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COLUMN SARWAR AHMED

Take home
Akbar Hassan invited us over for a cup of tea on Friday afternoon. It was a small get-together of students of Dr Saad Andaleeb who was our teacher at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), before he moved to the US where he teaches now.
As I stepped into Akbar's meticulously kept Briddhi' office, he introduced his friends. Rozina Aliya, a senior banker, Maajedul Huq, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Police, Moiz Siddiqi, heading a consumer product company, and Gulam Sarwar with a leasing company. Then Shamim Bhai (remember him from BTV news?) came in, as well as Majedur Rahim, who had just recently quit his well-paid CEO job leaving behind seventeen years of corporate life, in quest of greener pastures. With Salim Akbar's arrival, the room warmed up to his wise jokes. Jawad from Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) joined, as did Ferhat AnwarofIBA.
Akbar, our host, had left money-minting corporate management positions to set up 'Briddhi'. Like a messiah wanting to develop people, he has struggled and succeeded
in setting up a training facility, which I believe is one of the rarest, richest and the best. He has poured in his earnings, to invest in equipment and facilities, and to make his training programmes memorable, enjoyable and effective.
As we evoked the past, catching up on who's who and where, Andaleeb Sir walked in. It was a pleasure to meet up with him after all these years. He has put on some weight. You have to eat and eat when you are here, he tells you, and
there is no escape from Bengali hospitality. The conversation turned to the time we had in IBA during his days. Salim and I recalled how the two of us would ride a motorbike to Taj Jute Backing Mills on the bank of Sithalakya, adjacent to Kanchpur Bridge. We did that for a week to complete Andaleeb Sir's course assignment I shudder to think of it given the madness of today's Dhaka traffic! We finally presented him the project report, cover bound with jute backing
cloth.
Rozina recalled how Andaleeb Sir would give them take home exams. Take home exams? Yes, he would give them questions in the evening with a deadline of submitting the answers by 8 in the morning. the next day Answering would be like writing a thesis, literally taking the whole night, and bleary eyed, they would submit their answers the next morning.
You know why I would do that? Andaleeb Sir interjected.
I believe IBA takes in the best and I felt you would one day be at the helm of affairs of a business, like a captain of a ship. You needed to learn how to work under pressure, to be disciplined in managing time and meet unearthly deadlines, to leant how to focus. When you are a captain of a ship, you never know when the sea will get rough, and IBA's teachings was precisely for that, to learn how to handle the unexpected, to decide the best course for the business in turbulent times. I gave you assignments of which I did not have answers. I was looking for your creativity, your approach to handling the unknown.
Over ample snacks and tea arranged by /\kbar and his team, we talked of how our social skills helped us navigate the academic and not so academic whims of our IBA teachers. Beyond the academic values of learning, we realised that the intense pressure of doing assignments, tire unpre-dictably of daily quizzes, helped mould us into being decisive, and look beyond the chaff for the grains.
Who can forget Dr. Alimullah Miyan's (founder Vice Chancellor of IUBAT, our
teacher then) marketing research? Salim and I remembered that we were up for a whole week as we struggled to complete our report on marketing of bank services. The four of us would take turns to sleep for an hour or two. as the others would continue to tabulate results, interpret them and prod the typists to type the hundreds of pages, as the report finally shaped out. As Salim says, we may still owe money to the typists who spent those finger breaking days with us! Those grueling, physically punishing day’s helped us to build up our determination to meet deadlines and learn to bite what we can chew!
As dusk settled and the evening sky began to turn dark, it was time to say goodbye. Andaleeb Sir echoed his farewell feelings. As we were the fortunate few who have had lite best, it was time for us to give back to our country. He asked of us how we could do anything that would benefit our people, our country’. He bade goodbye and left us to answer this take-home ques lion, heavily weighing on our conscience.
The writer is the managing director of Syngenta Bangladesh Ltd