Tag: Almaty

No, I do not despise him!

This guy, Dr. Naqvi, I hung out with him for years. He was my colleague, but I also befriended him on my own. The more I knew about him over time,   more of his despicable traits were revealed. In the end, like right now, I have no open animosity with him, but I regret ever meeting him, in spite of his charisma, eloquence and scholarly qualities.

Let me describe his life story to the readers, reconstructed from published sources,  common knowledge among friends, Naqvi’s own recollections, and my observations about his behavior and lifestyle. There will be some rumors which will be clearly specified as such. I will vouch for the veracity of the main narrative, which will span about five decades.

You have heard of people being born with a silver spoon in their mouths, spending their childhood surrounded by lavish excesses, all their material needs being taken care of by a retinue of retainers and relatives. Imagine  a child born with a silver spoon in an environment steeped with economics! Yes, that will be our Nadeem, born in the late fifties. His father was the venerable Dr. Khaled Naqvi, Director of Research in the Delhi School of Economics. His mother was also an economist, and a socially active person. Both parents were officially  members of the Communist Party of India.  Famous economists frequented his house, from Delhi School and from other places in India. Delhi School was then one of the  hubs for discussions about economic theory  and India’s planning strategies. Nadeem will sit next to Amartya Sen and listen to his conversations with his father and others. Sometimes Mrs. Naqvi will prepare snacks for the guests and put them on a tray, and a ten year old Nadeem will serve these  snacks to Sukhamoy Chakrabarty, Mrinal Datta Choudhury and such.  I guess even the walls of the Naqvi residence were qualified enough to get an advanced degree in economics!

Sometime in the sixties, Senior Naqvi went to Cambridge on a research scholarship for a semester. Auntie Joan (The Joan Robinson – remember her? !) was his thesis supervisor from before and his current  co-author.  Nadeem remembers watching Auntie Joan riding her bicycle to her office, sometimes she would stop and chat with him.

Indeed, Nadeem was naturally primed to be  an economist and he did not disappoint.  After a stint at St. Stevens college, he enrolled in Delhi School of Economics for his Masters. He studied under giants – Sukhamoy  taught them theory and economics of planning, Naqvi saab Macroeconomics, the famous Nagar saab lectured on Econometrics. There were other famous economists also whose names I can not recall at the moment. Overall, Delhi School was a premier educational institution at that time.

He went to Southern Methodist university for his Ph.D. and wrote under Ravi Batra, who was really a prolific publisher of international economics articles at that time. Indeed, Batra taught him  trade theory and all the tools required  to come up with new angles and find solutions to new problems. Unlike us, who struggled mightily to find a research topic and solve our own  research problems, his transition from a student to a published author was rather smooth.  He published in very good journals with Batra, with other co-authors and independently as well.

His first job was as an Assistant professor at University of Goergia. Within six years of finishing his thesis, Nadeem got married to an Indian woman he met at Delhi, had a daughter and most importantly was granted tenure. With tenure came a promotion to Associate professor and a lifetime of job security.

 A university can not fire a tenured professor regardless of his activities and views and research topics, as long as he meets his academic responsibilities of teaching, research and departmental service. Dismissal proceedings could be initiated for academic dishonesty,  moral turpitude or criminal activities , but the onus of proof is very high and there are multiple levels of appeal, including appeals at  the university level followed by the  state High court and Supreme court at the end. The tenure system was established to preserve academic freedom of faculty in American Universities. A professor with heretic views that are hugely unpopular can not be ousted from the University. On the other hand, a professor who becomes lazy and incompetent after tenure will nevertheless continue to work as long as he satisfies the bare minimum responsibilities. Of course, in practice, things may work a little differently. A heretic  may be forced to leave if his views are politically incorrect . Sexual harassment  of females by a  heretic can be grounds for dismissal but sexual harassment by a productive and popular faculty member might be ignored or covered up for a long time. On the other hand, a lazy professor may get the most unpleasant assignments and receive minimum salary and the department may try to oust him at the earliest opportunity. Around 2010, when I taught at the University of Kansas  the salary range of tenured faculty was from 70000 annually ((about 52 lakhs) to a whopping 250000 annually (187 lakhs ) although keep in mind that even the lowest salary was adequate to maintain a decent standard of living.  The deadwood got 70000 while most other normal faculty received between 90000 to 130000 per year, only the distinguished faculty were in the 200 K range.  If you are a deadwood faculty, your salary would be stuck at 70000, while others will get a decent salary increase every year.

