman walked up to them and whispered something. I suddenly saw about ten hefty men, armed with lathis come out of hiding from the background and vanish after being paid. My colleagues told me cryptically that this was my 'protection force', in case the group from Rae Bareli had got violent. This was the moment my hands started trembling in nervous reaction, as I realised that the physical threat had been very real. My return flight to Delhi was early on the morrow and I was advised to leave my hotel as early as possible, to be on the safe side. Fortunately the journey back was quite uneventful.

When we hear of some outrageous incident, our blood boils and if we analyse ourselves, it is scary to find that each one of us is capable of violence in that frame of mind. Is it really worthwhile - all this anger?

To strike a slightly philosophical note, there is this lovely soliloquy of Hanuman in the Sundara Kanda of Valmiki's Ramayana, just after he has set Lanka on fire and caused immense destruction. He suddenly realises that there is a distinct possibility that Sita may have been consumed by the same fire and berates himself for succumbing to anger, enumerating consequences of what happens when anger dominates reason.

From time immemorial, anger leading to violence has been inherent in human beings but can we as individuals control our own actions, words, deeds and posts? The answer as Bob Dylan sang is probably 'Blowing in the wind!'

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