Rajat Gupta, Nandan, and IIT

To understand Rajat Gupta's success, I decided to follow him around, right from birth, to every major event he was subjected to. I had to assume many roles for that purpose. If you are shaking your head in disbelief, I have to say, "Some reality is Rajat Gupta's, some is America's, and some is mine. Either select the reality you are most comfortable with or create your own."

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Note: Everything is fiction here. It is vaguely based on the ragging experience I underwent in 1973 in Hostel 7 of IITB. Obviouly, Rajat Gupta was not there having graduated earlier from IITD. Is there a Narmada hostel at IIT Delhi or is it at IIT kanpur? Anyway, goal was to show how ... well I forgot.

August 24, 1966

IIT Delhi + possibly IIT Bombay/Mumbai/Powai

Narmada Hostel, Room 207

I was not alone. There were about 10 of us, each assuming an uncomfortable position and shouting out a few words at regular intervals. I was a "chicken" and was ordered to count up to 10000, and shout out "India Sucks" after each multiple of 7 or 100 or the largest prime number I knew.

I guess it was because of the answers I gave to the 'senior' who was sitting on a pile of newspapers, surrounded by items like a real traffic stop sign and half-eaten foul-smelling masala dosas and samosas. There was a line of freshman like me waiting outside the room for their turn to be questioned by that senior and their fates decided.

I was one of those freshmen nobody wanted. I had scored 1249th on the JEE and managed to get in M.Sc. Chemistry. That was a matter of pride in my village of Rampur and many congratulated me for going to ITI. At IIT was laughed at when others heard my rank. (Moreover, the asli ghee ladoos my mom had prepared for me to last a semester were all taken away from me.) I heard that was one person who had scored lower than me that year but had decided to go to MIT in the USA to do his direct Ph.D. in computational astrophysics on a graduate fellowship.

When Taklu, that senior, had asked me who my favorite dancer was and I had replied "Hema Malini" you should have seen the look on his face. He burst out laughing loudly, and said a word, I don't think I am going to put in here because ladies might be reading this. (I don't know if Indian ladies should be surfing the internet because of so much garbage out there.) Anyway, then he put his hand in my pocket and took out my wallet. He searched the wallet and found this picture of Mumtaz I had since I was 12. He said, "Bebafa (Unfaithful), you love one but lust for another" and ordered me to assume that "chicken" position. At first it was very uncomfortable but it is funny how quickly you get used to indignities of life, especially if you are from a village named Rampur.

I was in the early 400s (not the JEE rank, the count), when I heard the following:

Taklu: What was your JEE rank, you punk?
Freshman: 15.

Suddenly the whole room became eerily silent. I had never met a person ranked as high as him and stopped counting and glanced up to have a look at this freshman which drew a quick response from Taklu towards me,"You, brother-in-law." He thought everybody was his relative! And I resumed my counting but not before I had a brief look at this freshman. He seemed to be wearing a sports suit and had a cap on his head. In my own Rampur, I had never seen anybody wearing such an outfit. In Delhi, though, later I found many phoren-ers who worked in embassies, wearing such clothes. However, clothes are not important and below is what I recall as having heard while in a "chicken" position, counting up to 10000 and howling "India Sucks" after each multiple of 7 or 100 or the largest prime number I knew.

(I will refer to this freshman as Rajat, who turned out to be a very kind person, widely popular in the campus, and was even nice to a person like me with such low JEE rank.)

Taklu: So tell me you IIT-JEE Topper, since you must be mugging (studying) all day, have you read any books besides your studies? If so could you enlighten us with the title of your favorite and briefly explain why?
Rajat: Sir, I have read many books. Recently because of family situation I didn't have time to read as much as I would like to but when I was 12, I read a book titled A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man by an author named James Joyce. It will be nice to have that as a required reading for us all IITians, since as the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature and Ingram have correctly pointed out that this literary masterpiece written in abstruse, Latin-sprinkled, stream-of-consciousness prose is a tour de force of style and technique, and a profound examination of the Irish psyche and society. It is quite relevant to us Indians, actually. It's a nice introductory book and interested readers can move on to more mature and profound works like the Ulysses when they are ready.

Taklu (after a silence of about 10 seconds): What's your name? (It was the first time I heard Taklu asking anybody's name. Otherwise we all were either brother-in-law or something really really bad.) Do you watch movies? (Pointing to Stardust magazine lying on the floor with Hema Malini on its cover) Do you know who this b**** is? (Real ladies from India, please forgive me for using a bad word. I am just reporting what he said.)
Rajat: Rajat. Yes sir, I do watch movies. Like L'Atalante by Jean Vigo. And this woman seems familiar. Isn't she, what's her name, Sharmila Tagore, isn't she?
Taklu: No you fool. (His tone was very soft though as if a big brother is poking fun of the younger one. To my surprise, he didn't ask Rajat to join me.) Pointing at me, "Ask this monkey. He is her biggest fan."
I (the monkey): Hema Malini.
Rajat: Thank you sir. Yes I have heard of her. I don't think I have seen any of her movies, but isn't she is a good dancer trained in classical Indian dances?
Taklu (to me): You donkey, you have some good taste and luck. You may leave this room now and thank Raj for helping you out.

(I stayed in the room disobeying Taklu's order because I was very curious. So were others. There was a spark in Rajat worth watching.)

Taklu: So Raj, are you one of those Westernized snobs who don't like anything Indian?
Rajat: No sir. (Taking out a small book from his pocket) This is Gita. Concentrate on doing your best in what you do is its philosophy and so is my life's. When it comes to movies, I think Satyajit Ray is one of the greatest movie directors of all time and I immensely enjoyed his Pather Panchali. The New Yorker's Pauline Kael wrote about this film as "beautiful, sometimes funny, and full of love, it brought a new vision of India to the screen." Hard to argue with her. It is ranked number 12 on her all-time favorites. And I will never get tired of listening to Ravi Shankar's sitar.

Taklu started shouting out, "Nandan, Nandan, come quickly. I think your search is over." A couple of minutes later Nandan appeared with a toothbrush in his one hand and a razor in his other. Seemed like he had just woken up. It was 9:30 in the evening.

Nandan: Rajat, I have heard of you. What's your vision for India, say 50 years from now?
Rajat (who by now had dropped 'sir' and was talking very casually with even big shots like our General Secretary Nandan): Nandu (I almost fainted when I heard the word Nandu but Nandan didn't seem to notice) , I have a vision. India can leverage its cheap labor costs and in a paradigm shift can become the biggest, I really mean the biggest outsourcing resource for the developed world. We can't get money for nothing, we have to work hard for it as Geeta clearly mentions.
Nandan: (repeating) Money for nothing. Money for nothing. Good. Raj, I like your answer. Meet us at 2 in the morning behind the Powai lake. Expect the rituals for people who are going to shape India's future to take about half an hour. And then he looked at me kindly and said, "Sorry Kamal, you are not invited. You don't have the bojo for this" (I still don't know what bojo means.)

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