They educate themselves because it's the in thing, fully aware they don't need a degree to earn money. For work experience, they boast that they assist their fathers in business and can produce certificates to support their claims. "Working" means ordering the minions around to fetch innumerable tumblers of tea. Why they want to do an MBA is beyond me. They are rolling in money. Business is in their blood. A corporate job will be such a let-down, I think.
In class, I often wonder what drives them to seek an MBA degree. It seems they never feel completely at home in the small scale of their family businesses, which are packed with extended relatives. They want to apply the strength of the family heirloom to fresh business ideas. It's a dare. What can business school teach them that they don't already know? While their parents disparaged education, they want to take up the gauntlet and find out.
Most of them are the first in their families to go to college. Their interest in sports and extra-curricular activities is genuine, as if to compensate for their lack of interest in academics, with which their forefathers have had an uneasy relationship. Once in college, they try to keep up the facade of remaining indifferent but college changes them subtly. They seek friendships unrestrained by the bounds of community and make sturdy professional relationships with people who follow a different religion.
Politically, they are unidimensional. They like Narendra Modi, but are eager to read The Hindu - which is as anti-Modi as it gets. Their quest for success is imprinted with a deep anti-intellectualism, but ironically forces them to be argumentative, for that is the way to an MBA. They love Karan Johar's films, not merely because Johar's works are a paean to a certain conservatism but also because his films wrap that selfsame traditionalism in a new-age cool. They love that the actress who sings the Radha song in Student of the Year also spends her days in an unfettered lust for Gucci and Prada.
When they read a passage about classical music, they are at pains not to showcase a lack of interest in high culture. It's not that they are entirely culturally barren. They do watch plays in Gujarati and are steeped in the history of their state - but that's about it. They do not see anything amiss in this self-sufficiency extending to everything, including the arts. They can be frightfully insular. For them, the big debates about postcolonialism and globalisation are passe since lack of fluency in English or the rise of new money does not bother them. They do not make an effort at networking because their surnames are enough to get them shoo-ins in most networks.
It would seem that their backgrounds heavily influence them. But they are changing. They question if they want to spend their lives in tiny shops, sipping milky tea as the years, and the bellies, wear on. Not just that, they are discovering love. They have romantic partners, most of them anyway. And for them, the malls dotting Mumbai are not crude edifices of wayward capitalism but comforting zones where they meet their loved ones, away from the prying eyes of families and relatives.
They wonder how they can feel so deliciously happy with their partners, on the one hand; and with their families back home, on the other. They fret over whether they would ever gather the courage to bring these disparate worlds together. They don't have answers - they are too young, after all - but they have a suspicion it won't happen if they do not sever their umbilical connection to a past that has few rosy tinges for them.
And so they wish to do an MBA.
They come in hordes, Shahs and Shanghvis, Patels and Pandyas, dropping anchor as if it were their last resort to the promised land. They never negotiate the fees, pay upfront, and are respectful towards instructors. They try and concentrate in class, if unsuccessfully. They look into their notebooks while catching a secret wink and smile embarrassingly when caught. They think they are smart, which they are, but it's an ignorant smartness, not yet aware of the world.
For some reason, I fear for them. Among all my students, the Gujaratis are the ones most bubbling with enthusiasm for a yet untested way of life. They carry with them the certainty that life will bring them different rewards than what it brought their parents, and they await this joy of discovery with open arms. I pray they succeed, if only so their hearts don't break.
The author has switched too many jobs in the past and hopes he can hold down this one