We are filled with joy that you take your riding examination today. From such surmounting of physical boundaries do we prepare ourselves to traverse thresholds where matter dissolves into spirit, where time and space fall away, and where the glorious universe reveals itself to us in its infinite shades of compassion and love. A horse may be just a horse, but for you it is only the first of your many vahanas. You will not fail.

There was a woman in a white suit who had grown a human ear on a mouse and a curly-haired MacArthur genius who made documentary films on government secrecy. There was a two-man team of economists from Harvard, one of whom apologized for the absence of his companion, who was sick, and for sitting far apart from everybody else because he too was sick, although he assured everybody that neither of them had the swine flu.

IIPM formed the center of Arindam’s empire — the school was not only his first source of wealth, but had also produced nearly all of his employees. It had also become the target of much hostile scrutiny from journalists and bloggers, who insisted that IIPM was a factory for worthless degrees, banking tuition by churning out ever greater numbers of graduates who, if they didn’t get a job from Arindam, would be unable to get one at all.