WHY ARE THEY THE BEST BUSINESSMEN OF ALL? WHY?

For the past 15 days I hadn’t had any non veg food thanks to my Mallu Boss who panics even at the very idea of seeing someone eating murdered food. And since he is the one who transfers my food burden to the company’s income statement—a provision that was not supposed to be created out of company’s profits as per the details provided to me in my interview—it conferred this moral sense of duty on me to sit with him at dinner and during lunch and have in my plate what pleased his eyes. Actually it was not an obligation. I could very well sit somewhere else and enjoy leg/tail pieces. But the chatter box as I am, I preferred to sit with him and enjoy north Indian veg food with south Indian tadka on it.

That day I got this chance to please my palates. My boss had his B’day and we decided to go out to have dinner. Further it was decided to have food of one’s choice rather than to form a consensus on it MBA style. So five of us—2 herbivorous and 3 omnivorous including me—had our day. Venue—Karol Bagh. My boss unsurprisingly decided to go for a south Indian restraunt and we—also unsurprisingly—chose to avoid the same. Ravi & I left after others had boarded the metro. And by the time we reached there others couldn’t keep the mice in their belly under control. So we two were left. Now the problem was I didn’t want to eat alone and Ravi being a hardcore Gujju & ‘XXX’ veggie couldn’t sit in front of a non-veg thali. He was going to this restraunt named ‘Suruchi’ known for its Rajasthani & Gujarati Thali. So I decided to try something that was going to be a ‘First Time’ in the life of this guy from Ganga Kinare—A Rajasthani thali (Dont laugh OK!). Of course I had it earlier at Dolly’s home but that was a modified version I should say.

OK so we entered the restraunt. And astonishingly I found more waiters than eaters there—all dressed up in typical Marwari/Gujarati attire. The order was predecided so we didn’t have to spend time looking at menu card. One Rajasthani thali for me and one Gujarati thali for Ravi. Well I didn’t have any idea that they would take the order in its ‘literal’ sense and put two thalis without anything in it before us. I was just going to say that “No no! You took it wrong. We mean Gujarati thali + Gujarati khana in it”. Before I could utter a word, they came back with small bowls. I couldn’t count how many were there in their tray but definitely they were more than the diners sitting there. And they started putting them in our thalis one by one. One, two, three, four...... and still counting!!!! “Oye bhai!! Are you gonna use my empty thali as a tray?” I was just to speak when one of them came with chhach and another with FOUR types of chutney with him and started serving us. I was still unable to figure out what they are going to do with those SEVEN bowls in each thali because the FOUR types of chutney were served outside those bowls. Then came Salads. FIVE types of vegetables in it. That was an acceptable number. But wait!! Salad too outside those bowls. SEVEN empty bowls!!!! For the next 120 seconds I felt myself tripling in size or in number. I was not one. I was three. At least the assortment of food in my thali was trying to make me believe so. This many varieties of sabjis we don’t have even in a whole week menu in our home. SIX types of sabjis. Still one bowl left empty. Before I could see anything in it, here came two more guests—an all new bowl of dal-bati and another of churma. NINE bowls and still the feast seemed far from over. Then one stranger came in the so far empty bowl. I couldn’t make out whether the new arrival was a sabji or a dessert either by its look or as I later realized by its taste (It was sweet sabji probably). Yeh lo ji! The real dessert had come. Another bowl of aamras. So TWO new bowls... one & a half of dessert and another half of sabji.

I was just going to start when I realized rotis are yet to come. My Gosh!!!!!! Four types of rotis/puris—Plain roti, Puran Puri, Bajre ki roti and bati already there—all dipped in supposedly pure ghee.

Finally wait ended. We were supposed to start now. Ravi started with puran puri and I with bewilderment and that didn’t taste as good. I just followed Ravi with puran puri and while chewing a bite of it, my mouth was working slower than my mind. Which one after this!? Even after finishing this whole puri I had no clue what to take now. Just to buy some more time for my mind I stuffed this (unnamed) thing. I went back to my CAT-preparation days and started recollecting all the formulas of permutation & combination and the probability theory suggested me that I couldn’t try all of them. I am not exaggerating things but I really had to struggle to keep pace with Ravi and choose next thing to eat. My hands were going forth, retreating, again going forth and then again I had to hold them back till I could convince them that this is what should be the next. Only the speculation of recession reaching its worst had such an uncertainty. Suddenly I started feeling terrible. I was going to be an MBA finance, also trying my luck with CFA let alone the commerce background that I have. All the fundas of Quantitative Aptitude and Risk (& Uncertainty) Analysis had taken a tumble. And that Gujju guy before me was so calm; enjoying his dinner like it was a day-to-day chore for him to work with these numbers...SEVEN+FIVE+SIX+NINE+TWO.....

Then something just blew my mind. I possibly solved the Ambani riddle. Why these Gujjus and Marwaris are so sharp? Why do they rule over not only the whole of India but the whole of world when it comes to business acumen? And why NMIMS has majority of Gujjus (& Marwaris) in it?
We start learning higher mathematics only when we reach 11th Standard. These guys learn it every day twice since their childhood. We apply P&C when we leave school. These guys do it since the time they start holding spoon. We use risk analysis to minimize uncertainty about things they don’t even need to learn it because their food does the trick for them.

The fight was over now. This dinner was much better than Mutton Pulao I planned to have- not because it was tastier but because it gave me a new recipe of success.

And for the very first time in my life, my hands were more tired than my jaws after a meal. And so was my mind owing to those tedious calculations.