Sense of responsibility

Our meeting was a disaster. There was no consensus on even the need to save the company, let alone the way it was to be done.

Mr A, my boss, sat through the meeting, silent, like the man who has accidently walked into a divorce proceeding, but knows not how to extricate himself from the mess without seeming to be rude.

That Mr A was among the oldest employee of the company in our branch did not instill in him any feeling of loyalty that was so manifest in rest of the agitated members. That seemed strange to me, for I believe that his skill-set is not likely to be of any use to any other organization, and that he has a direct stake in the survival of the company.

Later that day in our office, I delicately broached the subject.

“There is a fear that if things continue to slide, it will be curtains for the company. Have you thought of any plan B?’ I asked him, seeing that he was waiting for his opponent to make his move on the online scrabble.

“What for?” he mumbled absently.

“You don’t fear that things will get worse, and we should start brushing up our CVs?” I tried a more direct approach.

“You are panicking too soon. That fool doesn’t know what he is talking about,” answered Mr A. I understood he was talking about his arch-rival Mr X, who was the one who had called the meeting today.

“Why, you see a turnaround?” I asked.

“Of course. Its commonsense. In a company of our size, what you do at branch office doesn’t matter, but what is done at the HQ is important.”

“And…what is being done at the HQ?”

“Nothing, so far as I can see. But that will change with the requirement of the times. Pressure to stay afloat will force them to act.”

“But that can also mean shutting down braches like ours.”

“Of course it can. That could be one of the options. Changes in technology could be another. In fact there are at least half a dozen possibilities of what could happen.”

“None of which we control,” I said, agitated.

“Don’t try to be a control-freak. There are thousands of things in life you don’t control. If you start worrying about all of it, when will you live?” he said, smiling at last.

That bugged me, for it was too condescending, but I let the matter rest.

A few days later, I found Mr A in an agitated state. It was early Monday morning, a time when we generally go for a cup of tea at the canteen, and I asked boss if we should go.

“No, you go ahead. I have something urgent to finish,” he said without looking up from the screen.

“What is it? May I do something?” I asked, surprised.

“Oh nothing. Superboss asked me to make a plan to submit to the HQ to turnaround the dropping sales. He feels that our branch is at stake and that we should take the matter seriously. I totally agree. All the buggers here are living in fools’ paradise, thinking they can keep on living like they did and others will think for them,” he said accusingly.

The change of tack was too quick for me, and I let it sink for a while. Taking a deep breath, I asked, “So what does Superboss want?”

“A proper plan for restructuring, and a new business model that is specific for our branch, but, if possible, something that can be integrated into a model for the whole company. In any case, we must do something to guard our interest,” he explained reasonably.

“What was the provocation today for Superboss?” I asked, for I knew therein lay the solution to this mystery.

“I think he got a letter from the CEO, who refers to a prospect of closing down some branches, and has asked for suggestions to avert such a possibility,” Mr A said.

If our branch were to close down, Superboss may or may not be taken to the HQ. Clearly his job was on the line. So things had come to such a pass.

“What’s the plan you have in mind?” I asked Mr A.

“Changing product line, upgrading technology and aggressively hiring new agents. It is a no-brainer. Shift in technology keeps on happening, and you must incrementally update yourself. If you don’t, you will have crisis at hand, when you will have to do it. We have left things to drift for too long.”

“But the other day you were not so worried. You said that…” I began, but was interrupted.

“I know what I said. And I know what I am saying now,” he said heating up. “Instead of talking shop, that bugger should come up with practical proposals,” he said implying that I was siding up with Mr X.

“Mr X has no plans,” I said to placate him. “But should the HQ not think of solutions. The crisis has been created because they did not act for so long,” I reminded him.

“No. That is where you are wrong. The crisis is because the branches did not give the right picture to the HQ. Did not project their requirements. HQ is not where action is, branches are. We should wake up now, or it will be too late. You call for tea here, we will have to work hard to get this document done today. Maybe we will be sent to the HQ for making a presentation next week….”

