What Prompted This IIM-A Professor To Give -Up The Material World?

In August 2012, news that a professor at IIM-Ahmedabad — one of the most coveted jobs in Indian academia — had decided to walk away from the material world made the rounds. The details mattered less than the question it forced on everyone who heard it: what would make someone give up everything we are told to chase?

The professor left behind a verse that captures the sentiment:

Na janu apne mann ki main, Ab kya kaha kab kaun banu, kuch bhi bana, ya kuch na bana, bus... baithi rahu tere dar pe main.

(I don't know what my heart says; what, where, whom I will become; make me something, or don't make me anything. Enough — I will just sit at His doorstep.)

It is not a new impulse. India's scriptures and history are full of those who renounced — the Buddha leaving the palace, Mahavira giving up his kingdom. What startles us each time is the contrast: someone at the very top of the ladder we are all climbing, looking at it and quietly stepping off.

For most of us, the verse is worth more as a mirror than as news. We may never leave the rat race. But every once in a while, we might pause and ask the professor's question in our own way: what is all this for?