How Not To Be a Birla

Whenever I visit the beach near my house, I take a long look at the awe-inspiring design of Mr. Brij Mohan’s residence. It looks and feels like a Rajastani Fort amidst a sprawling premise complete with carefully manicured lawns.

I just don’t look at it. I kind of introspect. I try to imagine Mr. Brij Mohan when he was in his teens. What was it that he did that I didn’t do? How could he build such a beautiful mansion (which he seldom visits by the way) on the sea front? How did he become so successful?

I return to my laptop and try to chronicle all the bad decisions I have so far taken in my life. I try to pinpoint the single most important factor why I am Venu and he is Brij Mohan.

Guess what? I end up with more than a hundred reasons. That is when I get the idea of writing this article – How Not To Be a Birla.

Writing this article as you might have already guessed has been a relatively a simple affair for me if you set aside a glaring fact that my fingers have absolutely no idea what letter comes to the left of “F” on the standard computer keyboard. All I had to do was to expand the hundred and one reasons – each into a sentence or two. Voila! I have my own article.

It is highly improbable that someone might actually be interested in reading this article but nevertheless, let me not scare my unfortunate reader with all the hundred and one reasons. I will dwell upon the most glaring reasons.

First and foremost, though Brij Mohan’s palace stands quite stately on the beaches of The Bay of Bengal in Chennai, the truth is that Brij Mohan is a Gujarati. Venu on the other hand is from Andhra Pradesh. That should explain everything. I don’t think I need to explain this in detail. Most of the successful men in this world are either from the United States or Gujarat, the G-state.

That said; let us try to dissect the psyche of a common Gujarati. How he acquires the business acumen at the tender age of twelve is a matter of mystery even to the Ph D’s at Harvard. This twelve year old guy can any day win a business war over his worthy opponents from Harvard. It is in his genes. He is a G-Man… a Gujju man. He is bound to be successful. He is bound to be building palaces like the one I talked about a paragraph ago.

Secondly, I see myself committing the royal mistake of writing the Engineering Entrance examination. I should have studied pure Science or even better, arts. I would have had no chance of landing a job in that case. So I would have attempted some business. Agreed that I have no G-genes in me but my brother is a long time resident of Ahmedabad. I believe that does have some effect. (I am writing this now. See?)

So what did I do when I lost my “hard-earned” computer science seat to a girl student whose rank was a thousand more than mine thanks to the latest drive of Women Empowerment from the Government of Andhra Pradesh? I joined Electrical and Electronics engineering in the same university… which turned out to be a decent branch contrary to what I thought.

Instead of spending my time in I.S. Mahal, the only English movie theatre in the town, I chose to study B. L. Theraja, the man every Electrical engineer loves. I ended up with almost 80% in engineering and a decent job in a chemical factory which kinda ruined my PG plans effectively. Ah I have a job… Why should I worry about GATE?

Thus spake Zarathustra, Let Venu be a nameless employee of a big corporation. My childhood friend, who happened to have a distant G-cousin and who could not unfortunately clear the engineering entrance examination is now the managing director of a milk dairy which exports to the gulf nations. News is that he has recently bought a Toyota Camry automatic. Last checked, I was roaming in front of the Rajastani Palace on my motorbike.

Another friend of mine: Sreedhar, a top student from Electronics and Communications, a real genius who never got more than sixty percent in any examination but who could talk endlessly about Somalia’s failed regime. This guy cleared the enigma called CAT and joined another mystery called Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. Till then, he was OK. He was the faithful Andhra Pradesh, bespectacled genius whose only aims in life were a plush job and Aishwarya Rai. However the moment he stepped on the G-Soil to pursue his macro economic goal of management, he had undergone a massive recycling of his central nervous system. He discontinued the purportedly best course in the country in less than three months and went back to Nidadavolu, a small town in Andhra Pradesh to start his own business.

Now his turnover is more than a crore. His wife is a close second to Aishwarya Rai. Understandable. If you can roam around in a Kinetic Aquila when your S-class is being serviced, you get the best dames in the world.

And I stare at the likes of him wondering why Venu is Venu and Brij Mohan is Brij Mohan.

I can go on and on talking about my life but in my opinion I think the main reason why I am on the wrong side of the compound wall of this palace is that I have spent close to an hour typing this junk out. A G-man would have utilized this hour in a far better way… To earn more money.

And you cannot become a Birla either. You have just wasted five minutes of your precious time by reading this article.

That’s how one doesn’t become a Birla.

Now don’t get me started on whether Birla has a G-connection or not. It doesn’t matter.