Ninety days with a Dozen

(Published in Connecting: The British Council Magazine in September - October 2007)

I was part of the 12 professionals chosen for the Chevening Gurukul Programme at the London School of Economics funded by the Foreign Commonwealth Office in 2005. So was Pankaj Singh, the then Senior Divisional Mechanical Engineer of Eastern Railway based out of Jamalpur. A coupla coffees at Atria brought a lot of memories back of the good and not-so-old 3 months spent in the glorious Scala House, complete with Mark the smiling-sea-shell-around-his-neck receptionist who smiled at the women more frequently than the men and the its 5 minute walk down to Oxford Street.

Pankaj: So after innumerable reminiscences we have had that went unrecorded you finally want to make it all public?

Arundhati: Blame Sujata and Debanjan for it Pankaj. They have invoked the curse of the Goddess and the withering away of my keyboard skills. But I think it’s a good idea to put all this down, don’t you think?

Pankaj: I want to start off by what got me to apply. My brother who was a Gurukul scholar about six years ago couldn’t stop talking about this programme for years man! The way he kept in touch with people even after the programme was over, being an alumni of LSE, getting newsletters, meeting other scholars made me feel so envious. I don’t know about you, but I spent a considerable amount of time preparing myself for the application process. I even bought myself a new suit just before the interview. The last thing I remember asking Nita (the Scholarships Manager from British Council, Delhi) just before I went in for the interview was - should I keep my coat buttoned or not (laughs), which she promptly mentioned to the interview panel as she ushered me in. They burst into laughter and the rest of the interview was a breeze. When I met all the twelve selected scholars the next day for the briefing, what got me was the level of intelligence crackling around the room. The soft spoken smooth corporate honchos, the intense and passionate NGO professionals and the sincere and relentless bureaucrats – the best of the pack seemed to be represented. What also impressed me was the excitement and sense of adventure the organizers brought into their briefings.

Arundhati: You are right, people formed such an important part of this programme and the learnings. To begin with the dozen of us representing the entire spectrum of ideologies and philosophy between rampant capitalism and rabid socialism – so many ideas and so many interpretations, every discussion with this group was another eye opener. I loved the way I saw people sober down from their extreme beliefs into starting to listen to the other point of view as the programme progressed. Of course there were some intellectual fence sitters like you!

Pankaj: I wasn’t a fence sitter. I used to love playing the devil’s advocate in every discussion. You were of course the ‘human element’ inserter in every class and every debate. The only thing that mattered to you seemed to be human beings.

Arundhati: (Laughs) No seriously, the learnings from the group aside, the fabulous faculty that took every debate in the classroom to the most complex level, the industry leaders and people from various fields who came and shared their experiences with us – wasn’t that fantastic? I always thought spurring with brilliant minds is a worthwhile exercise on its own.

Pankaj: Talking about the classroom, you know it’s so tough to put a course like this together – what does one put in and what does one take out? It’s on Globalisation and Leadership and that’s a vast area and yet the array of topics chosen were mind-boggling. From complex finance to issues in Turkish politics, from fair trade to national health insurance, from current state of affairs in Russia to the working of the NATO – the range was truly eclectic.

Arundhati: I thought the idea of taking optional courses was fabulous too. Each one of us had the freedom to do any two graduate courses that we wanted to. People took anything that stimulated their imagination. I took gender studies and some others took Islamic studies. What was yours, urban planning?

Pankaj: Yes. But you know the study tours were what made this course extraordinary. Berlin, Toulouse, Brussels, Edinburgh, Geneva – what amazing exposure! And at each place we had meetings with organizations like NATO, WTO, UN, ILO, Transparency International, Scottish Parliament, BBC, Bank of England and many more. I never thought I could see the workings of the European system from such close quarters.

Arundhati: And it was a good idea that our batch stuck together and over weekends explored these great cities on our own. The food, the museums, the history, the street life and the flea markets– we did not leave anything out. It was good that the stipends were good enough for us to do all this. Though we constantly cribbed about being paupers, we kept getting ‘good deals for students’ all the way.

Pankaj: (Laughs) Yes, and to be considered students after a decade for most of us…

Arundhati: Talk about yourself, I’m not so ancient.

Pankaj: But wasn’t it great? We, with our backpacks and student ids exploring a wide new world?

Arundhati: You make it sound like an adventure. You are right though. Living right in the heart of Westend, five minutes from the British Museum, ten from Covent Garden and a yard from Soho meant something else man. I could never get enough of the paintings and jazz nights and musicals. Had heard so much about the fringes and mainstream living side by side in the cultural life of London. Finally got to experience that. And to come back to a fancy, furnished apartment a minute from Goodge Street tube station was unthinkable as part of student life. I shall never forget the tube and the jokes we cracked about “mind the gap”. It became our war cry.

Pankaj: Didn’t the campus of LSE seem like international territory to you? The day they had the enrolment for clubs, I was astonished at the representation of every colour, creed, nation, politics, hobby and interest there. I would sit at the café and find one Estonian, one Moroccan and one American sipping coffee right next to me. More than fifty percent of the crowd at LSE is from outside Europe. I even spotted Monica Lewinsky.

Arundhati: But that way London itself is a vibrant international city which represents almost everything one can think of. And LSE is situated right in the heart of it, not an academic ivory tower set aside in a pristine environment away from ‘life’ and its hustle bustle. I liked the fact that it exists with the business houses, with the shops along the Thames and the office crowd and rowdy football crowd in the pubs.

Pankaj: You know my final take away from this course was the wide spectrum of ideas and points of view that were made available to us to choose from, to side with, to debate, mould and critique. I think Howard, our course co-ordinator was the true polymath, a Renaissance man who embodied the very spirit of this programme.

Arundhati: And somehow I had thought it was a cliché when they told us that life might go through a makeover after this programme. Surprisingly, for a lot of us it has. Just look at it, Thillai chose a profession in academics, Rohit is today the Private Secretary to the Finance Minister, Binoy is setting up his Development Channel and Arumugam…Arumugam actually found his life partner at LSE!

Pankaj: Yes, and as a batch we keep in touch, are there for each other as much as the hectic pace of life allows us. You don’t make such friends often so late in life. It has certainly opened us up for new possibilities. What can be more rewarding than that?

Arundhati: Cheers to that!