Business Card

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Two words I learned from my son soon after retiring from KGP and trying to settle down in Hyderabad are: (1) Business Card and (2) Front Office.

Not that I didn't know what objects they meant, but the very words were cute.

I asked him to show me his Business Card; and told him that I knew it as Visiting Card. But in Hyderabad no one apparently 'visits' anyone but for purposes of 'business'.

As far as I know, none of the 200 odd Professors at KGP went to the trouble of getting their business cards printed, at least till the 1990s when a handful of them had to travel to the corridors of power in Delhi for getting projects and funds. It was about that time when there appeared a new and thriving Section called: SRICC...decipher it yourself.

The lack of enthusiasm for making up one's Business Card is due to several factors.

First, Bengal was egalitarian (sorry, can't find a simpler word). Among the crowd of half a dozen canteen-troopers, there was no way you could locate the Dean, HoD, Senior Professor or a Research Scholar...they were all alike in their dress, mannerisms and bonhomie. The sole exception was GSS...he was always in a tie and rarely seen visiting canteens (he was a chain smoker and chain teasipper though...his 'boy' used to fetch his fags for him).

Next, Bengalis are too lazy to go to the trouble.

Next, there was no need for a Business Card even if you go to the Writer's Building. I once went there to meet the Health Secretary. The experience was a revelation. The Seat of Jyoti-da's formidable power was like our Old Building which then housed our Administrative Section once. You just go and say that you want to meet the Health Secretary and you are from IIT KGP. The armed guards will ask you to take the back gate because Jyoti-da is scheduled to arrive at the front gate. And the Health Secretary's room was like mine at KGP...no frills.

But I once tried to visited Shastri Bhavan in Delhi. The guy at the gate asked me for my card. I quit.

Anyway, in Hyderabad, everyone has a Business Card. Only difference is in its thickness, color printing, embossing and emblems that adorn it. The autowala and the electrical boy have cards as thin and flexible as carbon papers. The high-end chaps who have to visit Ministers print cards like the Platinum Credit Card of my son.

The other night at around 9 PM I went to our local pharmacy to get some Band-Aids. There was this lone Senior Citizen getting his cough-drops. He was curious about me and asked the usual questions like who, what, wherefore, why, how come...

As I answered all his queries, he opened his wallet and fished out his Business Card and offered it to me. I thanked him and pocketed it. And he was expecting that I would do the same. Since I never had any Business Card of mine, I was embarrassed. I could see that he was thinking that an eminent IIT Professor like me should be having a Gold Card but unwilling to do the honors. And while parting, he said that the ball in now in my court since I have his phone number and residential address...

I was then reminded of the Pickwick Papers incident where a refusal to reciprocate cards is a grievous offense:

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"Sir!", said the Doctor, in an awful voice, producing a card, and retiring into an angle of the passage, "my name is Slammer, Doctor Slammer, sir--Ninety-seventh Regiment--Chatham Barracks--my card sir, my card." He would have added more, but his indignation choked him.

"Ah!" repiled the stranger, coolly, "Slammer--much obliged--polite attention--not ill now, Slammer--but when I am--knock you up."

"You--you are a shuffler sir," gasped the furious Doctor, "a poltroon--a coward--a liar--a--a--will nothing induce you to give me your card, sir?"

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The offense was so grave that it led to a well-orchestrated duel with pistols...

And Dickens wrote it two centuries back.

Listen to our Autocrat at Boston at around the same time:

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...Old Age, this is Mr. Professor; Mr. Professor, this is Old Age.

Old Age: Mr. Professor, I hope to see you well. I have known you for some time, though I think you did not know me...I left my card on you longer ago than that, but I am afraid you never read it; yet I see you have it with you.

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I have a suspicion that the first thing John Gutenberg got printed on his invention were a set of ornamental Business Cards of himself: "JG Printers, Germany"

Not that we in Vedic India didn't have a formal way of introducing ourselves along with our Gotra, Rishis, Sutra, Veda and Name when we approach a Guru (like SDM). It is not a printed card, but a Sanskrit Verse I am supposed to recite with my hands closing my ears:

"Abhivaadaye Kashyapa Vatsaara Naidhruva Triyarsheya Pravaraanvita Kashyapa Gotrah Aaapasthambha Sutrah Yajusshakhaadhyaayee Prabhakara Sharman Ahambho Abhivaadaye!"

after which I am supposed to bend and touch my toes...since he may not like me to touch his feet till the Qualifiers are through...

SDM sure would have been bowled over...


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