Our office was filled with a degree of urgency not seen before. At least not in the last few years. Within a week, the whole branch was buzzing with frenzied activity.

For making an office work, nothing like putting the job of the top man at stake, I thought happily. I wish I could engineer that more often.

***

A bunched up Book Review

     

 

 

 

 

Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut

Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

Animal Farm – George Orwell

I do not why I have lumped these three books together – there must be a method behind the apparent madness.

The first two are American, the last British. The first two are anti-war while the third is on political philosophy.

But they do have some similarities. They all are from the middle of the last century, all sad-funny, what is called dark-humor. All have an underdog at the center of it, though the ‘underdogs’ in the last are the farm animals ‘minus’ the pigs and the dogs.

All these books have sensational quotes; all of them can be read happily by children and adults alike without meaning anything to them; all of them are depressing, for they ask you to abandon hope and try to understand the society ‘as it is’. All of them are against regimentation through ideology.

***

The central theme of Slaughterhouse Five is on the bombing of Dresden; but is also about Vietnam and other wars that will follow. It is about a person who is ‘unstuck’ in time and exists at all times of his life, all the time. I understand that to be merely living in memory, for the science fiction bit in the novel is really not very important.

Kurt Vonnegut was in Dresden when it was bombed by the Allied forces, for no apparent reason, killing over a hundred thousand civilans – more than the Hiroshima atom bomb. So, the novel is partly autobiographical, and probably that is why it is so rich in detail.

The anti-war sentiments are spot-on and the most beautiful passage is where it describes a war movie running on a rewind.

“American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.”

But like I said before, the novel is dark and offers no solution:

“That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?”
“Yes.” Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.
“Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”

***

Another beautiful anti-war novel is the famous Catch-22. Here is how the novel describes the clause “Catch-22” –

“Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.”

The confused question of relevance of nationalism that has become so central to the ordering of our lives is brought out thus –

“What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can’t all be worth dying for.”

The book is scathing at places, and truly insightful –

“It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”

Again, as is common with all the books reviewed here, it offers no hope. The society wants a total submission and eventually the life of the individual; the individual instinctively resists, for it is not in his DNA to die for others; much persuasion and heartburn later, the matter remains unresolved. Such novels, after all, can only raise questions and warn against the prevailing lies.

***

The last in the list is Animal Farm by George Orwell. This one does not have a war as its backdrop, and I probably include it to underline the fact that it is not war that is at the root of our problems – war is only a symptom, an inevitable result of the way we have ordered our society and brainwashed ourselves.

Let’s begin with the story, for it is beautifully-childish. The farm animals overthrow the regime of a cruel man and take it upon themselves to run the farm in the best possible manner, in the interests of the animals. But the newly named ‘Animal Farm’ under the democratic rule of the pigs fast degenerates into a dictatorship of ‘Napoleon’, the brightest pig, and his family, who use a group of dogs as their ‘musclemen’. They mainly use ideology and oratory to keep the other animals satisfied, but have to use ‘muscle’ eventually, when even the dumbest start to understand the true nature of the new order. The last lines of the novel shows the animals peeping inside a cabin where the pigs are having a party with the neighbouring humans, and the author concludes –

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

The beauty of the novel is that it simultaneously attacks capitalism and communism. And because of that, the novel comes to an inevitable dead-end, where human greed and cruelty comes out victorious once again.

Not surprisingly it was banned in both the US and USSR at one point of time. Written in 1944, it was before the excesses of Stalin era came to be, and so we can also salute the foresight of the author. But the worrisome part is not the “I told you so smirk”, the worrisome part is that the book is so ‘universal’ – reading it you know that this cycle of greed and domination will happen again and again. The way children pick up the same comics to read, again and again and again, despite knowing what will happen.

***

How to write a novel

My first class at ‘How to be a Writer’ started with a BANG.

“Mr Teecher, how does one begin a Novel?” I asked getting to the point straight. For I was clear, I want to write a Novel.

“Mr Ranga, we will come to that shortly,” said the long nosed thin Teecher.