After tenure, faculty members breathe a sigh of relief and usually go. through some important lifestyle changes. Of course, the real nerds may decide that they are going to spend only  seventy hours per week on research rather than the ninety hours that they were used to.  Others , though,  make more meaningful changes in lifestyle. Some start playing sports and participating in outdoor activities, some spend a lot of time with their families, some pursue meaningful hobbies seriously, some pursue women (or men) hoping to catch up on missed fun in college.

Drug use is not uncommon in America, so it is not surprising that Naqvi started delving in cocaine and marijuana and drinking heavily after tenure. What I find disturbing is that he got involved in selling cocaine. For about nine long years he was selling cocaine from his house in Atlanta, hopefully he did not sell to his students who would have given his name to the police and the university. As I indicated before, he had adequate income, so why was he doing this?

 I asked him , many years later, in Kazakhstan, why he indulged in this high risk activity where he could have gotten killed or assaulted by angry customers or other drug dealers. Even twenty years after he quit, he still was not sure why he did it. He had a secure job with an above average salary. So why? From his muffled answers, I figured out he had multiple aims:

To achieve a high rate of return on his investment on drugs

To wield power over strong black men and beautiful white women who were his buyers

In Kazakhstan, many years later, he told me while high on marijuana , alcohol and pain pills, how much satisfaction he got seeing his investment in cocaine business achieve 300, 400, or even 500% returns.

He did not seem to have an iota of conscience for wasting so many lives by selling them drugs. To him, this was only collateral damage for his profitable, albeit dangerous investment.

Most people from India, myself included, marvel at the physique and the strength of the big black men we see in the USA.  Granted, there are Caucasian men with large builds as well,  we are fascinated by them also because Indians generally are small-statured (the great Khali excepted). Nadeem is specially skinny, taller than most Indians, but basically skin and bones, not a single muscle  in his body! He certainly needed a couple of goons around him to run his drug business. He said he always had a steady supply of large men on drugs who will protect him in exchange for drugs and a little money. He was never in danger in spite of his frail body which could be twisted and taken apart by most American men if they wanted to.

Female companionship was Nadeem’s major interest all his life. His ability to procure drugs helped him to wield control over many beautiful women – we will talk a lot more about this later.

By 1999 or so, Nadeem’s tenure was revoked by the University of Georgia. As I said before , this is a very serious matter, some documents are available on the web but most documents and newspaper reports that I have seen in 2014 are not available any longer. So you have to rely on my memory for the most plausible explanation of a complex event.

By 1996/7, Nadeem was hooked on drugs, marijauana,  cocaine, alcohol, anti-depression pills, he did it all. This severely affected his job performance. His colleagues would notice his absence from important department meetings or his disruptive behavior in the meetings when he did show up. The students complained that he did not show up for lectures, sometimes for several days. He also frequently canceled homework that he had assigned earlier, I guess he did not want to spend time correcting them. He also rescheduled exams often, I guess because of the same reason. In North American colleges, faculty has  a lot of freedom regarding assignments and exams, they can do whatever they want. But the University demands consistency. Once the schedule is announced at the beginning of the semester, everyone is supposed to follow it.  Nadeem was breaking this rule left and right , annoying his colleagues and students. He would also target one or two of the university administrators that have been critical of him in the past and viciously attack them for small or perhaps trivial infractions. As happens in a bureaucratic environment,   the university would be forced to investigate these accusations formally, lot of manpower would be wasted and a lot of angry words will be exchanged between Nadeem and his nemeses. This was all induced by his drug-fueled paranoia, people were getting tired of it.

In spite of his erratic and irrational behavior, there was no direct evidence of his drug addiction which could be used to start a dismissal procedure against him. The powers that be, then, decided to frame him using his other weaknesses.

The whole scenario unfolded one evening in the little town of Athens in the state of Georgia, in  a bar popular with the students of the University of Georgia. Nadeem arrived already half-drunk and buzzed on cocaine, he started drinking some more and talking loudly to the students present. By prior arrangement , a large number of attractive economics major students were around that night. By prior arrangement, they continuously flirted with Nadeem and encouraged him to drink more. Finally, as expected, Professor Naqvi got seriously drunk and started asking these women for sexual favors. Some alleged boyfriends of these females and other spectators objected to Naqvi’s shenanigans. A lot of verbal abuse were hurled back and forth during  that evening.  There were a lot of neutral spectators who witnessed Naqvi’s predatory behavior. Although cell phones did not have cameras then, some spectators recorded the abusive language of Naqvi on their phones.

A few weeks later, the University started dismissal procedure against Nadeem for sexual harassment. His drug addiction was mentioned as an additional offense. The whole case was built on one evening’s incident although many other female students testified about Naqvi’s harassing behavior that they experienced on campus earlier.

