B.com Pass or Engg Honours ? Balance sheet or Euler-Lagrange equation ?

"Loose Tools goes to Current Assets sir. So does Patents and Copy rights" Shouted Ms. Astha of my Class when Prof. Kulkarni was teaching Accounting basics.

Creditors, Debtors, Cash Book, Ledger, Trial Balance and Balance sheets were the topic of discussion - Basics of Accounting. Its when all the engineers in our class - who have learnt Hi-Tech stuff ranging from Stress on a Beam to Compiler Design to Hi-freqency wave transmission - realised the Blunders we have committed in Life by NOT taking commerce while graduating.

For a minute, I went back to my 10+2 days. We, in 12th , learnt about Classical Mechanics. Did 500+ sums in Integration and Differentiation. We learnt what is Gravity and what satellites are. We knew how to make Phenol from Benzene. We knew that Voltage = Current * Resistance. We knew what the yellow product was when a Red Metal was treated with Hydrochloric acid. We cracked most questions of IIT-JEE too.

I was interuppted when Professor was asking a Question to us, "What is PL" ?

Having worked in IT industry for nearly 4 years, all I could think of was "Project Leader". Before I could say that (:-) , My class mate, another Engineer, shouted : "Personal Loans".

A bunch of guys, Probably the B.COM grads, Burst into Laughter. Once of them smartly raised his ass off the seat, adjusted his spectacles in a "smartie" way and said : "Sir, Its profit and Loss Account". And he looked at we engineers with a "meaningful" smile.

Finance Lecture got over. Lunch Break. Then came the Mathematics Prof. He said he'll be doing some Integration and Differentiation concepts. We, the Engineers, looked at our commerce colleagues with Contempt and affixed a Sarcastic smile on our faces which read : "Now the game starts buddy !! Count your days..."

But to our surprise and worries, the professor started his lecture with a problem :

"The demand function is given by the expression D = 2Q + 1/5Q*Q , the supply function is...Calculate Marginal Cost, Marginal Revenue...Equilibrium cost...Economic Order Quantity..blah..blah..."

Cool !! Wonderul ! Excellent ! All Greek and Latin. We knew to differentiate. But we did not know what the Marginal Revenue was all about. We Engineers were in the same dilemma as how a North Indian would feel when he is asked to differentiate between Malayalam and Tamil. Our sarcastic smiles became humble apologies. And Our Engg Honours looked much Humbler that a B.com pass.

We Engineers requested the Prof to give us a problem in Speed-Acceleration or Current-Charge to prove our "mettle". But professor replied "You are here to learn Business. Not Science."

They, B.coms, never had the pressure of entrance exams, Didnt have to shell out money in-terms of education. But had 3 full years of full fun at Places like LSR, delhi and St Xaviers-Mumbai, going to pub on every weekend and taking their GirlFriends to movies on every fridays.

They did "crediTing" and "DebiTing" - which has nothing more than Simple addition and subtraction.

We, on the other hand, slogged the entire 2 years of our 10+2 days, suffered a lot of "drought" in Engg colleges where female-male ratio is lesser than Tiger-Man ratio in India and spent lots of thousands on books, fees, In-Plant trainings and Projects. We did problems that involved Numerical methods, Binomial Theorem, probability, partial Integration and so on.

Now, after all that, we look upto B.COM grads, the same way a male-passenger waiting at Andheri station would tell himself when he sees a loosely packed first-class ladies Coach of 7.45PM Virar fast: "I should been have born in bombay as a woman !!"

Friends, Its not a real-life scene that I have depicted here. Lots of Masala is there- But I hope I have conveyed the underlying concept. Now time for your valued comments.