But that was not good enough. I knew the fellow would start by teaching short stories and limericks. I had been warned of that by my friend Dhiraj. “These courses are no good,” he said, “they teach you to write short stories and limericks.”

So I persisted. “Mr Teecher, we must start with the Novel,” I said and grinned, for it was no good getting the fellow angry.

“All right,” quoth he, and shrugged. “Although it is irregular, but just to give the class a taste of the best in English literature of the twentieth century, we will begin with the Novel. Now the difference between other writings and the novel is that the latter has a setting and is rooted at a particular time and place. It has a set structure, with a beginning and a resolution. It is normally linear and….”

“All that very well Mr Teecher, but how to start it?” I said, knowing the fellow was making it sound too bad, so I would be discouraged. My friend Dhiraj had warned me of these tricks. Methinks, Dhiraj has attended a writer’s class sometime.

“The start of a Novel,” began the Teecher slowly, for he must have known he was going too fast, and he can’t fool us by going too fast, “can be of any kind. There is no set pattern. I will give you some examples of the beautiful starts of some of the classics.”

So saying, he opened his notebook and starts to read. The fellow has not done his homework, or he should have learnt these by heart. Anyway, this is what he said:

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Thus began Leo Tolstoy in his masterpiece Anna Karenina, setting the tone for the novel. ‘He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.’ wrote Ernest Hemingway in The Old Man and the Sea, positing the conflict of the novel in the first sentence itself…”

The Teecher had misunderstood me. “No, no. How do we start writing a novel, I am asking,” I made my good self clear and grinned, so he may not get annoyed.

The Teecher thought for some time. Slowly he kept his notebook aside, and thought some more. “Although there is a set sequence in which the students are introduced to the art of writing, seeing the enthusiasm of Mr Ranga, I will, for a change, begin with some tips on how to write a novel,” he said, getting my point. You have to be firm with these fellows, Dhiraj had told me, and he was right.

“You must have a plot, to begin with. A rough sketch of the storyline, as it were. The names and characteristics of the main characters must be drawn up…” he began, but I interrupted on an important point.

“Teecher, my drawing is not so good,” I confessed, for when you are going for learning, there is no harm in being honest. It gives man honor and dignity, to confess weaknesses, however painful it may be. Mahatma Gandhi did that, and see what happened to the British Empire.

“Ummm,” thought the teacher, made some faces, no doubt because of deep thought, and said, “Ok, skip the drawing part, just write the characteristics of your main characters – the protagonists…”

After a long lecture, in which I took copious notes, he ended by giving us assignment for the next class, which was, to prepare notes for the novel we wished to write.

***

I worked hard all week, with my notes. I even consulted Dhiraj, who said, do not tell all your notes to class, or other students will cheat and write novel of your bright ideas. That was a good point again, and I worked carefully, hiding some important facts about my main story and my main characters.

***

“Mr Teecher,” I began, when my chance came to read out my notes, which was after two silly girls, who wrote about their heroines who were in love with a Pirate and a Vampire, two different girls, I mean two different heroines…Anyway, as I said I began thus:

“Mr Teecher, my story is about a great man, who was a nobody and became a big man, but ended being a nobody at his death-bed, and thought about the missing opportunities he had for love and doing good. But now, he thinks, no good thinking that now, for it is all over, and I have played my innings.”

I paused for reaction, for I knew the idea was very modern. Generally, people do not show their great men coming down again in their novels. But I did not want to write routine old stuff.

“Go on, Mr Ranga,” said the Teecher, for he was hooked.

“That is all,” I said, for I did not want to reveal all to cheating fellows in my class.

“Mr Ranga, you will have to flesh out the plot. Where did the events take place, when, who were the main characters. And even the plot is too generic. Exactly what happens, how the man becomes great, how does his downfall come about,” said the Teecher.

“It happened somewhere in India, in the twentieth century,” I replied, not giving away much. “The hero was a businessman, who hit it rich in petroleum and becomes a Prime Minister.”

Again the Teecher interrupts me. “The novel has to be plausible. Imagination must be tempered,” he said.