It was unfair to Nadeem, but the whole incident  was well-documented  and he was fired. He countersued and appealed, and I am not sure where all that ended, but apparently the dismissal decision stands till today.

After Georgia, Nadeem moved from one temporary job to another, United Nations consultant, post-doc in a German University and then a job at American University of Bulgaria. There , he met Gerald Pech, another economist and a very stable and conscientious German guy, and a young woman with a doctorate in political science that he married after a couple of years.  Around 2011, Gerald got an offer from KIMEP (Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Public Policy) University in Almaty, Kazakhstan and in 2013, Nadeem was offered a job in KIMEP as well.

Nadeem actually recruited me. I applied for the KIMEP job in 2013 online and Nadeem picked up my application, my CV and all and called me on Skype. We Skyped for a long time. I was glad to find a normal Indian guy on a thoroughly foreign campus, in fact I was delighted to find that his qualifications and background matched mine. We had many common interests. The next Skype interview was with the Department Chair, Dr. Gerald Pech, and about four or five people on the faculty, including Nadeem.

My first year, August 2014 onwards, I was kind of freaked out. New students, new courses, new colleagues, a language that everyone speaks all around me and I do not understand (Russian) and the  brutal cold that started from November – all these did not help.  People who live in their own countries do not understand how not speaking and not reading a language can be stressful. Suppose, you are in your own apartment  on a Sunday afternoon and the power suddenly goes out. In USA or India, you would call the electric company or a mechanic. Here, you will just panic and pray that power will come back before it gets dark because you will not know what to say to the electric company or the mechanic!  Or, at the supermarket, you want to ask for something that you do not find. Of course,  Google Translate will give you the Russian name for it. You ask somebody, he will tell you to go down five aisles and then turn left in Russian, and you are clueless and embarrassed!!

Anyway, over time,  things got easier, I found a workable solution for most problems. During the first academic year, I did not see Nadeem much. During Spring 2015 , my first  year, his wife came with his daughter and his newborn baby and lived with him in Almaty, so I just saw him at the office. The next semester,  his family had gone back to Germany by then , and he visited them in Germany too many times, so he was often absent form campus. We really hung out from Fall 2016 to Spring 2019, three years, both professionally and personally.

Our lives were inevitably intertwined, we had the same background, same profession, same employer, same interests and some of the same  vices. However , please remember that what follows is a review of his life and activities at Almaty. Although my life happens right next to his, please do not judge me here, I will write a separate diatribe on my Kazakh life later, where you will get ample chances to judge me and/or hate my guts.

Some of Nadeem’s activities and attitudes  I found strange, some I found very weird , almost disgusting, yet others I found nauseating and absolutely unacceptable,  in spite of my own rather unconventional approach to morality and sexuality. Apart from relationships and sexual matters, I also worked with him as a fellow professor, researcher and university administrator, and for a while, I was his neighbor. Again, his actions sometimes were merely strange, but sometimes thoroughly corrupt and hypocritical, and occasionally absolutely atrocious and despicable.

I went to Almaty during August 2014. Nadeem was living in a very large apartment, very beautiful, fully furnished, because he expected his wife, his daughter and his new baby boy to come from Germany and live with him later in the year , like in late November.

We talked about having a party at his place a few times, his wife was not there yet and I was still freaked out from my new job and new country and all that. Finally, he invited me over to his house for a “fuckfest”!

Apart from Nadeem, there were three Kazakh men who were  Nadeem’s ex-students and two Kazakh girls. One girl had a nice body , but had a  hard face like a pro, the other girl was very attractive but looked very young, possibly underage (and hence illegal). Every so often a guy will get up, take one of the girls and go to the bedroom next door. After fifteen minutes or so, the guy will come back to the living room and light up a cigarette or a joint.  The girl will go to the bathroom, freshen up her make up and come back to the living room and light up also. The next person will pair up then. All of the four men had sex with each of the two girls and were comparing notes about the girls’ techniques!

I did not want to participate in this. They were surprised but  I left after I watched the proceedings and talked to the people in the living room for a while.

Over the next few years,  I discovered a few traits about Nadeem that were disturbing. His drug use, which I thought were limited to Cigarettes and alcohol, actually were much more extensive. He would go to Germany to visit his wife and bring back the hard stuff, like cocaine and opioids with him, although he will deny this,  saying that if the cops at the Kazakh airport catch him , the penalty was  severe – many years in  a harsh Kazakh prison. But he would bring them anyways, notwithstanding the risk. I would see him often popping Xanax with whiskey (which can cause death!). His speech would immediately become blurred and his whole body will kind of shut down. I would also see the classic paranoid shouting and the excessive, energetic talking about nothing, and getting into vicious arguments with people about trivialities,  which is a  typical sign of  cocaine use.

