Not Abducted by Martians!

It has been a while.

Let us say, after notching up a 100 posts, I suddenly found myself with nothing to write. The feeling that I had nothing new to say, the feeling that I was repeating myself of late, and my blogger friends and other readers were indulging me purely out of a sense of obligation began to crop up. I stopped writing. My connection with my blog was confined to routine, mechanical publishing of readers’ comments.

But some of those comments expressed cautious concern, not wanting to pry, but obliquely enquiring: Is everything OK? Are you all right? Cynic’s was one such comment. El Furibundo’s was another. Thanks, people. I owe you.

But a lot has happened in the six weeks I have been off blogging.

For starters, I have turned entrepreneur now, joining up with an old friend and ex-colleague. In a way, it is an exhilarating feeling--to be at last your own master, orchestrating the sales and marketing push for an exciting new product, exactly the way you want it done, unfettered by other peoples’ notion as to how it should be done. Suddenly you are in the thick of action once again with product presentations, demos, negotiations and closing deals. You are travelling again to familiar cities, activating old networks and leveraging old contacts.

It’s a nice feeling.

It is also scary; sometimes I have butterflies in my stomach. The fact that you don’t have a pay-check waiting for you at the end of the month, does not exactly do wonders to your sense of security. The “what-if?” dragon raises its head with alarming regularity and has to be put down with a firm hand. You start scrutinising the monthly bills a bit more carefully and unconsciously start charting out strategies for cutting down on unnecessary expenses.

I have also resumed serious reading, having just finished Le Carré’s “A Most Wanted Man” and the first two books of the much-acclaimed, much-lamented Swedish author, Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. No mean achievement this, I say so myself, considering that each of the Millennium books is at least 600 pages long!

So forgive me if I don’t blog as often as I used to. But rest assured, I will definitely pop in once in a while to update you on my life as an entrepreneur.

Cheers!

Mahatma's Travails: Part 2

Mahatma has flown in from Chennai, the previous evening. He takes a taxi to Hotel H in Byculla, has an early dinner, and very soon turns in for the night. He sleeps soundly till around midnight when he is woken up by someone softly knocking at his door.

Cursing the intrusion and half-asleep, Mahatma opens the door to find a personable young man who asks him politely whether he would like some female company. Mahatma is speechless with horror and just stands there rooted to the spot, which the young man misconstrues as a genuine expression of interest.

The young man tries to build on his sales presentation, by elaborating further on the services on offer, the virtuosity of the practitioners, and the rates for different services etc., cheerfully oblivious to the fact that his prospective customer has pulled himself erect and started bristling in an alarming manner. Glowering dangerously but still struggling for words, Mahatma manages to utter just one sentence. “No,” he says. “Please go away!”

Our personable young man now, knows all about overcoming objections and closing the deal. He knows some customers act shy and have to be brought out of their shell. Some, he knows, just act disinterested, just to bring down the price. So, as a first step towards breaking the ice and building rapport, he looks furtively around and making sure no one is in the vicinity, drops his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, and asks Mahatma: “Sir, aap service kar rahe hai, kya?” (Loosely translated and put in context: Sir, are you working as a salaried employee in a company?)

Mahatma is taken aback by this sudden change in direction the conversation has taken. He has had enough of this young man and his impudence. He is about to bang the door shut at the young man’s face when the young man, probably sensing an opportunity slipping away, plays what he feels is his trump card—empathy. Vital for building customer rapport.

"I understand you salaried-people’s problems, sir," says the young man in his broken English. "Company need bill for everything. Don’t worry sir, I arrange everything for you. I organise bill for specials meals sir. No need for pay from pocket."

That is when Mahatma finally managed to prise himself away from this engaging conversation, close the door shut and call the reception to keep his bill ready for an early-morning check-out.

The incident created quite a flutter in the office and poor Mantri was at the receiving end of a lot of flak for having booked Mahatma in an inappropriate hotel. An aggrieved Mantri came to me the next day and complained: “Nahin lene ka to, bolne ka. Baat khatam. Itna shor machane ki kya bat hai?” (If you don’t want the service, just say so and the matter is closed. Why make a song and dance about it?)

Mantri never got the point.

Mahatma's Travails: Part 1

K. P. Mahatma was known for his temper tantrums. A well-built man with a blue-black complexion, K.P, when moved to anger, had the ability to contort his swarthy, Dravidian features into expressions of great ferocity that sent chills down the spine of many of his subordinates. When in a rage, K.P.’s eyebrows will move up and down in an extremely disconcerting manner and he will literally froth at the mouth, drenching the unfortunate victim in a shower of fine spittle. K.P. was our boss man for South and was based in Chennai. Even though all the junior managers sniggered behind his back at his various mannerisms, we were all a little, maybe more than a little, terrified of the man.

By contrast, P.K. Mantri was one of the most affable and laid-back people you could ever come across. Mantri walked the corridors of our Bombay office with a vaguely satisfied smile, his head up at an angle always, gently massaging his prominently protruding paunch. With his French beard and round-rimmed glasses, Mantri looked more like a college professor than a corporate lackey.

One day Mantri approaches me with an unusually grave face. KP is coming from Chennai for a meeting. All nearby hotels are full and the only place where he can get accommodation is at Hotel H, in Byculla.

