AIKYA FAMILY

ISB is known to introduce quite a number of concepts to the Indian business education. One such concept is the idea of “Aikya” Family in ISB. Through this concept every ISBian finds a second home to ISB during his/her stay in Hyderabad. Today morning was scheduled for the Aikya meet for the class of 2007. Normally every study group is assigned one family. F-6 (that’s my study group) was allocated one such family.
The time of the meet was fixed at 9:45 and today being a Sunday morning, the members of my study group were slightly lazy in making it to the atrium on time. By the time we reached, someone informed us that the person who is allocated for F-6 is already in the atrium. That means he arrived before us, or rather he arrived at 9:45 and we arrived few minutes after that time. As we walked close towards him, we noticed a very modest looking person with a pleasant and comforting demeanor.
I was the first person to shake hands with him. After that, he took his name card and handed it over to me. As my eyes discovered that designation on his card, suddenly I decided to stop talking and allowed K (one of my batch mates) to do the talking. I slightly took a couple of steps backwards and allowed K to have the pleasure of accepting the name card of the gentleman. I looked into the card again to discover the rest of the contents. This person is none other that Spl. Chief Secretary to the Government, in other words, one of the senior most IAS officers and topmost bureaucrats of the country.
All my teammates except H (who was out of the town to celebrate her brothers wedding and hence couldn’t make to the meeting) were there by then, and the discussions had turned out to be quite informal. It was quite a nice experience to talk about reservations, emerging markets, business and government with the top official. I also learned that his daughter is an ISB alumnus and is doing great in London.
The most interesting aspect of the discussion was the extra-ordinary modesty with which the big man carried himself. How true it is……Higher a person goes, more modest he becomes.
I have added a snap of F-6 with the Chief Secretary.