Let me get my begging bowl

(This Picture is taken from Johan G. Hahn's Website

you can see it in its original context here.)

In the old days, when you completed your education, you were supposed to take up a begging bowl and travel around begging for your food. This practice was valuable because (1)it reminded the scholar of the value of humility, so one doesn't get too carried away by self importance. It also taught the idea that knowledge is valuable only when it is communicated and benefits the community that the scholar serves. But yet another benefit was that the scholar now came in touch with a large number of people in different walks of life, and thus textbook knowledge was supplemented by knowledge from the school of life..

I have often been tempted to send in an application for one of those BPO call centre jobs, working on the night shift, to get a hands on feel about this new work place and new way of working.

In the meantime, one of the things I want to do during the coming one year is to meet up with friends (people who have been my students, or attended my programmes etc. ). Some of us have kept in touch, others find it easier to relate on a one to one basis. So if you are interested, lets meet up, you can give me a meal and we can sit down and have a chat.

Lets coordinate things via my mail list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ob1 I will send out an email when I am relatively free and we can work things from there. If you haven't signed up yet, go ahead and sign up, but please write a brief intro with your initial request

My Obituary

"The reports on my demise are greatly exaggerated"

...was Mark Twain's reply to a newspaper that published his obituary while he was still alive AND KICKING!

Last week a faculty member came to me and asked me if I am quitting XLRI. ...today it was a student! All this because I am on leave from Sept 1 2005 until Aug 31 2006. So I thought I will set the record straight!

No I am not resigning. In my life, right now, the priority is that I should be available to my parents at a time when they need support, and I cant do it from XLRI. (I tried - if I were to go to kerala, the air route would be Ranchi - Bombay - Cochin or Calcutta- Chennai - Cochin. Either way it gets prohibitively expensive and hard to coordinate. Or I could sit for 50 hours on the Bokaro Steel Express. The result is that I dont visit home enough.

While I do have an assignment until Mid November. After that, I don't have anything concrete lined up. So you could say that it looks like for the next one year I am going to be a "Freelance Consultant" a fashionable way of saying UNEMPLOYED. But guess what? Like a lot of my friends I am really looking forward to being unemployed and to have the freedom to go and visit my parents whenever I like. I will earn my bread and butter as it goes along.... maybe write a little, etc. I have several pet projects lets see if things work out.

In the meantime if your company has a lot of money and would like to do some crazy stuff, please send me email! I love crazy stuff, and lots of money cant be bad either! :) Believe it or not I already have a few people who I know who want to do crazy stuff!

So I am far from quitting XLRI, so stop eyeing my car, furniture, etc. Not yet, anyway!

Mathai Fenn