Those days I used to teach an MBA course at Alliance Business School, as a visiting faculty. Now ABS is part of Alliance University. ABS then was a two storey building, built on small site near BTM layout. It has grown into a huge university now. I must have reached early that day. I was waiting for taking my class . Just then, the receptionist came running behind me and said. “Sir I have been searching for you. This must be the fifth time the person is calling. The call is from Essae Chandran Institute”.
“Don’t worry I will call back later” I said. I thought Dr.Valecha must have left a message for me as I was supposed to finish some of his work. I kind of took some vicarious pleasure in making him chase me a bit like this. I used to do that to people I liked. I still do at times. More I like them more I do this, though converse is not true.
“No ! it seems it is something very important. Call is still on hold, can you please take the call?” insisted receptionist.
I was not really prepared to face Dr.Valecha right away. However, as this looked rather unusual, as receptionist said it was the fifth call. Leaving out possible counting errors and padding up for making me answer, still you end up with 3 calls in ten minutes, very high and unusual anyways. Thinking this way, I walked across the lobby and took the phone and said “Hello”.
“Mr.Hegde!!”. It was his secretary, as expected. There was more than usual emphasis in saying my name this time. “Can you come quickly to Dr.Valecha’s house? Doctor Valecha died yesterday out of massive heart attack. They want you to come to his house. All people have gathered there now. Why you didn’t come to Institute yesterday, doctor was asking for you all the time! ”.
I had heard it right. For a minute I felt it was all a bad dream. I must have been dreaming. Things were still. She spoke some more for some time. I was not too sure what I was hearing. After a minute or so, I heard her asking me still if I could come to his house.
Dr. Gopal Valecha looked more like an American, than an Indian. He was very fair, medium height and dapper dressed like the partners of hot shot international consulting firms, like Coopers & Lybrand or Boston consulting etc. He was in fact, more consulting like than the many of the partners of those firms. Carried himself very well and was very suave in his manners. He spoke very softly and rather too slowly. At times you had to make an attempt to hear him. Many times, I thought he did it rather intentionally either to make us more attentive to what he was saying or to save his energy. He was simply superb in his training sessions. More so in his sessions with us – Purandar and me. I enjoyed every conversation we had, though most of them ended up raising more questions later than I had in the beginning, no matter what we discussed – psychology, leadership, philosophy, spirituality whatever... When asked, he would say “Good. That is a sign of growing up”.
Dr.Valecha had a Ph.D. from Ohio state university and was very proud of it. He was a psychologist and did his doctorate in leadership psychology. His clients had tremendous respect for him. Most of them were over awed by his fluency in his subject. He had a kind of fan following. He was one of the founding members of IIM- B the numero uno of India’s business schools. ... And..... I was his partner in his few engagements!!. That was the thing for me! I am not kidding, he told lot his clients that i was his partner! He was like my friend guide philosopher.
I request you to take that partner thing with a pinch of salt. I neither had nor have any such illusions, but I liked it when he said I was his partner. The gesture was too kind, and springs out of very rare generosity usually found in great teachers alone and generally at very old age. He was then a towering figure, a philosopher a management guru whom your intellect cannot fathom. He was, then like everything I ever wanted to be. A kind of manifested, fulfilled dream that I was chasing, which i could touch every day and have coffee with. This made it so easy for me. All that I had to do was to read what he read, I had 24 hours access to his library, act as he acted, dress as he did speak as he did, lecture as he did, gesture as he did..... You see, all that, just a ready reference. A recipe to my success!! Well, in retrospect, I feel I liked him for lot more than just that.
That man, now, was dead and gone!
I must share with you something really interesting. This would be the most important thing about doctor. If there was one thing that attracted me to doctor Valecha this it was this ability. So I suggest you read this carefully. This happened in my first few days of meeting him. He told me that, if I was free on Wednesday, I could come and attend a class he was taking. He was running an Executive MBA program at Essae. Well, I came to the class. It was not really a class. It was team of top managers from TAFE or something. There were about 20-25 of them I suppose.
After few minutes of discussions doctor Valecha said he would take 40-45 minutes of lecture. That was the best I have heard in management, in terms of its impact and clarity! You might get confused still later. But so long as you were hearing him, something which was so abstract and vague, appeared so clear and logical and certain, ah! It was magic.
Dr Valecha’s lectures were more like music, than lectures that most us would know. I have heard good ones, trust me. But he was a class apart. He was maestro of leadership, management psychology and more than anything – lecturing, period. It would be more like hearing Osho, if you are Osho ‘s fan. But Osho would be on spirituality. Dr.Valecha would be on psychology and management. More so on leadership psychology which of course mirrored some kind of spirituality. His was prose- poetry! It was very logical, carefully measured, looked too hard to say unless rehearsed like in a movie. Words kind of flew mellifluously with some kind of exact precision and gave you intellectual jerks, right jerks at right time. First few minutes you listened, much like you listened to alaap of Hindustani classical and then he would take you to a different level where you would be so ready to agree to what he saying, you are in a kind of Dr.Mehalyi’s flow!. Only good music make you feel that kind of joy. Certainly these were of different kind not just entertaining type. But you had that intellectual, release. You would say aha!
to be done ..
