Insights on Human Behaviour

Any person worth their salt has a quest in life. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and the Monty Python troupe quested for the Holy Grail. Keen-eyed detectives of yore and the Powerpuff girls fight crime and the forces of evil. Most business school students have the slightly less high-minded, but nonetheless time-honoured quest of achieving footage while in college through means fair and foul, and making a lot of money after they graduate, again through means fair and foul.

After much consideration, I’ve decided that my immediate quest shall be that of finding out why humans behave the way they do. I will attempt to do this in a thoroughly rational manner, taking three situations that have occurred in my life recently and analyzing people’s responses to them. From this, I shall unreasonably draw conclusions about human behaviour and impose them upon the entire world population. I shall then achieve fame and fortune as a Master of Psychology, and my picture shall appear in the last but one page of Bangalore Times for a week, along with Deepika Padukone’s, as a part of a series of articles celebrating the achievements of Kannadigas everywhere.

Let us begin.

I study in IIM Bangalore. The academic commitments are rigorous and the competition gruelling. If you are a questioning sort of person, if there is a strong spirit of scientific enquiry within you, you will have no doubt questioned the relationship between the two. Are academic commitments rigorous on account of tough taskmasters that the barbed-wire chewing professors are? As a result of which there is intense competition? Or is it the other way round, the urge to go one-up on one’s fellow batchmates extreme enough to cause the entire hard-working spree management students tend to go on in the first place?

This question can be answered very simply. Are the professors at IIMB hard-faced, barbed-wire chewing, grim scholars renowned in their areas of expertise? Not really, atleast not all of them. This obviously leads to the conclusion that, to use a colloquial term popular amongst students everywhere, RG is the source of the rigorous academic commitments.

Drawing conclusions from this brilliant piece of analysis, we come to Lesson 1. The deep-seated desire in all humans to emerge triumphant, to rise above the morass we live in, is really why we live in the morass in the first place.

Allow that startling revelation to sink into your mind. We will move on to Experience number 2.

For the uninitiated, one reason why so many exchange students from numerous colleges, which no one in their right minds would have ever heard of, from France, Italy, Spain and other countries, come to IIM Bangalore, is to cop a feel of Indian Culture. While, most people are hazy about the whole culture thing, they may waver between yoga and kabaddi as true symbols of Indian culture, those at IIM Bangalore are a sight cleverer. They (the unnamed powers who run the institution), know that while the foreigners who come for a dose of India, don’t want too much of it. Just enough to tell their friends back home how wonderful it all is, and secretly vow never to come to India again. So, to relieve the monotony of traditional Indian life, L^2 (read L square) parties are organized at IIM Bangalore.

While this could be a Lesson in itself, my point is a different thing altogether. After long observations of the goings-on at the L^2 parties, one curious phenomenon that occurs is the ring system. Guys and girls form a ring and, to use the term loosely, dance. The life-span of a ring is proportional to the number of girls in the ring. If there are lots of girls, life is good. Once they start slipping away, what’s left is a bunch of guys jumping about together. Not cool at all. So, all that’s left to do is slink away shamefacedly, under the pretext of getting another drink. The ring thus breaks rapidly.

The important takeaway from the ring observations, which is in fact our Lesson number 2, is that humans are a gregarious species. They seek companionship rather desperately. Yet there is something within us, a sense of shyness perhaps, that prevents us from going after what we really want.

And the last, and most important (in my humble opinion) lesson.

Our placement season has just ended. Congratulations, you might say with a puzzled air, but isn’t it rather early for that? Yes, that is true, these are summer placements, for a two month internship next year.

I am not joking when I say that I’ve (had to, Lesson 1) put in more effort for the placements than for most courses. A significant amount of this effort has gone into eliminating white spaces on my resume. White spaces are those annoying things that are located after the end of a sentence. We were repeatedly taught that white spaces are a creation of the Devil, and good, respectable resumes had no place for Creatures of Evil. And hence the cry of war was heard resounding from block to block, and apart from a few exceptions, people took up the fight against white spaces with vigour.

Imagine our collective dismay, when we found that companies could not really care less about white spaces! There was very little one could do, can you imagine one going up to the company representatives and expressing his/her grievances about the company’s policy of indifference towards white spaces?

We had been spoon-fed what was, if not a lie, wasn’t really the truth either. And why did we believe it? Because it was something we wanted to hear, that we could actually do something to an unspectacular resume to make it look attractive. This brings us to Lesson number 3, humans are generally a gullible lot. We may laugh at the village simpleton, but most of us aren’t really much better.

And now my job is finished, the pearls have been scattered before the swine. All I have to wait for is recognition for the ground-breaking theories I have come up with, and my contribution to civilization is done. I shall then retire, happy, and hopefully rich, with a cut-out from a newspaper containing a picture of myself and Deepika as fond souvenir of my brief moment of fame.

My Valentine’s Day

One rainy day in the land of Saki, the Duchess asked Clovis to tell her a story that had enough truth in it to be interesting, but not so much as to make it tiresome. This is one such story.

I was impeccably dressed in a suit I had purchased the night before (my uncle had bullied me all the way into a Raymonds showroom, at my mother’s insistence. Its amazing how much influence she wields in my life from several hundred kilometers away). The blazer was hot and uncomfortable and I fidgeted quietly in a chair, reading the day’s paper. To add to my troubles, I was the only one suited up that day, and I was garnering strange looks from the rest of the candidates, imperfect creatures that they were, dressed merely in a shirt and tie. Or so I consoled myself.

I made the acquaintance of Red-Nose that day. He was sitting beside me, reading the Economic Times, when he turned to me with a ferociousness that startled me. Consequently, I missed his name. I murmured my own in reply, and there followed a strained silence that I did not wholly discourage, for my butterflies were acting up again. After a few moments, my companion saw fit to break the silence.