He messed up several economics department end of semester parties because of his excessive drug use. These parties were hosted by the department, usually in one of the few good Chinese restaurants in Almaty. Faculty and Teaching Assistants showed up, ate and drank to celebrate the end of the semester. Nadeem would show up late, already high on cocaine. He would stumble into his seat and start speaking loudly, forcing everyone to listen to his meaningless gibberish. Sometimes he will dislike a remark made by someone and start ranting against him, almost coming to blows. Sometimes he will start yelling at the amenities of the restaurant (“Why is the damn window closed? We are suffocating here”) or the quality of the food. One time, I remember, he insisted that a few women employees of KIMEP (that were at our party) have dessert after their dinner – the slender females refused and he became mad as hell. Finally the desserts came and everyone in  the room was forced to eat a big piece of cake whether they wanted it or not. The Kazakhs are respectful people, so he never got beaten up, but by the end of the evening everyone was disgusted at  his behavior.

To be fair, both Nadeem and I were interested in having sex, lots of sex. While I was single since I got divorced in 1990, Nadeem had a wife  who lived in Germany for most of the time,  except for six months of 2015 that she was in Almaty. Typically, I refrained from sex with others during the periods when I did have a steady girlfriend, while Nadeem had no such principles. For him,  an evening of massive drug consumption was followed by or accompanied by the company of  one or more women. He will get high, fuck, get high again, fuck again until he passed out. I never joined him during the fuckfest or drugfests, but he talked about it, usually the next day, while complaining of a hangover.  He was pushing sixty, so I always wondered how his body could handle all these drugs. Yes, he was a glutton for both sex and drugs. For me, sexual pleasure  was something I sought, while for Nadeem, happiness came when he passed out in exhaustion after too much drugs and sex.

This sex was procured from the internet where females contacted men. Sometimes one of Nadeem’s students will help him for a fee (I found disgusting that he was using his own students, there were a million other Russian speakers in Almaty that he could have hired)). The students will go to Russian language websites where a lot more females advertised for their services. The young women, for the most part, were very attractive, some actually very beautiful. Most females in Almaty did not have any problems seeking “sponsored relationships” since Kazakh  men did not usually have the means to take care of a beautiful woman, and these women were not looking for love with men that are not affluent.

But wait! Nadeem had this charm, this charisma that made women attracted to him all over Almaty. Employees of the University, other female professors, students, waitresses and even  women he would meet casually at the stores or banks will soon speak of professor Nadeem in glowing terms and go to lunch with him, often followed by acts of intimacy. It was almost like a fairy tale! He would facilitate these “friendships” by offering them free drugs if he realized that they would fall for it.

I know for  a fact he had sex with an Associate Dean, the Dean of English Language programs and a Journalism Professor (this last one was hot AF!). Apart from offering drugs, he also volunteered to write their English presentations (since their native language was not English) or reports or petitions to the university administration which required use of precise legal terms. Friendship had its benefits, indeed!

All these females and drugs would make his life very complicated. Sometimes he would not be able to conduct normal professional activities like teaching his classes. His solution to simplify his life: scream, yell and verbally abuse all his current female companions – most of them will leave him alone in a hurry! He will be left with his wife in Germany and no female companions in Almaty. He will start from scratch again and in a couple of days get his new crop of girls.

This abusive behavior benefitted me a lot!  One of his girlfriends was Tsarina (Gulbanu), an absolute wet dream. Fortunately, around the time he started abusing her verbally, I also broke up with my Kazakh girlfriend. Tsarina became my consort for the next three years-  I was very happy with her.  She was by far the most beautiful girl I ever dated!

Everywhere I went, there was glowing praise for Nadeem’s scholarship and his student evaluations were off the charts. While he was articulate and spoke freely about various topics, his teaching was seriously hindered by his lifestyle.

He usually had no textbooks that he followed! No class notes or study plans were posted on the website for the courses! No sample questions or homework were posted online! Exam dates were either not posted or moved around at will! (in North American Colleges, the professor decides on the number of exams and the dates for the exams for his courses at the beginning of the semester, and these are not changed later).  

Yet, student evaluations were very good! As I was the Department Chair for two years , I did a little detective work on my own. Apparently, given Kazakhstan’s social structure, there will be dominant students in every class, usually children of the powerful people. Nadeem will befriend them and party with them and scratch their backs, and they will return the favor. The dominant group will intimidate others to write good reviews for Professor Naqvi. In return everyone in the dominant group got good grades!

