Was attending a crucial meeting on planning for kicking off a large project. We were about half a dozen of us including the function-heads from the company.
The spreadsheet was up on a small screen before us. N was checking with us and updating the sheet in his laptop and on the screen.
It involved factoring in delivery schedules of many vendors, new hiring, statutory clearances and other umpteen dependencies. The meeting often devolved into confabulations in knots of two’s and three’s. Of course, for right reasons.
It fell on N and D from time to time to call the meeting back to order.
This is when I heard them use the metaphor ‘Azad Maidan’. A deshi description, though not exact for the present occasion, with an interesting etymology:
Azad Maidan is a triangular-shaped maidan (sports ground) in the city of Mumbai. It is located on 25 acres of land near the CST rail-station. It is a regular venue for inter-school cricket and club matches. And for the kids and young men from near and around playing softball cricket. Home to many cricketers of international fame, it boasts of something like twenty-two cricket pitches (Wiki), not counting interstitial spaces also used for the same purpose.
But what’s the connection, you ask, eh?
Here you go:
On a Sunday morning, especially when exams are not around and no official matches scheduled, the ground would be a host to so many teams engaged concurrently (mostly in soft-ball cricket), each match played on its own pitch, and the pitches, nearly overlapping!! Though an observer from outside would be hard put to trace a rolling ball to the pitch and batsman it came from, the players always knew. It was rare a fielder in the outfield found himself chasing a ball that did not belong!
It is this concurrent action of teams, independent, in close proximity, but mishap-free, each busy about its own play – the vivid imagery that gets captured and distilled into this metaphor Azad Maidan so succinctly!! Buzzing beehive? Yes, something like that, but with weak/no commonality of purpose expressed/hinted, more human for us to easily relate.
It is not too much of a stretch to liken this to a scene frequently played out in corporates where a meeting in its course often gives way to multiple mini-meetings, each with its own steering, diluting the focus.
A very colourful addition to one’s vocabulary of phrases and idioms! Sure to come handy to spice up any conversation. Just right for describing any coordinated collective activity going ‘to pieces’ – and Life throws them up for us aplenty!
Who knows, one day Azad Maidan may even make it to Oxford! Thanks to Deepak and Nikhil for the education.
End
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