Bhopu ban gaya baapu
It was a dhoti clad frail little man who with his sheer determination and discipline led us to the road of Independence and with his charismatic personality and humble demeanour won the hearts of billions across the globe. He is fondly called “baapu”. Decades later, there came another man who rose to such heights. He too, with his natural charisma and wit won several hearts that beat for him in unison. His humble disciples, ready to take on the world to defend his honour, in an almost hypnotic dedication called him “Baapu”.
No he’s not a spiritual leader or a social reformist or a rockstar or a cricketer. He’s an Accounts Professor. Now, if you feel you have been taken for a ride then read on to get a whiff of the bullshit behind the so called greatness and see the crap behind the supposed legend. Here’s the real story of the Baapu!
When you see him for the first time he will appear to be a poor little dejected creature with his sad droopy eyes and a “my mommy doesn’t love me” expression. You’ll almost feel sad for the helpless chap. But that’s how gremlins look right before you feed them!
He is a vampire octopus head wrapped around the face of humanity!! A ruthless sadist who draws pleasure in torturing poor little souls who are under the impression they are going to be imparted knowledge.
First of all, he teaches accounts. Yes accounts- a set of guidelines that tell you how to record and report financial transactions of a company. Right? Wrong. Because you have entered the twisted maze of this accounts prof’s head who thinks he’s teaching nothing short of the mystery that is held in the movement of sub atomic particles that explains the existence of life and helps you uncover the secret of why humanity exists and shit. He thinks he does humanity a big huge favour by waking up every morning!
To understand why a man is how he is, you should take a peek into his past. Now as this ratio obsessed Dracula says “Create a story with all the facts in hand”, let me try to do the same.
He’s a living caricature! Yes - the classic case of big head small body. When he stands without support, he looks like he’ll fall face first any second! That might be one of the reasons why he was bullied terribly as a kid. Yes bullied. Why else would a perfectly sane man who is apparently an IIT pass out choose to take up a subject like accounts to start his reign of terror over humanity? I can almost imagine… just like Bruce Wayne spent all those years in isolation learning the art of warfare in the snowy ravines of some kind of Chinese monks inhabited place in the middle of nowhere to avenge the death of his parents by fighting all the bad guys in his general vicinity, this pimple faced (I can only assume) geek of an engineer turned to Accounts as a weapon to get back at all the smart looking bright young minds kind of people who once bullied him! Day and night he must’ve stood in front of the mirror practicing his stink eye stare and tried out different versions of his signature line “That is agreed. So?” till he got it just right.
Now moving on to his teaching techniques, it is basically an endless loop of “so-why-how”. He will start the class with a question and after what feels like decades of questioning and counter questioning, he will conclude the discussion by asking the same question again. Why the endless loop? To answer this we go back to the time he was an infant. He had a toy fixture attached over his cradle which would spin round and round. He was so mesmerised with it that he looked at it all day. When he was shifted out of the cradle, it was like he had lost the meaning of his life. But not for long. He then discovered the ceiling fan! It too went round and round! What’s better was that it didn’t have those gimmicky colours and it spun around faster! When other kids spent their time playing outdoors, he spent all his time staring at the ceiling fan. And so like the movement of the ceiling fan, his thought process and his teaching process started moving round and round in circles.
Why does he suddenly “hang” in the middle of the lecture? Because there are no ceiling fans in the classroom and he spends two minutes in silence thinking how much he loves them.
The man wears a pair of run down brown dirty sneakers to class everyday. Why wear sneakers to class? That too an MBA class? There can be two explanations. One – he thinks he looks cool. Two – he too, like Forrest Gump, had a dream to run his way across the world. When he made the life changing decision to go down the path of accounts for his not so noble cause of bullying people, he thought he should also re live his childhood dream side by side. So he bought a pair of sneakers to wear all the time and when people are not looking he works on building his stamina by running in lightning speed from one place to another. This explains why he shoots out of the class like a bullet once the time is up.
He has only 4 t shirts and two pairs of trousers. That’s it. Why? You see, since he is so tiny, he has to buy clothes only from the kids department of shops. It’s possible some sales person got the wrong idea when he was found lurking around the kiddie changing rooms without a kid and a restraining order was issued against him in all clothing stores. So he is stuck with just 4 t shirts which he wears over and over again.
In the coming few years of our lives, we have to think over issues from the points of view of a creditor, an investor and a manager. So now that all the observations have been discussed, now “what does all this mean?” Frankly, I don’t care! I’m still orbiting in the infinite loop of what is the purpose of doing cost accounting, what do you mean by acceptable and whether the cost of two nails that were used in building a table in somebody’s sundry is a materials cost or an overhead cost!
Waise “baapu” ke bare mein jitna bhi bola jaye kum hai
Lekin itne bhi velle nahi hum hein.
Class mein baithe ho gayi mein soch soch ke pareshan
Kis janam ki dushmani nikal raha hai yeh insaan?
Megha, Lambu, Sujeet, Kung-fu: I love you guys!! Let’s see how many of you actually reach this part of the blog! :P
Mano, Sheel, Abhinaya: We are not the only ones who think this way!
-Tilo.