Indeed, Nadeem picked up the trait of a successful official in a post-communist society. He oiled and buttered the powers that be in the University. The Dean, Gerald Pech, was his personal friend. Gerald was a very honest and conscientious German academic, but he had a major soft spot for Nadeem. He pardoned Nadeem’s infractions like absence from classes and meetings. One time Nadeem came to a meeting literally soaked in alcohol, the entire meeting room was reeking . Gerald quietly canceled the meeting. He would have taken disciplinary actions if anyone else did this.

I was the Department chair and I covered for him too. Usually after a short vacation, the classes will begin on Monday morning. Suppose Nadeem’s class begins at 11:00, he will send an email around 9:00 am from Germany, saying he would come back four days later. I will teach his class at 11:00 and arrange for others to teach his other classes. Some of these were advanced courses, faculty members did not want to teach these classes without prior preparation! Yes, I was chicken , I never yelled at him for messing up everyone’s schedule (including mine) on a short notice!

The President of the University, also its founder,  was an old man named Dr. Bang. He befriended the country’s president , Mr. Nazarbayev , in the nineties when he was visiting Kazakhstan from USA where he was a tenured economics professor. With the President’s blessing, he started KIMEP in the mid 1990’s as an American style Business school. By 2015 or so he was in his early eighties and was interested in all kinds of new projects. One of his pet projects was to write a definitive book about the economy of  North Korea, where he was originally from . Unfortunately, after all these years, his economics knowledge was inadequate, and his analytical ability was below par. Yet he set up a “ North Korea research Institute”  with KIMEP’s money,  and wrote a few articles. He asked most of us to review his work and we all refused politely rather than telling him that his research was garbage. Nadeem however, seriously read and commented positively on his papers!!

As a department chair, I had my own secretary, who sat in the adjoining office. I did most of my paperwork myself including writing memos and making copies, so these young females had very little to do. They answered the department landline and redirected students to faculty offices, dozed off, filed their nails and texted their boyfriends. Usually, these females were undergraduates. In the Fall of 2016, Dilobar, a Masters student, started working as my secretary . This itself was significant because we  had a small Masters program where almost all  the students had full time jobs – all classes were held in the evening. Dilobar was an exception. While other students struggled with coursework, jobs, family etc., Dilobar was keen on working on her Masters thesis as early as possible. She asked me for help, I told her to finish her coursework first so she has some knowledge that she can use to do research.

Professor Nadeem noticed this. He started “borrowing” Dilobar from my office. He took her to banks and financial institutions as  his Russian translator as  he was apparently  transferring large sums of money from India to Germany.  Because of the time difference,  Dilobar will leave with Nadeem around 4 pm and come back late around 10 pm after having dinner with him.

Nadeem had a research project ready for Dilobar. This project required her to be at Nadeem’s apartment during the middle of the day where they worked together. Soon I would not see my secretary in my office at all! Her absence did not bother me, because there was not much to  do in the office, but I was concerned that Nadeem was grooming her for sex.

I confronted Nadeem about it, but he cleverly said he has a new young girlfriend and he is busy with her. That’s why he was unable to hang out with me or go to lunch with me as we would  three or four times a week earlier.

By the end of academic year 2016, I knew what was going on. Dilobar and Nadeem were getting it on right under my nose. It was my duty to report him to Gerald, to the Vice-president and to Dr. Bang, but I did none of these things. Instead,  I told Gerald I would step down from my position as a Department Chair and will work part-time only from now on. I regret being a coward and violating workplace rules till this day.

The Dilobar saga played out for a while. The following semester, Nadeem hired Dilobar as his own secretary. I heard that she became very paranoid about other females and will interrupt frequently if Nadeem had female visitors!

During Summer of 2017, I visited Nadeem and his wife and kids in Magdeburg,  Germany. Nadeem will actually spend two months with his family every year. In the evening we gathered in a friend’s  house for dinner. After dinner, Nadeem described Katya’s (his wife) angry outburst  two nights ago. Apparently Katya had found out about Nadeem’s affair with Dilobar, she confronted him, and in her anger stomped on his feet with her shoes, breaking a couple of bones in his toes.  He lay down on the bed  in pain all night. In the morning she took pity on him and drove him to the hospital. Apparently, she was still pretty upset!

Katya’s anger was expected, but what I did not expect was Nadeems’ pride and joy when he was telling me about this. His whole body was swelling with pride. It was like : Look,  I am sixty-two years old, my wife is forty –three, and I have a twenty-two year old girlfriend and my wife is upset about it – how cool is that?

Like I said at the beginning , I do not despise him , but maybe I should!!