My Favourite Backbencher
MY FAVOURITE BACK BENCHER
Lecture on Business Communication.
Premise: In Communication of business, “We works better.”
The class to pair up according to these roll numbers:
1-11
2-22
So that’s how we paired up.
I was Roll no. 8. He was Roll no. 28.
I hadn’t noticed him in the first 14 days of Marketing Management Course.
Fourteen days. Same classroom. Same faces. And I had somehow missed him completely.
We read our common assignment:
Roll no 8: I will establish the brand by creating a differentiator.
Roll no 28: We will establish the brand by creating a differentiator.
“Prof. Kaul is right. Doesn’t ‘we’ sound better?” said Roll no 28.
I answered, “I prefer ‘I’.”
It was a small grammatical disagreement. I didn’t know then that it would become the beginning of a very long “we”.
The next I know, Roll no 28, a habitual backbencher, had jumped to the 1st bench beside me.
“Did you join late? Haven’t seen you ?Why do you always sit in the back bench?”
“Why don’t you? It’s very freeing there. I carry a few books and newspaper. I read if I am not interested in the prof’s words.”
“That’s a sin. You should always note what the prof.is saying.”
I had never sat in the back bench in my entire school/college life.
It wasn’t just a seat. It was a worldview I had never understood.
The prof. had come and I started making notes on 4Ps of marketing.
He looked amused and kept staring at my notes.
These backbenchers will never amount to anything much, I thought, and kept scribbling.
I was mentally categorising him before I had even got to know him.
Exactly 48 hours later…
I was in the back bench and reading the book Positioning by Al Ries.
Forty-eight hours. That was all it took.
I did not take any notes, but I read all the articles he was carrying in the thick green file.
"Marketing fascinates me, but no definition cramming for me.I like ideas. I dislike reproducing them.
Suddenly he raised a hand and asked a question.
“But you were not listening.”
“Who said I wasn’t? I listen to all the relevant bits.”
“Who decides what is relevant?”
“You because only you know what you really like.”
I realised I hadn’t allowed myself the freedom to ask myself what I had ever liked.
I had spent years becoming good at what I was supposed to like.
The first question I asked myself was: Did I really like talking to this guy?
This guy who did not fit into my definition of a first bencher I could spend the rest of my life with.
My definition of a husband had, until then, been suspiciously similar to my definition of a first bencher.
“Jaya, you know, even if we win the rat race, we are still rats.”
I don’t remember what we were discussing. I remember the sentence.
By the end of the year of MM course, I had decided:
Backbencher, Roll no 28, it is.
Not because he had moved to the front bench. Because I had finally understood why he never needed to.
Thank you my favourite backbencher.
Life with you has been watching everyone trying to hustle up to the front bench.
The front bench of success. Of recognition. Of proving that you have made it.
We have taken it easy. Nothing to prove. We were gathering experiences long before Gen Z made it cool.
That’s how we have been sailing through life—two opinionated individuals.
Two strong “I”s who somehow built a very comfortable “we”.
The boat of conversation ensures we do not fall.
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