“My God, Mantri,” I say, “you know that place is a dump.”

Mantri nods sadly. Hotel H those days was known for its “B” and “C” grade clientele from the Middle East and had acquired a very unsavoury reputation. Rumours even had it that the hotel had a secret entrance to smuggle in call girls without attracting the attention of the police.

“The rooms are ok. I have checked personally,” says Mantri. “And you know, the food is quite good.”

I caution Mantri about the possible repercussions and ask him to look for other alternatives. And as it so often happens in office life, I very soon forget all about our short conversation until the next Monday morning, when all hell breaks loose. KP is standing at the reception with his suitcase and he is ranting and raving. Eyebrows are going up and down like windshield wipers on high-speed and the man is generating enough foam to drown an armada.

We somehow manage to calm down Mahatma and try to piece together what had happened.

(To be continued...)

Photo Courtesy: www.cbgextra.com

The Blackberry Warriors

I have bought myself a Blackberry recently.

It is a sleek, elegant model, quite unlike the earlier Blackberrys which were thick, square and rather boring. This one is slim, light and nicely contoured: the Katrina Kaif of Blackberrys, you could say!

Actually, it was peer pressure that drove me to this purchase. In the new company I have joined, all the directors sport one. Recently, on a week-long association with one of them, I was intimidated to find that he was constantly on his Blackberry, making and receiving calls, reading or composing e-mails, surfing the web and doing a host of other things that left me light-headed.

As all you techno-freaks out there know already, the biggest USP of the Blackberry is its “push” mail application. You can set up multiple mailboxes in your device for your official and personal mails and the e-mails will land in your Blackberry more or less simultaneously with their landing on your mail server. There is no waiting around—your net-enabled mobile doesn’t need to login periodically to check if you have received new messages. It is a wonderful feature, works very well, and can be an invaluable facility for a corporate user, as it frees him to a great extent from the tyranny of the laptop.

But I do have a quarrel to pick with the Blackberry warriors.

Some people call it “The Curse of the Red Flashing Light”. Every time a new e-mail arrives on your Blackberry, a red light starts to flash persistently and in so ominous a fashion, it’s impossible to ignore. Never mind most of the time the messages are mindless forwards from friends bored out of their wits, pathetic scams from exiled Nigerian monarchs who need your help to reclaim their inheritance, or Facebook alerts from distant acquaintances you would rather have nothing to do with, but very soon you find yourself constantly checking the device for that the red flashing light. In no time it starts controlling your life and it has become an obsession.

I have been having the device for over three weeks now and I know I am not obsessed with that flashing red light. Maybe I am not normal. Most of the Blackberry users I know stop a conversation in mid-sentence and reach for their devices the moment the red light starts flashing.

That brings me to another issue, which is the quality of replies that you compose on your Blackberry. Just like most people find an imperative urge to open and read a mail the moment it arrives in their device, they feel equally compelled to reply to that mail that very minute itself. Most of the time there is no reflection and analysis, no search for alternative solutions in case a problem has presented itself, no delay between thought and action. This often results in an impulsive response, not well thought out, leading, at least in my opinion, to sub-optimum results.

While researching for this post, I came across this nice article in The Telegraph, UK by their columnist Bryony Gordon. Please do read it. Meanwhile, you have to excuse me now. There is that red light flashing in my Blackberry...

Image Courtesy: htp://Observatori.ca

Subbudu

Herman was the big boss of the Industrial Products (IP) division. A tall, dark man, sporting an eternal scowl, his presence could be forbidding, to say the least. I was not reporting to him; we were just colleagues sharing adjacent tables and that was all right. Herman treated a junior colleague like me with an air of faint but acceptable tolerance. Relations between us, one could say, were cordial.

So one day, when Herman announced that he was getting an assistant, I was curious. Would it be somebody like Herman, cold, humourless, and unapproachable or would it be somebody younger and more fun to be with?

Subbudu turned out to be neither. He was a short, round man in his thirties, eager to please and, as I was to realise later, full of his own importance that made him act in a grave and ponderous matter. We became friends and Subbudu told me that he did not smoke and was a vegetarian and a teetotaller. He had also elaborate plans to revamp the entire IP department and confided in me that Herman was on old geezer far behind his times.

I said nothing.

Shortly afterwards, IP department gets a visitor from England and Herman, Subbudu and Tim Robinson go to an exclusive five star restaurant for dinner. As I was not present, Herman told me the next day about that memorable evening.

The drinks menu is passed around and Subbudu first orders orange juice. Seeing the others order scotch and soda, he changes his mind and asks the waiter to bring Chivas Regal because “he has heard so much about it.” By the time the others have barely finished the first round, our man is onto his third drink and showing alarming signs of inebriation.

The food menu is circulated and Subbudu opts for vegetarian. Conversation happens in fits and starts because both Herman and Tim are keeping half a wary eye on our man who is periodically nodding his head and smiling vacantly into space.

The food arrives. Subbudu finds the “Pork Loin chops in Apple Cream” ordered by Tim to be much more visually appealing than the Indian vegetarian dish ordered by him. He makes a grab for Tim’s plate without so much as a by your leave. While a mortified Herman looks on helplessly, Subbudu starts attacking the pork chops ferociously and untidily, splattering the gravy liberally on his face and shirt front.

