The Churning Ocean of Knowledge

Fare thee well, our mentor gone

I wonder how fully we understand

The part you played in our BBA band
Your presence made us PACEans proud
A name concurred by your gentle nod
Remember your eyes jut out with pride
Every other time we got it right
 

A real management class you took us through
Always taking time for an extra mile too
To ensure the class moved levels high
Than the pioneers of UIT could ever sight
A group who knew not why they were herd
You showed us light for a whole life ahead
 

You taught us to stand in front and talk
To sit as team and spark our thoughts
Respect opinions and share what we knew
In ways aplenty that to us were new
You proved to live through bright and right
And yet stay simple at heart with might
 

We never met back it feels so bad
Since that farewell at the railways yard
We all got caught on tickets not bought
Some things I've learnt you'll never know
To such place though I always go
With tickets and thoughts of you to show
 

That’s how life these days goes
We never find time for good things own
And however hard the others try
We mostly fail to realise the lie
The trivial thing makes days fly by
Till something happens and time is why
 

The most important as granted lie
While race we run with heads held high
When something's lost we turn our back
To say some chants all haphazard
Then move back on and continue
With shoes as bright and shining through
 

What good deed did you this day
And how much love you shared on way
Whose lives touched with acts of thy
And how many smiles in someone’s cry
These are things we just ignore
Thinking time is always more
 

It’s sad we never got to know
You this ill so close to home
So desperate to live on more
Just to hold a daughter just born
With all good memories instilled within
It’s truly sad we never could know

Life does need to move from stand
But just sometimes it helps to land
To breathe the past with moments gone
And bring back faces lost for long
Those are times that mould us strong
And makes us like the better souls gone
 

Sometimes its good to just breath in
The past gone by and the future live
To respect all which made you thee
And bow your head in love and care
Say a little prayer for all things in
Borrowed from someone in the past lived in
 

If we knew you could just be gone
Times together we'd have prompted more
The steps we walked with lights of yours
Many things owed for all life long
Moments to stay ingrained in us
For life beyond than your sweet song
 

Every little move in life we make
Has a little more of yours as stake
Every little step in days we wake
Is a little more of yours to take
Just too sad we never got to know
You could in such a hurry just go
 

We promise you sir to keep smile's on
To stand together and better deeds all
And add a little glitter to one another
In times distressed and cries together
 

So fare thee well, our mentor gone!
Fare thee well, our song goes on!

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Saji KB Nair a.k.a Saji Sir was one of my first Professors in my Bachelors class in Business Administration in University Institute of Technology (UIT), Trivandrum. Our batch was the first students of his teaching career. He was an MBA, PhD(IIT Bombay), Fellow (AMS), and had presented research papers at Harvard, MIT Sloan, UC Berkeley, Chicago Booth, IITs, IIMs, etc. He has 172 publications to his credit (104 at Intl. level) and was consultant/trainer to over 90 firms in India/ China/ Japan/ Nepal/ Taiwan. He was Professor of Marketing & Technology Strategy at IIM Lucknow when he passed away on 22nd June 2014 due to an illness wrongly diagnosed and wrongly treated. 

The entire BBA batch bow their heads in respect and prayers. Thank you Sir. You will be missed.