7.1 Sundry Debtors

In MBA institutes, project groups are the life-sustaining ecosystem that one carries around oneself.

It is like a band of soldiers that vow to fight and fall together, through thick and thin, war and peace. They are also what decide one’s final grades. Hence, it is of the utmost importance that a group have the right mix of people. The finance guy drills through the numbers in the case-study, the HR guy gives the recommended dosage of soft issues, and the consultant ensures the necessary polish and strategic angle. The marketing guys are the ones who invariably end up presenting, and taking credit for all the work.

Thus, after three back-to-back episodes of Seinfeld, when we regrouped for our first Finance class and a grinning Usha informed us that the project groups for Marketing had been formed right after our exit, we paused and listened. When he further revealed that shockingly no one else was willing to pick the four of us, and we’d all been bunched together in the same group by default, we paused for a little longer, as our hearts slipped through our pants, zipped over our legs, and landed on our shoes with a wet thud.

In moments of crises I always find it helpful to visualize what success would probably look like. At this moment, I tried visualizing the four of us locked in an exhilarating debate about when to launch the new chocolate variant of baby nappies, enriched with the extracts of Aloe Vera. I couldn’t.

‘Can you imagine how lucky we are?’ asked Usha, attempting to summarize our collective elation, as we unwillingly walked into our Finance class.

‘No Usha, presently I cannot,’ replied K2, and took in a deep breath.

***

There are certain phenomena in nature with the sole purpose of causing mere mortals like us to pause momentarily, ask ‘Huh, really?’, and move on. The politicians of Tamil Nadu, and the films of Sawan Kumar Tak are some examples that come to mind. Corporate Finance is another.

As the weeks and months whizzed past us, the four of us realized that we didn’t need to rely solely on each other to embarrass ourselves. The institute provided ample opportunities for young marketers to make a fool of themselves. As if being excommunicated from the comfort of marketing in your very first class was not anguishing enough, we were also forced to walk bare feet through the dense rainforest known as finance.

To be honest, it seemed ridiculously simple at first. There was this page that was divided into two halves. Whatever went into one half, had to be accounted for in the other, so much so that at the end, they would total to the same amount. Fair enough; even someone like K2, who was missing the left hemisphere of his brain, could deal with this. But somewhere between class 4 to 5, things got a little murkier, when terms like ‘sundry debtors’ and ‘securitization’ started popping up in classroom discussions.

‘I don’t think it’s an accounting problem at all. For a firm named Bhai Lal Enterprises, I wouldn’t even bother to look at the…the…EPS ratio. Given that the firm is in the consumer durables business, I would rather take a long and hard look at the equity of its brand…,’ said K2, attempting, for the 5th time, to recast the spot accounting quiz into something more manageable.

‘I don’t care’, said Professor Rao, squinting at his student’s name tag. ‘I seriously can’t care less if Bhai Lal Enterprises is the worst brand in the world, as long as you can tell me what is wrong with their EPS.’

Appreciation of their colleagues’ academic streams was something the professors needed to work on. With the sigh of a ‘never understood during his life-time’ artist, K2 sat down, and started gazing out of the window for inspiration.

‘What are you trying to do?’ asked my neighbor, just as my head was about to disappear under the desk, and out of the professor’s line of sight. I acted surprised and got back up. My neighbour must have been pretty loud, for as soon as my head resurfaced, I found Professor Rao looking directly at me.

‘Perhaps Mr. Rishi can help us solve the elusive problem of Bhai Lal Enterprises?’

The ridiculousness of the proposition seemed evident to everyone, as the entire class started laughing. I chuckled too, expecting him to take pity and move on.

‘Well?’

Grin.

‘So?’

‘Sundry expenses, Sir,’ I said in a flash of genius.

‘What?’

‘Accounts receivable’

‘Pardon me?’

‘Err…Plant and Equipment?’ I said, rattling off the last combination of words I’d picked up over the entire class. As the class erupted in laughter, I sensed that I had not nailed the issue.

‘Have you any idea what is being discussed here, Mr. Rishi?’ asked Professor Rao, as I felt my face turn an attractive shade of baby pink.

‘Livestock?’ I offered as my final offer for a truce.

‘Is this some big joke to you? Are we, by any chance, trying to be funny here?’ asked Professor Rao. He had this habit of shifting from singular to plural whenever he was about to skewer someone. ‘Or are we just naturally gifted at making a complete and utter fool of ourselves?’

‘Bingo. You are a fool. Glad that you finally figured that out. Now get the hell out of my face,’ I felt like saying, but decided it wouldn’t be very tactful.

‘No, sir.’

‘No sir, what?’

‘No sir, we are not a fool.’

By the time I realized that it hadn’t come out the way I’d meant it, it was too late.

‘Young man, you are excused from class,’ said Professor Ram, his voice quivering with anger. ‘And I suggest we meet up after class.’

His accent on the word ‘meet’ and his right arm pointing to the door suggested he didn’t have ‘casual chit-chat over hot cups of cappuccino’ in mind.

‘This is not done,’ said the voice from behind me. Karthik was standing up, hands akimbo. ‘I think we’re all grown ups here?’

Seeing everyone’s eyes shift to him, Karthik decided to turn up his charm a few notches.

‘I really see no reason for you to throw him out of class. He doesn’t know the answer to a question. Who’s fault is that? Who’s job is it to teach him?’ said Karthik, banging the desk for effect.

Five minutes later, if Prabhakar was wondering how the two of us kept managing to come back from class early every time, he wasn’t showing it; he just smilingly handed over our cups of coffee.

‘Man, we are turning this into a habit, aren’t we?’ said Karthik, almost hinting some pleasure at being singled out for this treatment.

I had to admit there was a certain amount of cleverness in writing yourself off before anyone else got the opportunity. There was this addictive heroism to the ‘damned if I care’ attitude that fate seemed to have scripted for us. There seemed no fun in living life as per the Official User Manual and trying to ‘fit in’; standing out from the crowd and getting noticed seemed a much more attractive option. After all, wasn’t this place all about standing out – 200 odd students, all brilliant in their own right, trying to prove themselves superior to one another? In such a fiercely competitive environment, surely getting noticed couldn’t be such a bad thing, right?

(To be continued)

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