A normally reticent Herman all but sobbed on my shoulder the next day. “I tell you Rada, I wish the earth had opened up and swallowed me that minute,” Herman said. “I have never been so embarrassed in my life!”

Needless to add, Subbudu did not work for Herman long.

Image Courtesy: www.sptimes.com

Joergen's Famous Letter

In a competitive marketplace where businesses have to scrap for a limited number of customers, customer satisfaction is perceived as a key differentiator and has become an important element of business strategy. Companies spend large sums of money in detailed analyses as to who are their customers, what are their needs, how adequately these needs are addressed by the company’s products and services and how can these customers be kept satisfied so that their loyalty can be assured.

While all this is very fine, some customers can never be satisfied. SPT, so shall I call him, for fear of libel suits and such like, was an example.

SP, as he was popularly known, was one of our VIP customers in Delhi. SP was a canny businessman and got into exports quite early. Business grew rapidly within a short span of time and with the expansion came the need for more products and services. Suppliers tripped over themselves to offer him every enticement in the book to make him purchase their products and SP played one against the other to get the best deals. Negotiations with SP were long-drawn-out affairs; finally when you managed to snatch the order from the jaws of your competitors, it was, at best, a pyrrhic victory, for there was virtually no profit in the deal—in fact, after provisioning for warranty and related expenses, you could consider yourself lucky if you didn’t lose money at the end of the day.

Negotiating for the best deal is, of course, every customer’s right and that was all right. But with SP, your troubles had only begun once you got the order from him. He bitterly complained and fought all the time about clauses in the Letter of Credit, equipment lead times, delay in installation, deficiency in training his operators, short-shipments, wrong shipments, warranty claims, product quality issues, you name it.

SP was what is politely referred in corporate circles as a “high-maintenance customer”. What they actually mean of course is that he is a pain in the rear.

On a Friday afternoon, Joergen gets a letter of complaint from SP. We have installed a machine at SP’s factory a few months earlier and the letter is a bitter tirade against the company pointing out how miserably we have failed in executing the order. The letter demands financial compensation and also broadly hints to legal recourse if the demands are not met forthwith.

Joergen, who has been personally overseeing the order execution considering the customer’s cantankerous reputation, is not amused. It is obvious the customer is resorting to wild exaggerations, half-truths, and even blatant falsehoods to take undue advantage of the company.

On Monday morning, Joergen calls his secretary and dictates a letter, the first para of which goes something like this:

“Dear SP,
Shortly after reading your letter which I received last Friday evening, I was carried out in a stretcher from the office frothing at the mouth and in convulsions. After having spent the weekend in an expensive psychiatric facility mostly under heavy sedation, I have recuperated enough to come to the office today to reply to the baseless allegations and impossible demands put forth in your letter...”

SP never complained thereafter.

Cartoon Courtesy: www.smalbusinessscope.com.au

Life after a Layoff

My blog post “Acceptable Losses” elicited a record number of responses in the form of comments, phone calls, text messages and e-mails from both friends and strangers alike. I suppose the post touched a chord in most readers, because it talked about layoffs, a matter of much concern in these times of global economic slowdown.

Sanjay Dattatri was one of those strangers who wrote to me. He said:

“As part of my work, I talk to a lot of companies and people. Very soon I realized that there are a lot of layoffs happening in India, but mostly under the radar. Companies are not interested in exposing themselves to political pressure (like in the case of Jet Airways) and hence are finding excuses to fire people (Transfer them, drastically reduce salary, scrutinize their resumes for inconsistencies, look at their expense reports, dress code, anything at all that can be used to fire people on disciplinary grounds or make them voluntarily quit).

On the employee side, unlike you, most people are averse to letting on that they have been laid off, especially when some charge has been foisted on them. Indians are still not used to the concept of layoffs and there is a fair amount of social stigma associated with it.

Thus I found that people who got laid off had no support, neither societal, nor governmental (like employment benefits), or from corporates.

This prompted me to start a site with a built in forum where people can come to share their experiences, get/give career advice, find job openings and generally get support. This is a purely not-for-profit venture...”

Later, Sanjay came to see me at home. After successful stints in Bangalore both as an employee and as an independent entrepreneur, Sanjay is currently based in his home town Chennai, where he has founded a very interesting jobsite called www.jobsbyref.com, very different from the “monster”s and “naukri”s of this world. Please do check it out.

But the real purpose of this post is to request you to direct any colleague, friend, acquaintance or relative who has lost his job recently, to the http://laidoff.in site and also encourage them to participate in the forum (http://forum.laidoff.in). These are still early days for the site and the forum, but over time and with active participation, it could well grow into an important support resource for those who are fired, sacked, retrenched, laid off, down-sized or right-sized and need help.

Whatever is the term or euphemism used, people who lose their jobs suddenly, need all the help they can get. By directing them to Sanjay’s site, you can help their cause in a small but significant manner.

Cartoon Courtesy: www.lowcred.com

The Monkey On Your Back

When I had sent out a mail to all my friends and past colleagues on my departure from the company, one of the first replies I received was from Joergen, wishing me luck and gently enquiring whether I was planning to retire in Kerala. I smiled when I read that message; Joergen had always been fascinated by Kerala.

