Thoughts on Being an XLer

Recently, I've been thinking a bit about XL and XLers in general.

Perhaps it was the alumni party last month. Perhaps it's the fact that my juniors recently joined the company I work with, so I'm seeing a lot more XLers these days. Or maybe it's just the fact that I completed a year recently at work, and one of my juniors asked me, "Don't you miss XL at all?"

Of COURSE I miss XL. Though maybe not as much as in the months immediately after I reached Bangalore. Back then, it was a constant throbbing, an absence of something inside me. Sometimes, in the afternoons, I used to just let my mind wander back to Jamshedpur, to those few acres of green trees and golden sunlight - it felt so good, that bittersweetness.

While at XL, I used to wonder - how do these alumni handle it? Don't they know that they've left Heaven behind forever? That they're always going to have to look back upon these years with a mixture of longing and a wonder that they were allowed to be part of the magic at all?

But now I know how it is. Either enough time passes by that you get used to it, or you realize that you don't have an option, so you better just get yourself to deal with it. Over time, XL fades from your system, it becomes muted, sometimes for days. But inevitably, something or the other will remind you, maybe a photo on Facebook, or a horrible dosa that makes you pine for those early morning visits to Mad Sam, or - hell - just the way the sunlight plays on the trees! And then you feel that familiar ache again.

I'm told that people from other b-schools undergo the same thing. But somehow, I refuse to believe that their experiences were as good as ours - there's just no way!

Most of the reason being, of course, Jamshedpur. Objectivity be damned, there's no way an Ahmedabad or a Bangalore or a Calcutta can compare with Jamshedpur. The orange of the sky in the nights, the endless rain, the sheer cosiness of the place! And of course, the fact that there was zilch to do outside the campus, which ensured that XLers always created their own entertainment!

XL's magic has remained a secret for generations, known only to the ones who've experienced it. Plus maybe the ones who've read a certain incredibly well-written book (let's not take names here) on XL.

Unfortunately, I've discovered recently that it's not just the magic, but XL itself that seems to be a well-kept secret. Despite being chosen number 3 on India's best b-schools list, the fact remains that most people would know an IIM (even the new ones, though I've lost track of those now) way more than an XL. Recently, I was introducing myself to somebody when he asked me, "Oh, but you're from Kerala. Why did you go all the way to Jamshedpur for your MBA?" And this guy was a 'Learning Consultant' with a reasonably well-known firm. So much for the 'Best HR Couse in the Asia-Pacific', then.

Mango Season

My Ammoomma was born in the late thirties, in a village in what is now Pathanamthitta district of Kerala. She was the seventh of eleven brothers and sisters. Her father worked as a doctor in the local hospital, and they all lived in a big house near the temple. Acres and acres of their land surrounded the house, and the family was considered quite wealthy.
The house was sold off long ago, converted into a resort for the rich and the rootless. But Ammomma often reminisces about those times. The amount of rice the house used to consume in one day, the number of servants they used to have, how the children all used to sit on the dining room floor in one long row for lunch, how the girls used to go to school every day with so many roses in their hair that the other girls made fun of them. I like imagining her running around that big house, a little girl in a white petticoat, secure in her little village, while outside, in the big world that she knows nothing of, her country survives the final throes of a freedom movement, becomes independent, and takes its first tentative steps as a nation.
She says she likes talking about those times because they are gone forever. That way of living, it has quite disappeared. And the way we are today, it can never come again. Then again, that's also probably why I like listening to her stories. They're about a time that I can experience only through her words, by letting her stories play out in my mind against the backdrop of a house I can remember only sketchily.
One of the stories she told me recently was about the mangoes.
Their big house was surrounded by mango trees of all shapes and sizes. There was the one that produced long and thin mangoes; these mangoes were called 'kolan manga'. There was the mango tree that stood next to the broken well. Its mangoes were called 'pottakinaru manga', and were the sweetest of the lot. At the western end of the compound, two mango trees stood so close to each other that it seemed they must grow from the same base. But they produced two different types of mangoes! And then there was the poor tree whose mangoes nobody liked, because it stood right next to the refuse pit.
"In the mango season," she says, "Whenever there was a wind, PADA-PADA the managoes would fall. And all of us, the children, we would run out, and grab the mangoes. The ones we couldn't eat, we would give to Ammoomma. And she would decide what to do with them. Some she would keep for lunch. Some she would decide to pickle. And others, the ones that were slightly broken from the fall, would go into the big jar for the winter.  And at lunch, Appooppan would squeeze the essence of the mangoes and give each of us a big yellow ball of rice and curd and mango and salt. By the end of the squeezing, his hand used to become completely yellow!
"Even the servants used to pick up a few mangoes for their lunch. They used to eat enormous amounts of rice though, much more than us. There used to be a Muslim who used to come to chop wood - Thambi Metthan, he was called. That's what he used to do all day - just chop wood. And when we poured rice for him to eat, it used to be like a little white hill, so tall that his face was almost covered. And he would actually eat it all too!
The ground below each mango tree used to be littered with fallen mangoes, she says. And with flies feasting stickily on the mangoes. When you went near, they would rise into the air, a buzzing black cloud, but some would remain on the mangoes, too full to fly perhaps.
"What happened to all these mango trees?" I ask.
"Cut down, all of them, " she answers. "One by one."
"Why?"
"I don't know. Maybe they went bad. Trees do." Pause. "You know, it was the tree next to the refuse pit that survived longest. Nobody wanted its mangoes in the beginning, but it ended up being the most sought after. How times change!"

