Mind My Business

One of the nicer things about doing this column is that every now and then all sorts of interesting people invite me to have a look at me. Seeing my column here, month after month, they probably ask themselves why this should be so, and what exactly it is that I'm doing to occupy this high-value slot. In short: What business do I have to be in The Kathmandu Post? So, they call me over so as to scrutinize me at close quarters. For I come from a Kalwar family which for generations had engaged in business. I was the first Kalwar to go into naukri, or service. Curious family members would ask me: So what is it exactly that you do when you go to your place of work? And I'd reply that I wrote things. What things? they'd ask. So I'd show them the things I wrote and they'd shake their heads in mystification and go away to do some more lucrative business and leave me to the inexplicable enigma of my naukri. I just did not fit into the fundamentals of a successful business model, which is based on the premise of identifying a specific demand and supplying goods or services to meet that demand in return for a profit. Business, all business, So what demand did I--or rather those who employed me or still unemployed--seek to supply, and with what? And no one could figure that out. Not my employers (bless 'em), nor my readers (bless 'em even more), and least of all me. So when week before last I got an invitation from the Khowpa Engineering College, Kathmandu, to visit them and interact with some of their faculty members and students I accepted with alacrity. If anyone could set me right, business-wise, it was the KHEC. Founded five or six years ago, the KHEC is associated with the Purwanchal University.
As I don't own a tie (or Microsoft, for that matter) I had no such qualms. Toothbrush tucked behind my ear, I headed KHEC-wards. The cab rolled into a luxury resort on the outskirts of Kathmandu. A long driveway (Careful, Peacock Crossing) wound through immense grounds under a star-spangled sky. A state-of-the-art institute, catering to the career advancement of 400-plus students, ranging in age between 22 and 40-some, set in 20-odd acres of campus. In an intense one-year course, with a price tag of Rs 1-2 lakh approximate, live-in students, some with families, have their professional skills honed the better to do cutting-edge business in the world's slowest growing economy.

The next day I toured the campus, met students and teachers, and found out more about doing business than Harvard ever taught me, what with my never having been there. I came away feeling confident. And who knows? Perhaps the bright folk at KHEC will be able to fathom what's perplexed me all my life: namely, what is my business. In other words, I hope the KHEC will mind my business. Because, it is only too evident, I'm congenitally incapable of minding my own.