Joergen was my first expatriate boss and one of the best. A tall, handsome Dane with a balding pate, Joergen, when I first met him more than 25 years ago, must have been in his late thirties. An excellent manager, he had a highly-evolved sense of humour, which sometimes played itself out as dry wit or cutting sarcasm, depending on how you looked at it. While he could be extremely solicitous to the customers and utterly charming to the ladies, Joergen did not suffer fools easily and used to routinely destroy them with the sharp, rapier-like cuts of his delicately wicked sense of humour.

One day I walk into Joergen’s cabin with a problem which I thought was beyond my abilities to solve. I am a 26-year-old greenhorn, new to the complexities of sales management and am understandably nervous when I start blurting out my problem to him.

Joergen makes me sit and asks me to start all over again. He lights up a Marlboro (this was before the days of the “no smoking” offices) and listens to me attentively, interrupting me not even once. I finish my narration and wait expectantly for his reaction. But Joergen is silent. Leaning back in his chair, he is looking up at the ceiling and quietly blowing smoke rings. He seems to be in some kind of trance.

Impatient minutes tick by, as I sit and fidget in frustration.

“So what are you going to do about it, Rada?” asks Joergen, after a long time.

I don’t know. That is why I have come to him. I tell him so.

Joergen looks disappointed. He shakes his head sadly and tells me: “I do not want the monkey on your back.”

“Sorry?” I cannot comprehend what the man is talking about.

Joergen is kind but firm: “If you have a problem, chances are you are the best person with ideas how to solve it. So please think the problem through and come and discuss the possible solutions. I will help you choose and refine the right solution. But by trying to dump your problem on my lap, you are just transferring the monkey on your back to my back. Sorry, not interested.”

We together solved the problem in the next fifteen minutes.

Even today when young managers come to me for solutions to issues or problems they themselves have not thought through, I derive some mischievous satisfaction by asking them not to transfer their monkey to my back.

Thank you, Joergen!

Image Courtesy: www.kchristieh.com

Acceptable Losses

I lost my job last Monday.

I go back to the office after a month’s medical leave and I am handed over the proverbial “pink slip” with an unsubtle urgency that is vastly amusing: Please hand over your laptop, if possible today itself, and oh yes, you don’t have to serve out your notice period: we are giving you a month’s salary instead. And please close the door on your way out, thank you very much.

So, I closed the door after me, very softly. Banging doors is just not me.

Even a year ago, such an unceremonious exit in India for a senior manager of a company, who has put in more than 30 years of service, would have been unthinkable, unless of course he had committed some financial impropriety or been charged with sexual harassment or something equally unsavoury. But right now, unfortunately, we are not living in normal times. Companies, their balance sheets all bleeding and under pressure by the shareholders to reduce costs and increase efficiency, are becoming increasingly jittery and unsure of what to do.

We know desperate people tend to make impetuous decisions; the same is true for desperate companies as well

By engineering my departure in so abrupt a manner, I could see the company had alienated a substantial number of staff, if the flood of distraught and disconsolate visits, phone calls, e-mails, and text messages I had received over the next two days were any indication. Similarly, by not allowing me enough time to say a proper good bye to my customers, all of whom will have to get to know of my departure through third-party sources, the company may ultimately end up garnering a lot of negative publicity it can ill-afford in these difficult times.

Finally after clearing my desk when I came out of my cabin, the entire floor stood up as one and quietly escorted me down the steps into the lobby, gravely shook my hands, and led me to the car. As I looked at the pinched and unhappy faces of my colleagues, some of who have worked with me for over two decades, I felt a deep sense of sadness welling up inside me. I was not feeling sad I was leaving the company; I was grieving the fact that I would not be working anymore with these wonderful people. It was as if by leaving, I was letting them down in some way; I was leaving them defenceless with none to stand up for them.

As I waved my final good-byes from the back of the car, no, I did not choke.

That would have been very unsubtle.

Remembering Ramnath

Ramnath was the best stenographer in the company.

A small-made man with a prominent nose and wiry, steel grey hair, Ramanth lived in Mulund and had to take the overcrowded and notoriously unreliable Central Line every day to reach the office in Ballard Estate. Ramnath also acted as the de facto personal assistant to my boss Gana and lived in mortal fear of Gana catching him arriving late to work, which was often, due to the unpredictability of the suburban railway system.

Humble, honest, and always happy to be of help, Ramnath could be depended on to deliver a neat, flawless letter every time and was in great demand among the managers. He rarely used a whitener, never typed over a mistake and abhorred carbon smudges and greasy thumb marks.

Ramnath harboured a cynical disdain for those managers whose working knowledge of English was poor or whose dictating skills were not up to scratch, even though he was careful not to show such feelings in public. I must have shown some promise in both departments because very soon Ramnath took me under his wing and patiently chiselled away and smoothened whatever rough edges I had, when it came to official, written communication in English. He freely edited my drafts, sometimes replacing words or even whole sentences and often, playing around with entire paragraphs. I did not mind this at all because every time, the final result was much superior to my original draft.

A few years later, I knew I had passed the test when Ramnath stopped editing my drafts.

