Conversations with the alter ego (Flashback series)

‘Heard you’re writing for the ISB blog and all’, altar ego snapped suddenly, breaking the calm of the mid night nothingness.

‘Eh…..ya’, I replied uneasily. I hate it when he appears uncalled and unexpected. Just when you don’t want questions. Just when you don’t want conversations.

‘And I heard it’s this glorified story of how you mere mortal transformed into this Kryptonite eating B school grad of sorts. Of how you can read Adam Smith beyond page 26 and solve optimization problems that have double integration signs and Greek symbols you don’t even know how to pronounce’, he laughed. I hate that laugh. That questioning laugh. Sarcasm, derision and all things negative written all over it.

‘How do you know?’, I wanted to ask. But what the hell; he’s my bloody other half. How would he not know?

‘I know it because I know it’, he giggled.

And even before I could interject, he continued ‘So what’s it gonna be like. The Harvard Business Review meets Economist kinda articles eh? Think of you sitting in front of your laptop pouring over HBR articles for inspiration, just because your blog submission is due by 12 o clock’. Laughter.

‘Hey, hey, wait a minute’, infuriated me quips back.

‘And do write one of those wishful thinking ‘If I were a consultant, I would wear Giovanni to work everyday’ kinda articles as well. If not perspective, they will at least add humour’ he continued, like my voice never carried at all.

I had half a mind to smash the face peering out of the mirror with that questioning snigger plastered all over.

‘Listen. I don’t think you’re ever gonna get this but what makes you think I am gonna make this a blow your trumpet space for godsake. All this aims at is to give a perspective to life in a B school. And I swear it’s gonna be as interesting as any of those 150 other book versions plaguing the roadsides screaming perspectives from a B school grad. But I swear I’ll be different. For one, I’ll give a perspective – to life, the times and all that jazz’, I screamed profoundly.

Laughter. Uproarious laughter.

Sound of shattering glass. I hate it when he laughs like that.

There are no stitches; but take rest, the doctor told me. And I am still trying to convince the housekeeping guys that it was the freakin dynamites at Gachibowli that made the mirror mysteriously fall onto my hands and shatter. I don’t think they are buying it. Damn.