Vantage point




Saturday, October 19, 2002

BUMPS AWAY or Uthaa Lo

IIM Lucknow has a weird tradition. We keep giving people bumps. I know what you will say, birthday bumps is a phenomenon common all over the world. But here birthday is just ONE of the occasions for bumps.

Again when I say bumps, I use a great deal of latitude. All over the world bumps is the name given to the activity when you pick up a guy (or a girl if you believe Don Quixote was talking through his hat) with one person holding each limb of his and let gravity pull him down and bring ground and buttock into contact. This leads to pain in the pelvic area. However in IIM, the definition differs (is that alliteration?). Here, 4 blokes pick a guy up and 40 others kick his butt...literally. This leads to an even greater pain in the pelvic area. of course not everyone kicks. There is one guy in our class who uses his slippers to make his frustration felt. He is now called Moses Tatya-Chappal Moses.

So as I said, these bumps are there for a birthday, but they are also there for extremely arbit reasons. And if any of these reasons weaves itself into the circumstances, up goes the cry "Uthaa Lo"(lift him) and the unfortunate bloke is subject to feisty kicks. The arbit reasons include -

- If someone tops a quiz, test, midterm, end term

- If someone cracks a particularly bad joke (No, I've never gotten bumps for this reason).

- If someone asks the teacher a question/doubt after the clock crosses the one hour mark.

- if someone asks a redunadant or irritating question

- generally

So whenever one of these reasons is detected a murmur goes around and a decision is made to bump someone. When the last teacher leaves after the last lecture, an enterprising bloke (usually the one who was bumped last time and is itching for revenge) runs and bolts the door. He then proceeds to say "Uthaa Lo" and the kickfest begins.

As I have said before, the road to MBA is a bumpy one.