I will conclude this post with this interesting story: One day Ramnath is on leave and another stenographer called Sathe is forced to take dictation from Gana. Sathe is terrified of the great man who dictates in a clipped accent at breakneck speed because when he goes back to his typewriter and looks at his own shorthand, he can comprehend nothing. Finally after several attempts and with a little help from fellow stenographers, he completes the letter and places it reverentially in front of Gana.

There is a moment of silence as Gana scans the letter before signing. Suddenly he sucks his breath in sharply and screams: “Sathe! What do you mean by this? Please check your piles? Please check your piles?”

Sathe realised only too late that he should have typed, “Please check your prices”!

Sathe never took dictation from Gana again.

In Praise of the Stenographer

If you look back over the last 15 years or so, the stenographer as a species has totally vanished from the office scene. You do not see him anymore. The advent of the PC and the laptop, word-processing programmes with spell check features and the unblinking focus companies have brought to bear on headcount-related costs have all played their part in vanishing what was once the constant in any organisation chart.

One of the skills which I had to master quickly, when I started my career almost 25 years ago, was that of dictating a letter. It is a skill which forces you to think clearly, logically, and in paragraphs, for, it is not enough to just reel off what you want to say, you have to also call out the punctuation marks and the paragraph breaks to the stenographer as you dictate.

The dictionary definition of stenography is “the art or process of writing in shorthand”, but good stenographers did much more than just convert your words into little strokes and squiggles in their shorthand pad and reconstruct them without mistakes on their faithful Remington typewriters. The better stenographers could improve on your original draft by correcting grammatical mistakes and errors in syntax and by ruthlessly editing out verbiage and clumsy usage.

Right from the days of the British Raj I suspect, the monopoly for good stenography was held by the South Indian Brahmins of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. During the 1940s and 1950s, thousands of them, after passing their matriculation from small towns such as Kumbakonam and Palghat boarded trains to Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, and other cities afar to make a living. What they had in addition to the matriculation certificate was a working knowledge of typewriting and shorthand learned at the friendly neighbourhood typewriting institute. Most of them found jobs in government and in large trading houses of that time and a good percentage of them rose up through the hierarchy by dint of their hard work and dedication and went on to occupy key positions in the very same organisations they first joined as a humble stenographer decades ago.

In the company I first joined, they had a “stenographers’ pool” which was almost fully populated by South Indian Brahmins. I still have fond memories of these colleagues finishing their home-cooked sambar rice or curd rice in double quick time and spending the next 50 minutes of the lunch time in quiet slumber in their chairs under the slowly-revolving ceiling fans.

Photo Courtesy: Roberrt's Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

Language Tangle

The peculiarities of the English language can prove to be a challenge for the best of us. To my friend Joymon, it was even more a daunting task, having studied in a Malayalam medium school in Kerala. Conversational English especially, was something he struggled with every day.

To his credit, Joymon never gave up and refused to be discouraged when his colleagues took pot shots at his Malayalam-accented English. He was not afraid to make mistakes nor was he ashamed to ask and clear his doubts on the correct usage of the language. Within a year he became sufficiently proficient in English and could navigate the treacherous linguistic by-lanes with a fair amount of felicity.

One day, all of us get invited to the Big Boss’s house party. Big B lives in a palatial beachside bungalow in Juhu. This is an annual event normally scheduled to coincide with the visit of the members of the senior management from Germany.

That year I have to miss the party as the date clashed with an official trip to Bangalore which had been planned weeks ago. I bump into Joymon in the corridor the following Monday and casually ask him whether he enjoyed the party at Big B’s place on Saturday night.
Joymon beams.

“Fantastic party,” Joymon says. “Big B lives in this fantastic house with a huge garden. There is even a swimming pool!”

“So, good food? Great Music?”

“Wonderful,” says Joymon. “Really enjoyed myself.”

“Great!” I am about to move on when Joymon says: “And Mrs Big B...”

“What about her?”

“Such a hostile lady,” Joymon says.

“What?” I am puzzled. I cannot co-relate Joymon’s bright smile as he uttered the sentence with the kind of antipathy one normally associates with the word “hostile”.

“She was taking care of each and every guest,” Joymon explains, “making sure everyone had enough to eat and drink and going round and chatting to even the junior managers. So hostile.”

Suddenly the coin drops. “Hospitable,” I say. “Hospitable is the word you want, Joymon. Hostile means just the opposite, like, being rude and unfriendly!”

Joymon listens intently and vows never to repeat the mistake. He also reassures me that while bidding good-bye, he had not mentioned to Mrs. Big B what a “hostile” hostess she had been!

Photo Courtesy: Woman-with-a-lens Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

Ravan and the Cable Guy

It was 1993 and, as an aftermath of the infamous Mumbai blasts, anti-Pakistan sentiment was at an all-time high. Even though Pakistani serials were very popular those days, many cable TV operators had withdrawn such programmes from their channel-bouquet, bowing to the prevailing sentiment.

However, the cable operator in my area continued to beam the Pakistani TV channel (PTV) in spite of repeated representations from jingoistic viewers to take it off.

