Dear Sarvanama (A to Z):
You need not be unsure whether this artefact is meant to convey anything to you. You will not identify with it until you have read a few paragraphs ahead. ‘A t0 Z’ certainly includes you, as does Sarvanama (I, we, you, he, she, it, they….) if you realize the content to shake your memory a bit. If you find yourself addressed, you may bother to comment after the post where I went wrong in representing you.
This artefact should not come to you as a surprise if you know me as a writer. I keep inventing ways of communicating rhetorically. Most of you already know this too. Let me remind you of a few past experiments: Small People Small Tales, Ask Thy Tutor Three Great Questions, Challenge Thy Tutor in a Style, A Letter to My Writer Persona, among others. Some of you partook in them; some others probably scanned them.
This epistle connotes those who joined Kathmandu University during my ‘influential’ tenure. By influential I denote the time when I had minimal impact either as a recommender, team leader or evaluator. I mean those who might at least remember that I was the first person to welcome you with a copy of your appointment letter, and hand extension letters in the consecutive semesters with a delightful smile. The trend began in 2004, and ensued through 2005, and lasts in diverse forms until today. I do not want to name the folks who do not like to be named in the list of those who at any moment might need to take my name as one of the significant benefactors of their lives. They say, and I know, that it is as much virtuous not to publicize the rights you do for people as to confess the wrongs you do against them.
When I address A to Z (one of you), I do it with a purpose. Have you been in a position to recommend and groom someone in the foundation of their careers? If you have, why did you help them? Did you do it for the satisfaction of being helpful? Or to build someone’s life? Or just for an easy plea to brag publicly that so-and-so person was worthless until you performed that divine duty of recommending them an opportunity? I am writing to you here to let you know that I have so far not told anyone about the fact that I selected you for the potential to serve my team longer than your competitor. Not necessarily because you were indispensably intelligent and universally acceptable. I know you were as great as I was when I was selected for similar potential. Among the ones I had accepted as a team, only two quit early, and for their own hubris. One more switched to government service, and the one who came in replacement opted higher education abroad.
I wish to share with you this satisfaction that my recommendations were founded on far-sightedness. If you don’t mind, I will someday feature each of you in my blogposts. But before I gather inspiration to craft the saga of benefaction with you as protagonists, let me feature myself in the light that you have probably ignored. Do not worry. I am not writing an endless list of what defines me.
First, if you admit that you came in because I facilitated your entry, do not try to interpret it as my way of earning gratification by receiving reciprocal treatment or public acknowledgement. I have so far favored people without expectation of repay. If I had any such intent, I would never let people walk their ways by clearly describing their career trajectories at KU. There was no greed for credits to keep important information concealed and let its bits drip only when you asked for. I never compelled you to come around my office asking about your future.
Second, I encouraged everyone to upgrade yourself. My vision of incentive involved one of the two tracks: raise, or education. I primarily emphasized professional development before asking any of you to update your resumés. Thus, each of you was asked to join a higher degree within a few years of your entry. You have seen that those who failed to appreciate or comply with this incentive also failed to get the former (the raise). I wanted to make you academically ready so that you could also compete for career milestones outside. Your benefits were twofold: employment, and the prospect for better career even at termination!
Third, I always wanted to build a convergent team out of disciplinary and personal distinctions. I tried to bind you around a shared ideal of a transdisciplinary department encouraging one’s expertise and experience to substantiate another’s. Initiatives like the interdisciplinary discussion series that ran as far as sixty episodes, and Friday lecture series that saw a few gatherings were the testimony. I believe you haven’t forgotten these weekly sharings. These were costless and sustainable in that you as a presenter consented to pay the incentive for tea and biscuits. My faith in unity was so deep that I sometimes penalized you without letting you feel disadvantaged. You may relate this with the transfer of one senior faculty member to a center closer to his home, and termination of another’s tenure as freedom to concentrate on academic activities. And, when someone bragged about their potential for better leadership, I worked surreptitiously to get them hooked in a small but pressing portfolio, which never felt like revenge.
If your conscience is in place, you will admit someday that you must forget the moments I quarrelled with you. But will you forget those I quarrelled for you? If you refuse to forget the instances I fought with you, will you also refuse to forget the instances I fought about you? Fought for the collective good of the team and the students? On my part, I simply ignored the moments of annoyance and cherished those of ordeals when you were at my side.
Perhaps wrongly, I tried to build a family where, at times, personal whims transformed each of us into more disconnected individuals. This might have been the judgement of those who made mountains of precarity when you reported the mole hills of disgruntlement. The causes were most of the time as minuscule as a change of time-table or denial of an unwarranted errand outside the University. If I reacted to folks and if the reaction felt hurtful, I did not relent. That’s me. And you did not try to drift apart from the team owing to that reaction. That was you. You must have inferred at least one maxim there. It is that the most dangerous factor in a leader is the intent to lead by harming or disgracing a team member and the most binding one is the commitment to protecting their self-esteem. I tried to practice this maxim no matter whether you found it to manifest in my performances.
So, dear A to Z, let me murmur a little more about what you may not know of my character. You know, I begin to create a distance with an individual — a good, honest individual — when I realize that closeness creates problems between us. Simple ideal: if you must save a relationship, just stay away from it. It will work with you, too. Just reflect upon one reality about me. Everyone who ran away from me due to some misunderstanding came closer for a more profound connection. We reunited without confession, without explanation, in a typical Nepali way where ‘sorry’ and ‘thank you’ are only alien platitudes.
What I reflect so far should not give you an inference on good-bad, like-dislike, love-hate binaries. I think I am in the stage of transcending these as trifles. To reiterate in a different register, I carried this hangover of being useful to humankind. If I stood in a position to do any favor to anyone, it was because of the people like you, who deserved it. To be of service to the deserving was a virtue that I came with my birth.
I know, and you know, that quite a few people in our circle of acquaintances do not like me. I assume that majority of the dislikers are the ones who have never been in close contact with me. These are those who have heard of me being of a category which they regard as not-likable. For example, the illusion of me being among the high and mighty most of the time, or as one who had the knack to influence policies that advantaged one group over others. Some of my dislikers are those that find it hard to sway my sturdy simplicity. I mean a demeanor that keeps impenetrable a few inter-personal attributes which ensure great bonding among those associated with me or those I associate with.
Trying to be universally likable is a perennial burden I dislike bearing. I choose to live the simplest way possible in the given share of this planet and planetary occurrences. So, I do not dislike people who do not like me. I only sympathise with them for the perennial burden they carry in my name, my identity. I also find myself helpless in not being able to rid them of this burden in that they have shunned communication with me.
As I reflect upon the like-dislike binary, I consider myself to dislike those who are dishonest, those who discredit harmless folks, those who drag innocent souls to disgrace, and those who fail to discern their own fault lines that have led to a surge of sufferers and revenge-seekers.
If you can manage to retain group with whom you can sip a cup of tea unconditionally whenever you wish. If you can run into one of this group without having to realize it is always you who must pay or be paid for. I am hinting at the need to reflect if you (not) belong to such a circle. Paying for tea, in fact, must be the non-existent thing in the sphere of camaraderie. You can offer your heart and soul in the name of such company.
Do I have one? Do you, O’ Sarvanama?