Ek Moad...

I had shortlisted a few titles for this post. It goes like this:
- Ye Kahan Aa Gaye Hum
- Ek Moad Aaya
- Kaisi Paheli Zindegaani

Pretty atypical title for my posts. I know. But things of late have not been quite the same. Even though the title says "Ek moad...", its actually thousand "moads" (that too of the ghat types, hairpin bends you may call them, or even blind turns) that landed me where I have landed today.

So basically all this blabbering deals with me landing up in academia after almost 10 years of corporate life. Ten years of five working days in a week. Ten years of bosses, deadlines, presentations and strategies. Of performance appraisals and Italian marble offices. Ten years of revolving chairs, flickering screens, swipe cards and unused notepads and pens. Ten years of calling CEOs and VPs by their first names and (only!!) wishing to come home at 6 pm.

And today here I am, as Associate Professor in the KIIT School of Management, Bhubaneswar. A black-haired boy in the crowd of gray hairs. Or rather a haired boy in a mostly hairless world. A world of six working days, of summer vacations. A world infested with "Sirs" and devoid of first names. A world of prefixes that affixes itself to surnames (the first names gets mostly ignored) - "Prof. Kar", "Dr. Sengupta" and so on. A world where the cabin lights go out exactly at 6 pm.

Even though I haven't started taking classes, I am getting myself used to the feeling of being a "Professor". Getting used to sit through cultural programs (and in the first row, which never happened when I was a student myself), evaluating competitions, awarding winners and writing for the "faculty column". I am getting used to "surnames" and "sirs" and "madams". Getting used to having a laptop with no security and installation restrictions (ask anyone from the IT industry and they will tell you what restrictions mean). Also getting used to lots of pens and papers (the only thing I used for writing earlier was Windows notepad application)

Someone just came inside and affixed a black plastic block on my glass door that reads "Prof. Ashutosh Kar" on the outside, in golden letters. Inside, to me, it's just a black piece of plastic affixed to the glass.

May be some day it would grow transparent and I too will see myself as a "Prof".