One day, casually over lunch, I mention this to Ravan Singh and he flies into a rage. “How can you tolerate this,” Ravan thunders. “We have to put a stop to this nonsense immediately! The fellow should be put behind bars for treason!”

“It is futile,” I say. “The cable guy is an arrogant fellow with political connections and does pretty much as he chooses.”

“We will see about that,” glowers Ravan. He pulls a telephone directory off the rack, finds the number of the service provider, and starts dialling. A lady comes on the line and Ravan asks her to put him through to the owner immediately. When she enquires who she should say is calling, he says with ominous calm: “Tell him this is Inspector Parulkar from Palton Road police station.”

When the owner comes on line, Ravan starts slowly, almost gently: “I have received a complaint that you are beaming PTV programmes in your cable network. As you know very well, this is against the law. Your viewers have requested you not to telecast these programmes, but you continue to do so. What have you to say about this?”

Perhaps Ravan’s conciliatory tone lulls the owner into a false sense of security. He is rather nonchalant in his response, saying that PTV programmes are popular and he is only catering to customers’ needs and many cable operators are beaming them anyway, so what’s the big deal?

Ravan explodes from his chair, draws himself to his full height and unships a few choice epithets in Hindi and Marathi, outlining the cable owner’s doubtful paternity, his unsavoury relationship with his sister, and his abject inability to satisfy his wife in bed.

“Do you know who you are talking to?” Inspector Parulkar shouts. “Do you know I can come with a posse of policemen in the next fifteen minutes and put you inside so fast that no one will ever even know where you are for the next fifteen years? Or should I make it easier for you by arranging a police encounter where a carefully-aimed shot is all that it takes to put an end to your miserable life?”

I can see, like all great actors, Ravan has merged with the character he is playing. At this moment he believes himself to be the tough, angry cop bullying the stuffing out of the criminal who has had the effrontery to talk back to him.

After fifteen minutes of this tirade, at the other end of the line, the cable TV owner is an abject mass of quivering jelly, tripping over words, profusely apologetic, and declaring his undying loyalty to his motherland. “PTV will be taken off immediately sir,” says the broken man. “You will have no further cause for complaint.”

“I give you exactly one hour,” says Inspector Parulkar, back to his deep, soothing voice. “After that, I come for you.”

And sure enough, the owner kept his promise.

Photo Courtesy: Chin Wu's Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

Introducing Ravan Singh

I think it is time I introduced Ravan Singh to the readers of my blog.

Ravan was a tall and well-built man with a scraggly beard that he deliberately left untrimmed. He could have passed off as handsome, if only a prominently protruding paunch had not spoilt the overall effect. Ravan had a voracious appetite for food; could drink anybody under the table; and fancied himself quite a ladies’ man.

Ravan and I were colleagues for over a decade during which we became very good friends. Looking back, this was rather strange for, both in appearance and temperament, we were like chalk and cheese. Ravan was the hearty, back-slapping type while I was painfully introverted. Ravan could be impulsive and rash while I was methodical and boring. Ravan was always the life and soul of the party while I generally had a tendency to blend in with the woodwork.

Ravan had a reputation for becoming very boisterous after a few drinks; during office parties the task of keeping him under control or some semblance of it, always fell on me. When he was sloshed, the only person he listened to was me and his obedience on such occasions was implicit and childlike. But there were couple of occasions when things went horribly wrong.

One such was at the Ambassador Hotel in Bombay where we are holding a reception for customers. The business part of the evening is over and those who imbibe have made a beeline for the bar. We circulate among customers, clinking our glasses and making polite small talk. Suddenly someone tugs urgently at my sleeve. It is Ravan.

“I don’t like the way Customer S is behaving,” he says in a hoarse whisper. “He is talking ill of our service, the worm! I think I will pull his toupée off.”

“What?” I am distracted. “What toupée?”

“Everyone knows S wears a toupée,” he says reasonably.” I’m going to yank it off.”

“You shall do no such thing,” I say firmly. “Just ignore the guy and go slow on the whisky, will you?”

Ravan disappears and I forget about the conversation. The evening winds down peacefully and after couple of hours, most customers have had their dinner and have left. So have the top bosses of the company. There are a few stragglers in the bar and I can see Ravan and S having a heated argument. Suddenly, in front of everyone’s stupefied eyes, Ravan yanks the toupée off S!


All hell breaks loose. Ravan is swaying on his legs and guffawing while the hapless S, shorn of his hairpiece and dignity, is screaming and weeping and lunging feebly for the toupée which Ravan holds aloft like a trophy.

No, Ravan did not lose his job. Probably, if the incident had happened an hour earlier when the party was in full swing, he most definitely would have. The next day, Ravan visited S and offered his profuse and unconditional apology for his boorish behaviour.

The customer forgave him and, I suspect, they had a drink together afterwards!

Photo Courtesy: boomSlang's Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

Carol and the Old Monk: Part 2

Carol gives me a wan smile.

The problem, she says with commendable detachment, is with her head. It weighs a ton. It also hurts very badly. But the real problem, she says staring straight ahead, is that she cannot move her head to the left or to the right. If she does, dazzling flashes of lightning seem to dance before her eyes and it is awful...

“You have a bad hangover,” says Russ, uncharitably stating the obvious.

I look at my watch which shows 9 am. The first customers would start arriving in the next 45 minutes or so.