“Oil’s at forty dollars a barrel,” Red-Nose informed me intelligently.

“Ah… I see.”

“Gold’s fallen,” he shook his head dejectedly. “Bad for the rupee.”

“D’you really think they’ll ask you all this in the interview?”

Red-Nose beamed at me. “It never hurts to be prepared, is it?”

I decided that I disliked Red-Nose. I borrowed the crossword page from ET, and steadfastly refused to be drawn into conversation with him. Not that he minded, he continued to talk, casting financial pearls of wisdom before the proverbial swine.

They called us in.

*

We were seated in a circle, in an inner chamber of the Institute of Hotel Management. There was an air of expectancy all around, all that was left for us to do was hold hands and we wouldn’t have looked out of place in a séance. The two spirit mediums distributed papers and bade us to ponder over the topic for the group discussion. The door suddenly burst open and a wild-eyed girl entered, stammering out profuse apologies for being late. After some haggling, the two examiners let Wild-eye join the circle.

We had before us a summary of the first expedition to the South Pole, and the hardships they overcame and all that sort of stuff. There was apparently an Indian expedition to Antarctica in the coming month, and the leader of the expedition was desperately seeking advice from us. We were to discuss what advice to give him. As to why we were the best people to impart the aforementioned advice, the examiners did not deign to tell us.

The discussion went on like all discussions do, with longwinded arguments that were oft repeated and fairly boring overall. After five minutes, desiring to include a fresh direction, I started, “I think we should look at it from a leadership perspective…” I trailed off as someone else interrupted.

Wild-eye interrupted when the faceless person stuttered for a bit. “I think we should look at it from a leadership perspective…” she began. I stared at her in undisguised astonishment. She stared back at me shamelessly and continued on with her thoughts about leadership. I decided that I disliked Wild-eye as well, perhaps more than Red-Nose, who thankfully wasn’t in our group.

As the discussion went on, an aggressive Wild-eye interrupted people often and made herself unpopular. When she called for a consensus on the issue, everyone agreed that more discussion was needed. Petty as it was, I nonetheless shared a smile with a fellow candidate at our minor victory.

The high point of the discussion was at the very end, when someone was expounding the dangers of snow-blindness. “But that’s not a problem,” Wild-eye said confidently. She looked around, evidently pleased with the interest that the statement generated. “With all the global warming going on these days, there won’t be much snow left in Antarctica…”

What made this even worse was while some people were in a state of disbelief, others were nodding along, acknowledging her point! No doubt they were furiously berating themselves for not thinking of this earlier and thinking frantically about something to add to the global warming argument. Perhaps the examiners suspected so too, for they halted the discussion at that point.

*

We trooped outside to wait for the interview summons. I met a senior from college whom I hadn’t recognized earlier due to his haircut (he hadn’t recognized me because I was wearing my suit). As we caught up on old times, I noticed that Red-Nose had made Wild-eye’s acquaintance and they were happily discussing ITC’s market share in biscuits…

I was the first one called for the interview from my group. I stepped inside, carefully closing the door behind me and wishing the interviewers a good morning. From that point on, the details of the interview are slightly hazy. In the mists of my memory though, one thing stands visible. During the interview, I discovered that I had a voice in my head.

On hindsight, I realize this may have been a slightly worrisome thing to happen, but I didn’t really think about it then. And since then, the Presence has consequently muted itself, and I have never heard from it again. This in a way is a pity, because the Presence gave me excellent suggestions during the interview. The stranger and infinitely more ironic thing was that I did the exact things the voice told me not to…

“So why is it that you don’t want to pursue an MS degree abroad?”

Talk about how, while you like Electrical Engineering, you don’t see yourself doing it for the rest of your life, the voice suggested. And then you can talk about why you want to do an MBA instead.

“Well sir, it is difficult to get admission into the good universities in the US,” I replied. The voice voiced an expression of disgust.

The interviewer raised an eye-brow. “Despite graduating from IIT?”

“With my CPI, I won’t get admission into the best universities…” I trailed off, realizing what I was saying. Nice one, the voice glowered at me.

“Do you have a role model? Some public figure?”

I opened my mouth and closed it. “Abdul Kalam,” I invented. “His success story, from a fisherman’s son to the President of India is very inspiring. And he’s done a lot of work too, the Father of India’s nuclear programme…”

“Really?” the other interviewer drawled. “Are you sure you’re not referring to someone else?”

I did my fish imitation again. A name floated up from the murky depths of my mind. Homo Baba? Homi Baba? No definitely not Homo Baba, you fool! What was I thinking? I did not reply to his question.

“Tell me about any news item you’ve been following.”

I told them about the Indo-US nuclear deal, but unfortunately (predictably?), I was unable to give too many details. Did I have another? Well, I had something I’d followed in the newspaper every day…

Not that, the voice groaned.

I proceeded to tell them about Shilpa Shetty and the Big Brother fiasco.

And after I stumbled out shoulders drooped, I realized that I’d forgotten to give them my recommendation letters. I waited outside for five minutes, and handed it in when the interviewer opened the door. He smiled pityingly at me.

I think he genuinely felt sorry for me.

*

This is not a sad story. It is in fact, a story which strengthens one’s faith in a benevolent force up there in the heavens, smiling sunnily down at us humans scurrying forth busily here there everywhere. This is because, after a couple of months, I got a letter from IIM Bangalore informing me that if I were interested, I could join the MBA programme on June 25^th. I was, and here I am now. Miracles happen.

No, I haven’t seen Wild-eye or Red-nose around here…