I don’t know whether I should be amused, disappointed or flattered.
A young man from Chennai came to visit me last week, on a courtesy call as directed by his father who is a friend of mine. This young man had come to Pune to attend an interview for a job opening in a Logistics firm here. The young man is an alumnus of the same Business School of which I am an alumnus too.
This young lad spent a couple of hours with me and scooted off to attend his interview and return to Chennai.
I received a phone call from my friend yesterday, that when the young man was informed that I am alumnus of the same Business School as he was from, he was zapped and told his father that he was under the impression that I was a philosopher / retired Tambrahm school teacher! My friend in turn was zapped and wanted to know why I had not mentioned my qualifications to the young man. I simply responded that an occasion did not rise on the subject.
This led me to ask a few of my friends who are also alumni here as to whether they would have recognised me as an alumnus had they not met me under the aegis of the alumni association and without exception they responded that they would not have. When I shared what the my friend had conveyed about my being a philosopher / Tambrahm school teacher, one of them went so far as to say that it was stereotyping me!
In case you are wondering, the image of the pundit on the top is that of Chanakya.
Strange the father hadn’t mentioned it, but apparently the conversation went well so was it really that important?
Cheerful Monk recently posted..Fire Season
‘Iyengars follow the Visishtadvaita philosophy propounded by Sri Vikanasa or Sri Ramanujacharya. They are divided into two sub-sects: Vadakalai (Northern branch) and Thenkalai (Southern branch). most of them are stern worshippers of lord Vishnu. They even name Ganesha as Thumbikkai alwar, signifying their staunch worship of Lord Vishnu.’
is this the one you would have been included in perhaps?
the thing that makes it interesting to me is that your ‘awareness’ or ‘awakenedness’ (probably not even a word!) but that it precedes you now as your wisdom by hindsight as you call it has become more predominant than your usual ‘business’ good knowledge! my western take on it anyway.
it’s something that would make Lao Tzu and the Buddha laugh in delight! LOL. SH
tammy j recently posted..baby butts and coconut
No, I come from the Iyer branch but grew into being a Vedantin thanks to a brilliant teacher and his student who in turn became my teacher. If you want details, I will write separately to you.
yes, it’s always interesting when you don’t happen to talk of something that could have been of significant interest to another…
I had a few conversations over the w/end that somehow my other people within whatever group I was in – got a huge surprise when I would mention something that interests me no end. And it was assumed that due to my “age” wasn’t where I should have such an interest!
I can’t recall anything to muse about here…
I think that you have hit the nail on the head. It was my age and my not having brought up the subject of our mutual alumni connection that made the young man consider me as he did.