Carol gulps down couple of tablets of paracetamol and empties half a bottle of mineral water. “You guys wait down in the lobby,” she says, “I will be down in fifteen minutes.”

True to her word, Carol joins us fifteen minutes later. I can see that she has brushed and combed her hair and put on some make-up. She looks definitely better than the ‘victim-of-train wreck’ I saw some time ago. She pats my hand and says everything is going to be all right.

“I shall sit and operate the console,” Carol says. “But I cannot turn around and look at the customers who will be sitting in a circle behind us. If I turn my head, it hurts real bad. So I cannot smile at them. Neither can I answer their questions. The three of you have to manage all that.”

“They will think you are a rude lady,” says Russ, not very helpfully.

“Never mind that,” I say. “Let us do as she says.”

That day Carol excels herself. She sits like a statue in front of the console from 10 am to 6 pm and operates the console flawlessly, neither looking to the right nor to the left, staring straight ahead. She continuously drinks water from a glass and declines lunch. Bob and I try to shield her from questions but when customers ask her a direct question, she answers them looking straight ahead. Fortunately, nobody notices anything amiss and the demos are a grand success.

After a hard day’s work, the entire team goes back to the Taj and my boss says: “C’mon guys! That was fantastic! Let us have a drink at the Harbour Bar!”

Carol shudders visibly, excuses herself and walks up to the lift, looking neither to the left nor to the right, but straight ahead.

Carol and the Old Monk: Part 1

Carol sits in a sofa looking down, cupping her face with both hands. And when she raises her head to speak to me, I can see she is bleary-eyed and her face is white as a sheet. She is shivering a bit. Her voice is dry and cracked. She looks terrible.

And terrible is the quandary I find myself in.

Bob, Carol, and Russ are the threesome who has come from the US to help us with the new product launch. Russ is responsible for hardware maintenance. Bob is the Presenter and Carol, the Applications Specialist. For the past two days we have been rehearsing the demo and it has been coming along nicely. Bob and Carol do a finely-nuanced Punch & Judy show where, as Bob prattles on about each function and feature, Carol’s dextrous fingers bring up the necessary applet on the monitor.

They are a diverse lot: Russ, short and stocky, with a round, mournful face and careful to drink nothing but Coke. Bob, bespectacled, tall and thin like a reed, looks more like a nerdy college professor. And Carol, sincere and serious, working hard to ensure that the demos go off without a hitch.

Today is D-Day. The demos are to take place at the Grand Hotel in Ballard Estate. The hall has been booked. The hardware is installed and tested and ready. VIP customers have been invited at one-hour intervals, starting at 10 am. We are ready to roll!

When I reach the Taj Mahal Hotel at 8.30 am to pick up the contingent, a nervous Bob meets me at the foyer and says we have a problem. Carol is very sick and can I please come upstairs to her room?

I cannot understand it. Carol was perfectly fine when I dropped them off in the hotel the previous night at 9 pm. Could it be something she had for dinner that had caused her to fall sick? A bout of food-poisoning, perhaps?

Slowly, hesitantly Bob and Russ come out with the story. Apparently, after I dropped them off yesterday, they had gone for a short walk along Colaba when they “chanced” upon a liquor store. While standing in front of the store, they suddenly remembered this excellent dark rum their friend Rada had introduced them to the previous night and also his secret recipe for a cocktail that had equal amounts of cola and soda in it with a twist of lime. So without further ado, they had grabbed couple of bottles of this excellent spirit only to come back to the room and begin to consume it forthwith.

“S***!” I howl. “You guys polished off two bottles of rum between the three of you?”

All three nod in silent misery.

Soren's Poor Jokes

This post by a fellow-blogger suddenly made me recollect an incident that happened several years ago.

Pankaj had recently joined the company. He was a very sincere, hard-working young man with a ready smile and a cheerful demeanour. Being new, Pankaj was in that phase of constantly trying to ingratiate himself with all his colleagues and charm them with his social graces.

Soren was an expatriate who worked for our company at that time. A tall, heavily-built man with deep-set blue eyes and a blond, scraggly beard, Soren always reminded me of the Giant from Jack and the Beanstalk. He smiled often, but the smile, rarely if ever, seemed to reach his eyes. Soren could be blunt, irascible, and was prone to such severe mood-swings that his colleagues normally tried to avoid him as much as possible.

Not Pankaj. Every day morning, Pankaj would go across to Soren’s seat and the following conversation would ensue with minor variations:

Pankaj: How are you Soren?

Soren: I’m fine thanks. How’re you Pankaj?

Pankaj: I am also fine, Soren. How’s the family?

Soren: Fine, thanks.

Pankaj: Have a good day, Soren.

Soren: Thanks, you too, Pankaj.

The whole office would listen to this exchange with good-natured tolerance, suppress a smile or two, and go on with their work.

One day Soren is late. Pankaj faithfully wishes everyone else a cheery Good Morning and starts preparing to go out on a sales visit. He is busy cramming his briefcase with price lists and brochures when Soren walks in. Instead of going to his seat, Soren makes a beeline for where Pankaj is sitting and plonks himself on Pankaj’s table. A startled Pankaj looks up from what he is doing and offers a helpful smile.

