ABSTRACT
In this mini-essay, I connect my impressions and sentiments about IIMC at 60 and its relationship with Kolkata. Through my perspectives as both a quasi-insider and a quasi-outsider to IIMC, I seek to portray my collective impression over three decades, of IIMC's institutional culture and how I see it coupled with the culture and ethos of the city where it is embedded in. The spirit and cultural characteristics of IIMC appears so connected to its “mother” city that I believe one would be hard-pressed to find such a strong parallel in the case of any of the other “older IIMs”. Primarily and probably at superficial level, this connect between IIMC and Kolkata/Eastern India seems to manifest at the level of an institutional make up, and identity. However, at a latent level, it also seems to reflect in the pace of evolution of both, a certain quality of idiosyncratic unchangingness despite changes in physicality, a generally slow-paced life in the community and even an insidious inward orientation. Even with the limitation that this essay treats the inherently complex concepts of culture and identity in an impressionistic rather than academically rigorous fashion, I submit that this unique coupling sums up the essence of IIMC@60 – its identity and its spirit, its struggles and its successes, its past and likely, its future.