I thought of Dhirubhai Ambani, and saw his point. “Ok, I said. The man makes it rich in the petroleum sector and becomes a king-maker. His decline comes because his sons are no good, and his daughters run away with drivers and actors.”

I was clear that it was not a Dhirubhai story, and this ending would make it clear. “At deathbed, he is in a refugee camp…”

The Teecher interrupts again. “Refugee camp? How did that come in?”

“There was a war in which he lost everything. His industry is nationalized,” I reply, grinning. I could see he had not foreseen that.

“But how does that make him feel about missed opportunities?” Teecher asked, clearly perplexed.

“Because he could have gone over to the enemies side, which was more powerful. But details later,” I said firmly, “Now for the characters. Man, his wife, his two sons, his two daughters.”

The Teecher sighed, “Describe your characters. For example, the description could be like – A balding middle aged man, of medium height. Greying, thin mustache on a rotund face. A middle-class businessman with delusions. Frowning and agitated demeanor. Of modest beginnings, which is evident in his style, dressing and language.”

Methinks, the Teecher dislikes me. It was clear he was describing me, hiding behind the great man in my story. But I let that pass, for, as Dhiraj told me later, Gurus become jealous of their chelas when the chelas start doing better than them.

We were given the task of writing synopsis for each of our chapters for our next class.

***

It was difficult to write synopsis without giving out too much information. I consulted Dhiraj, who said caution is better part of valour. No use showing off in front of class girls, he said, keep the synopsis short.

***

My turn for reading out my synopsis came two weeks later, for I had to listen to the rubbish by the girls about Vampires and Pirates. Some parts I liked, where the girls giggled and said there will be some lovemaking, and that gave me some idea to throw in the sexy parts in my synopsis, and I kept on rewriting and improving. But without giving out the intimate details, as they say.

“Mr Teecher, Chapter 1. Old man is born in a cheap family. He is the thirteenth child. He is put in village school. He decides not to join Mahatma Gandhi, for business is what he likes.

Chapter 2. He goes to college and works at night. Teachers are bad to him and girls giggle. Yes, just like that giggly girl in the front seat. But he is not deterred. He also feels attracted to a rich girl, but not says anything to her. This he will remember at the end of the novel, with regret.”

I look around for reactions, and was happy to note that the girl sitting next to me was smiling.

The rest of the synopsis went off well. Mr Teecher said I should start working on the novel ‘in right earnest’.

***

It has been two years since I wrote my first novel. It set me back two hundred thousand rupees to get it printed. My friends liked it a lot, and Dhiraj was very happy too. He said I should write more, but it is costly to get them published, so I will think about it.

Dhiraj was also right about the Teecher. He is jealous sort of fellow. I asked him to write a praise to be printed in the book. And what he wrote shows he wanted to be a writer, but did not have the guts. He wrote:

“The first novel of Mr Ranga is a notable effort in terms of the ground he has covered from being a semi-literate. The first time he showed up in my class, I knew he would write a novel and get it printed. He has that kind of money, and the burning desire to add respectability. I wish him all the best in his future endeavors as a novelist.”

Anyone can recognize the sarcasm, but he was right about the money and respectability, and so I let his words be printed in my book. In any case, one must not snub gurus. It is not in our culture. Also, my large heartedness would make the fellow squirm at his own mean-ness.

I dedicated the book to Dhiraj, my wife, my two sons and my two daughters. It was unveiled at a glittering ceremony by the Prime Minister.

***

An incident in the park

The child, about six years old, sitting on the park bench was looking curiously at me. It broke my reverie, and as an opening gambit, I smiled, but he continued to stare.

“What’s up young man?” I asked.

“What are you doing?” he asked, point blank.

That un-nerved me a little, for you never know what the kid was thinking. I played safe, “Just imagining things,” I said.

“What things?” he asked.

“All sorts of things,” I said, not really getting the hang of the conversation.

“Why?” he said.

Now there is little you can do when a young person asks you why. So I deflected the question, “My imagination saw your imagination there,” I said, pointing towards the sky.

That hooked him. We were on familiar territory now, in the world of imaginations.