“How are you, Pankaj?” Soren asks loudly, making sure everyone is listening.

“I am fine, Soren,” says Pankaj, ‘how are you?”

Soren, delighted that Pankaj has fallen neatly into the trap set for him, replies in clear, ringing tones: “I am fine, Pankaj. In fact, I couldn’t be better. You see, I woke up at 5 O’clock, went for a jog, had a shower, f*- ed the wife who had just got up, had breakfast and here I am! I tell you man, I’m feeling good!”

Soren looks around expectantly. The whole office is frozen in silence. Nobody laughs. No one even looks at him.

From that day onwards, Pankaj stopped wishing Soren in the mornings.

Monsoon Madness

"In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes," said Benjamin Franklin. If you are living in Mumbai, you will doubtlessly add one more to the list: the certainty that Mumbai will be paralysed, with all public transport including BEST buses and suburban trains suspended, for at least couple of days during every monsoon. So it was 25 years ago; so it is now.

Some of the most delightful recollections I have about Mumbai are waking up to the noise of a heavy downpour and quickly making the decision to snuggle under my blanket and go back to sleep, because one instinctively knew the train services will be off and there was no point in slogging it to the station anyway.

But it is a nightmare when the skies open up in the afternoon and the train system closes down just before the offices close. The buses are jam-packed and trying to flag down a speeding taxi is an exercise in futility. Wet, hungry, and tired, you are lucky if you manage to reach your home in the distant suburbs by midnight.

One such day, Katara and I decide to go against the grain and not go home. With most of our colleagues milling about in the lobby discussing various means of transport to reach home, we wait for a lull in the raging thunderstorm and make a quick dash to the cosy and warm interiors of Grand Hotel nearby. We sit in the near-empty bar and start drinking slowly and methodically, munching on the delightful finger-food the barman keeps replenishing, listening to the storm raging outside and talking about nothing in particular.

Close to 11 pm, we walk back in the drizzle, none too steadily, to the office which is empty save for the watchman, who informs us the train services are still down and finding transport home at this time of the night will be difficult. We nod cheerfully and walk towards the conference room. Rearranging the furniture, we spread newspapers on the soft, two-inch thick carpet, set the thermostat of the air-conditioner to a comfortable 25 degrees and are out like a light, almost instantaneously.

Next day morning, when I reach my apartment, there is a surprise. Sunitaben exhibits some real emotion seeing me back safe and sound and comes up with a hot, steaming cup of tea followed by a real, sumptuous breakfast.

Happiness!

Photo Courtesy: Sakura's Public Gallery, Picasa Web Albums

Nervous Bosses

Nervous and insecure bosses are dangerous. Not only do they try to infect you with their nervousness and insecurity, but when the chips are down or, to put it more delicately, when the shit hits the fan, you will find such bosses are often coated with Teflon: nothing sticks to them and suddenly you find yourself the guilty party with the brown stuff plastered all over you.

Gana was one such boss. A small, dapper man with snow-white hair and a sallow complexion, Gana could be charming when he wanted to, but most times took an unholy delight in making the lives of his subordinates miserable.

Gana’s brow is always furrowed in thought. He is forever calling everyone to his cabin for impromptu meetings and discussions. He smokes incessantly, ‘water-boarding’ his cigarette butts into a huge ashtray half filled with water. His glass-topped table is always full of important-looking files and papers. When he walks out of his cabin, he walks with fast, purposeful strides and has this anxious, anguished expression on his face as if the company’s future hangs on the momentous decisions he is about to make.

Six months into the new job, Gana calls me to his cabin. As usual, his table is piled high with files. He is sitting with a large sheet of paper and is drawing columns and rows with a ruler and a pencil, this being much before the advent of Lotus 1-2-3, Excel and their ilk, of course. My task apparently is to dig into each file and come up with some numbers which he enters faithfully into his spreadsheet. It is boring, repetitive work and not something a Sales Head should be really doing by himself. An hour into this monotony, I can take it no more and start fantasising about women.

I am brought back to earth by someone shouting my name. It is Gana.

“Customer Tejal. You have given me the wrong figures. HOW CAN WE HAVE NEGATIVE COMMISSION?” he screams.

I have no idea what he is talking about. But he has succeeded in making me hopelessly nervous.

“Err...maybe you entered in the wrong column, sir,” I point out helpfully which is a big mistake. Gana is now literally frothing at the mouth.

“SHOW ME...SHOW ME...” he shouts.

I reach out to point out the error and in the process, manage to overturn the entire contents of Gana’s ashtray on to the sheet. The ashtray apparently has not been emptied since the Chinese war of 1962, and a viscous, brownish fluid, smelling in equal parts of tobacco, vomit, and unwashed dishcloth spreads slowly but inexorably onto the beautifully-drawn rows and columns of Gana’s now almost-completed spreadsheet.

I watch in fascination.

Cut to Gana: I am sure the man is dying or at least, having a heart attack. His face has turned an unhealthy crimson. He is trying to shout, but what comes out is a strangled groan. He chokes, he gurgles, and then, with a hand quavering with anger and indignation, wordlessly commands me to get the hell out of his office, which I am extremely happy to do.

They had to keep him under sedation for the next few days.