The last lecture - B2B Marketing

Hello folks,
I wrote this few months back in my official college mail  after the last lecture of my most favorite subject happened from Oct 2009- Mar 2010. I felt so endearing towards it, i decided to publish it.
Cheers
Venkat

"What I thought was unreal, now for me... seems in some ways to be more real than what I think to be real... which seems now more to be unreal. "

Fred Alan Wolf - Theoretical Physicist in What the &^%$ do we know

Even in wildest dreams I didnt expect that I would be playing around with this quote in a business class which was christened officially as B2B. However, as nature unfolds its mysteries with infinite possibilities,


We were in for a ride which was different to say the least. Allow me to wallow in some nostalgic ramblings as I realize while I am typing this that although the learning has jus begun with the end of this course, the classroom sessions under the cosy confines Room No. 507 is over....

Sir's classes in a way reminded me of John keating's classes in Dead Poets Society, albeit, in a more serene, tranquilized by the wisdom of the teacher, amidst intellectual chaos. John Keating's line of convocation for the Dead Poets Society sounds as if it were written for our teacher, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

What is real? What is unreal? "How can you continue to see the world as real, if the self that is determining it to be real is intangible?". 


As the new era descends, we are realizing that we are beginning to shed the baggage we've carried along for centuries since the days of neanderthal man. Whats interesting in this baggage shedding exercise is, along with this baggage, we have obscured several phantom identities and egos under the carpet, that now we realize that with this exercise, we have to metamorphose our identity in this networked world. None of the surrogates which helped us create false identities, deluded by an endless cycle of fear and greed, are going to work. Although we might very well, in hindsight, make assertions that we came up with these surrogates, for convenience and simplifying the complexities, we realize now that we can never go far any more. 

An interesting and easy analogy can be seen in the case of films. Since the days when the first silent movie "Pundalik" was released in the year 1912 by N.G.Chitre and R.G. Torney( Wikipedia zindabad!), movies were all about surrogates. Its beguiling to see how we first began to see reality through movies which were initially black and white ( both literally and metaphorically). Movies of the previous era were all bout loving parents, the dutiful son Ram, great mythologies, loving couples and people who lived happily ever. Now, as we move on to the new era, movies are not about "they lived happily ever after". Movies have begun to depict what is real and what we've never been accustomed to. Movies like DEVD, Love,Sex aur Dokha, Wednesday, are perfect examples of how they are becoming more real. Needless to say, businesses have also become real. Gone are the days of baapus led businesses. Businesses have become agile, global and forthright. 
A big lesson amidst this lesson to be learnt in this all, is the end of era of compartmentalization. We've so cosily put things in compartments for years, in every sphere of life, be it personal or business. As the surrogates have become dead, we realize that these compartments have begun to converge. 

What does this mean for all us? 

Is there a possibility that all potentials exist side-by-side? 

Are all realities existing simultaneously

Well in a way these two questions help us look at the things. What it means to you, depends on how suitably you answer these questions to yourself. As Sir brilliantly said in one of his lectures, a statement i would treasure for years, "Im jus intellectualizing what you've internalized"