“Where,” he asked. Perhaps he wanted to know the exact location of our imaginations.

“There, above the clouds,” I said, “Where lots of imaginations live.”

“Imaginations live above clouds?” he asked, curious.

“Not all,” I said, “but the better ones like to live above the clouds.”

“How do you know?” he asked.

“I have been studying imaginations all my life. I am an expert on them. My imagination meets the imaginations of so many people. That is what I was doing. ‘I was connecting’,” I explained.

The expression on his face turned to respect. It takes one to know one.

“Your imagination tells you everything?” he asked.

“Imagination can tell anything. Many things that even the scientists do not know,” I said.

“And they don’t lie?” asked the kid, for he wanted to be on sure grounds before proceeding further into the world of imaginations.

“Imaginations can tell you anything, it is up to you to believe them or not. They are not very particular about truth, but they are powerful none the less. They know the truth, which is sometimes difficult to find,” I said.

“But truth is easy to see. They are like facts,” the kid remarked.

“Not so. Most of the times truth is hidden behind layers of feelings. But imagination knows truth, for truth is sweet and imagination is powerful. I will give you an example. There are many poor children who have not seen the inside of a normal home. They imagine how it may be and are happy.”

“They can go anywhere they can imagine,” he asked.

“Yes of course, like you can go on an adventure, or on a spaceship, or fly with superman or fight the aliens. My imagination once saw a beggar child imagination what it would be to go around the city in a car. I decided to take him along with me in my car. And I did. At the end of the ride I asked him how he liked it, and he said, it was good, but he had been around earlier also. I asked him when, and he said, in his imagination. So, you see, imaginations can be pretty accurate.”

“Wonderful!” he exclaimed.

“No, but remember, not everyone is blessed with such great imaginations,” I cautioned, for I knew that he would feel that the world doesn’t need anything more than imagination. “Moreover, the soul needs imagination, but the body needs more worldly solid things.”

He was disappointed, for he seemed to detect a fly in the ointment. “My dad was saying it is all fool’s paradise,” he said.

“Not so. Newton to Einstein, Aristotle to Marx, Leaonardo da Vinci to Picasso – all the great men have had great imaginations, ones they believed in.”

“What was my imagination doing?” asked the boy.

“I don’t know. Did not talk to it. It seemed busy,” I said.

“Yes, it was. It was catching snakes. Huge snakes,” he nodded and said.

“Ah, that explains it. Your imagination was looking very preoccupied,” I said.

“How did you recognize it was my imagination?” he suddenly asked.

“It looked like you,” I said simply.

“Oh,” he said, “there must be millions and billions and gillions of imaginations up there?” he said.

“Not so. Only few imaginations soar so high. Mostly those of kids. Only few adult imaginations go there. Most adult imaginations can not even cross the clouds, let alone reach space. But the one that can go into space can go anywhere in the universe. No, even beyond the universe, but that needs more power,” I explained.

“What’s beyond universe?” he asked.

“Don’t know yet. Have not been able to go there. Imaginations of saints and really good people are so powerful as to break out of universe. But I have talked to some of those who have been beyond, and they say it is wonderful, for there it is without rules and limitations and free,” I said.

We were silent for a while, as we tried to imagine beyond universe. The little boy’s sigh told me that this time he had failed. And that is the danger of growing up. “Boy, never give up imagination even though at times it will not be able to take you where you want. The imagination of the adults becomes feeble only because they stop believing in them. They start believing too much in the real world, which, I am sure you know, is also imaginary,” I concluded with a smile, and decided to let his imagination figure out the rest.

***

 ((Pic courtesy: punktlos from the net))

From Plato to Bob Dylan, in a day

I was flipping through the employment section of the newspaper when I was interrupted by a cheerful Mr A.

“Boy, why so gloomy?” asked my boss, backslapping me.

I shook my head, trying to avoid a direct answer, but he would have none of it and insisted on knowing the reason for my downcast mood.

“I think the company is going to be wound up, or at least there would be layouts. I see no future here. It’s time to move on,” I blurted out my dark thoughts.