Alex Garland - The Beach

What a horrifying book.

I picked it up because my brother had been recommending it to me for years. I'd resisted for a long time because our tastes aren't exactly similar. He likes abstract stuff, whereas I prefer straight narratives. But I was looking for a book to read on the flight back to Bangalore from Trivandrum. I picked this one up and flipped through it, and it seemed a racy enough read for a boring flight.

And boy, was it.

It starts innocuously enough. A traveler who has just landed in Thailand. A strange night-time conversation, a map stuck to the door, a mysterious suicide. Soon, we're on our way to a mysterious beach in the middle of a marine park. 'Eden' the beach is called. A Holy Grail for travelers, spoken about only in whispers, a place supposedly so beautiful and enchanting that people stay there for years.

They do discover the place, and it turns out to be everything they've been promised. A tiny hamlet, a flawless beach, a beautiful lagoon. The people staying there are travelers from all over the world. They've landed up on Eden because they're tired of the beaten path, of the masses that descend on every beautiful place. They live simply, eating fish and rice, smoking up at night, playing football on Sundays, just enjoying the beauty of the place.

Heaven? Yes. Until things start going wrong. The problem is that they are trying to escape the very thing they cannot escape - people. The hamlet looks may look idyllic from outside. But there are rifts within the group, tiny enmities, factions that form on the basis of perceived slights. Group politics dictates everything.

This book is about madness. It's about how fragile human minds are, how fucked up they can get. How seemingly small things can turn people's heads. How strangely and horrifically people behave when they are put under pressure.

The tempo builds up slowly. You hardly even realize it when things start to go off the rails. People's minds starting to behave strangely, the increasingly horrifying events, the nightmarish and surreal climax.

Racy, unputdownable, horrifying. Must-read.

Weekend

New cities are exciting. Especially when you land there at six in the morning. Getting off a bus, being mobbed by autowallahs. A red sun rising between two trees. Women carrying yellow flowers in baskets. Sleepy neighbourhoods. Murugan Idli. Yellow autos.

The city I've heard so much about, the city I used to wish to be a part of, the city I started to hate for no fault of its. I finally saw it, and it made me realize how soulless Bangalore is.

***

Sitting on the rocks lining Pondicherry beach, feet dangling over the drop. Slightly high. Talking. Listening to the waves breaking upon the rocks below. Wishing he was here with me. The breeze coming in from the sea. Wishing it wasn't so cloudy. The realization that this will be one of my favourite memories years down the line.

***

It was seven in the night, and Besant Nagar (?) beach was so crowded. People sitting in circles on the sand. Kids running around. Young boys playing football. Colourful lights that went zooming into the air. Women selling peanuts. Above it all, and as a background, the waves pounding the sand.

XL Again!

I'm going to do the whole Bangalore-Calcutta-Jamshedpur thing again. I'm going to go in through those wide open black gates again. I'm going to see Anu again! I'm going to sit on JLT and drink nimbu pani again. I'm going to have coffee at Daddu's again - steaming hot coffee with chocolate powder liberally spilled over it. I'm going to talk to the Profs, and this time know what an honour and opportunity that is! I'm going to sit on El Top Top and watch the orange lights of Tata Steel again. I'm going to go to Karnel Singh's Dhaba and have butter naan and paneer butter masala again. I'm going to walk under those tall tall trees and be awe-struck all over again. I'm going to visit the library and walk through the fiction shelves again. I'm going to watch the dawn lighten over the top of GH1 and feel an indescribable longing again. I'm going to have Bishu Da's Cheese Maggi again! I'm going to NOT be a company senior. I'm going to ride back from Bistupur in a cold cold auto again. I'm going to go to Mad Sam and have butter masala dosa and their insanely sweet coffee again! I'm going to try to get enough people to play basketball again. I'm going to sit on a green bench in the sun and read a book again. I'm going to take a walk through Faculty Quarters with Anu again.

For two whole days in February.

On Reading

There is something wrong with me. I haven't finished a single book in the last one month. Oh, I'm reading all right. But I lose interest halfway and start another book. Here's a complete list of the books I've begun reading and abandoned in the last one month. Please note that this is NO commentary on the quality of writing of the below authors!

• Michael Ondaatje - The English Patient (beautiful, beautiful book)
• T. Coraghessan Boyle - If the River was Whiskey (Picked up in Blossom's - mostly cuz I liked the title!)
• Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
• Anjum Hasan - Neti, Neti (I've been wanting to read it ever since I read Jai Arjun Singh's piece on it here)
• J R R Tolkien - The Hobbit (PDF)
• Robert Jordan - The Shadow Rising (The fourth in the series - e-book version, though)
• Kate Fox - Watching the English

On Writing

Every story that needs to be told has already been told. And now we're telling the same things over and over again, in different words, in different colours.

Where do I fit in? Do I have a story to tell? Does anybody want to listen? My ideas are cliched, my tone amateurish. I read what I've written and wince at myself.

Yet I need to put words down. I get joy out of seeing them there, little black squiggles on white, little bits of my soul that I've squeezed out and lined up.

Maybe that's enough, at the end of the day. But not at the end of the life. Surely not?