“He, he, he,” he laughed in his rare display of good cheer. “You read the balance sheet or company forecast?”

“Isn’t it obvious? We are losing clients and business. We are not innovating. How long can we stand?” I asked, not taken in by his bravado.

“We survived for the last 30 years not because our balance sheets were good, or because we never lost clients. We survived because of the X factor,” he said. “Not Mr X, X factor,” he added hastily.

I was sure of my facts, and the writing was clearly etched on the wall. I was not likely to fall for the X factor gimmick , and just nodded. My boss realized that it was time for a serious, educative lecture, and began thus:

“What is most important to keep a company afloat?” he asked.

“Capital,” I replied, reluctantly, for I did not wish to get this gloomy lecture started.

“Ah, that is where you MBAs get it wrong. Companies are afloat on Faith. Till investors have faith, capital will flow,” he said.

“And our company instills faith in investors?” I asked derisively.

“My boy, don’t interrupt. Listen. You will agree our company reinvented itself three times in the last thirty years?” he was sounding like Socrates now. I nodded in agreement.

“And in those times, the wolves were at the door?” he asked and I nodded again.

“Are the wolves at the door yet again?” he asked.

This time I thought, but could not come to any definite conclusion. “Maybe,” I said.

“Yes, they have, or no, not yet?” he asked. “For we must be clear about facts,” he added.

“Maybe not just yet, but the day is not far off,” I replied.

“So far so good. How far in the future do you expect our canine friends to pay us a visit?” he asked.

“The point is the world is not the same. There is competition, and turnaround time and opportunity is too small. Reinventing companies today is almost impossible. It is easier to start afresh,” I protested.

“My boy, you did not answer my question. How long do you think the company has for a major crisis to strike,” he asked again, ignoring my comment.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Based on Fibonnaci retracement analysis, about three years, I would say. Subject to some assumptions,” he answered his own question, to his own satisfaction.

“You admit there is going to be a crisis in three years,” I said a little triumphantly.

“No, I said that is what you should say, based on your studies of accounts,” he said. He was being a little deep today.

“And what would you say?” I asked.

“I would not say anything till I come to the bottom of the whole business, till I have explored the question in full,” he replied.

“Are you reading Socratic dialogues by Plato, by any chance?” I asked suspiciously.

“Do not confuse yourself,” he admonished. “Tell me this, what will happen when a crisis strikes?”

“Why the company gets broken down or wounded up real fast. Vultures come in pretty fast to devour the leftovers,” I tried to add a bit of Shakespearean color to what was turning out to be too Socratic to my liking.

“It does nothing of the sort. There are people who have investments in the company. They start thinking. When the management goes to them to ask for financial support, they ask for ‘plan’. And this time, the plan has to be good, and workable,” he said.

“And is there a possibility that the management will be able to come up with a good plan?” I asked, for I felt we were just delaying the inevitable.

“Knowing the company you feel there is no possibility?” he asked. This time it was easy. I shook my head in the negative.

“And so, the invested money, the infrastructure would be allowed to be dismantled?” he asked.

“There is hardly a choice,” I said.

“You mean, there would be no faith. But the faith is there today?”

“There is inertia. There is no spotlight on us as of now,” I said.

“It would be too time consuming to start with an analogy, like Plato would have done,” he said, “and so I would come straight to the point. There are about a hundred companies in a situation similar to ours in our field. None of them have lost faith. And, more important, none of them are going in for ‘re-invention’ just yet. Not all of them must be blind,” he remarked.

This argument interested me. I waited to see what was coming.

“Re-inventing comes with a price – in terms of capital investment and risks. It is done only when it is inevitable. Companies are not closed down – this is not a Hollywood idea of business, this is reality. Here, and this is not how MBAs are taught, the balance-sheet within the minds of big investors matters most. Till the time there is a possibility of a positive balance-sheet, nothing will be ‘written-off’,” he explained.

“But that is not how great companies are run,” I blurted out, before I could check myself.

“Ah, there you reveal yourself,” he said, sounding like Sherlock Holmes now. “Your worry is not whether the company will survive, your worry is whether it will be great.”

I refused to answer that.

“There are few companies that MBA text books feature in their case studies, but ours is not one of them,” he said, “but, like thousands of them out there, we will not be the one that will shut down. Or become a case study.”

“And we will come up with a plan, when required?” I asked.

“Sure, like all others will, at that time. The answers, at the time, would be blowin’ in the wind,” he remarked with finality in his voice.

Sudden shift to Bob Dylan zapped me. But the satisfied look on his face was strangely reassuring. I put down the employment section of the paper, and picked up ‘page-3’. No use fretting till the time when our canine friends give us a visit, I thought. I looked at Mr A, who had started a game of Scrabble on the net, and wondered whether managers like him are made or born.

***

The turnaround

The summer months dragged on like some old case, like a relative who habitually overstays his welcome.

The air-conditioner in the office gave more sound than relief and Mr A prodded on with his work. He was neck deep into a report that had to be submitted ‘before today.’

The CEO at the Headquarter had changed, and like all new CEOs, was bent on turning the company around. And, like all the CEOs before him, wanted the branches to submit their ideas on how this could be done. Superboss, our branch head and an old hand in dealing with new CEOs, did what he knew was to be done in such cases – he asked Mr A, his man-Friday to make a report.

Now Mr A did have all the old reports in his computer, and it would have been easy for him to recycle any of those reports. But he did not.

“We must be honest in what we do,” he admonished me when I suggested the easy way out. “I will rewrite the entire thing again from my memory,” he declared.

That statement confused me slightly. Was it going to be just a test of memory? I got the answer soon enough.

Superboss called a meeting to get opinion of all the managers regarding the report in question. Normally this meeting happens before the task is assigned to Mr A, which becomes one of the decisions of the meeting, but this time, perhaps with the intention of being original, the sequence had been changed slightly. In fact, as it turned out, it was reversed entirely. Mr A made a presentation of his ‘final’ report, and the other managers were left with the creative task of sounding original while agreeing.

Mr A began his speech with a preamble. I have found people generally do this in summers, or when they do not have much to say.

“Our new CEO is a man of vision. He has decided to take on the challenge of the times, and take the company out of the morass that it finds itself in. Having successfully charted the fortunes of five companies in his twenty year long career…..”

I thought Mr A had forgotten that the CEO was not among those present, and the attention of the group wavered. But I was wrong. It was only later that I realized that his opening remarks formed the part of the document that was sent to the CEO for his attention.

Anyway, after what seemed like ages, Mr A came to more ‘substantive’ part of his presentation.

“Our clients want a platform that cuts across the numerous technologies and media and integrates seamlessly with the social networking sites. It must be an online system, working on the power of cloud computing. It must be hardy enough to withstand the challenges of the time, and yet simple enough to be useful to the meanest of the company employee. It must address to the needs of the small business, who are the bulk of our clients, and must be able to update its data automatically through the net….”

And so on for about a quarter of an hour. The gist was, we wanted a software that did all that we were supposed to be doing. And since the creation of such software was a centralized job, it would have to be undertaken by the Headquarter.

There was a round of relieved table thumping, but as expected, a fly decided to invade the sanctity of the ointment.

Mr X spoke up. “What the HQ wants is a clue on what the clients want,” he said offensively. There is no love lost between Mr A and Mr X, but the former kept his cool.

“Exactly what Superboss told me to do. If you recall, I have highlighted the fact that in this age of computerized customization of client-relationship, no one has the time for snail paced responses. As you can see from my presentation, the exact need of the client and the solution is highlighted,” replied Mr A, stressing on the word exact.

That impressed Superboss. He knew that the report was passably all right, and had a hunch that he did not have the quality manpower to better it. A good manager is one who realizes the limitation of his resources, as also the need of the hour.

“I think A’s report captures the essence of what is required. A, mark a copy to X for further comment that he would like to make, and then put it up to me by today afternoon. We must not delay the matter further, for CEO was very clear that he wants action not words,” said Superboss, and it was curtains on the meeting.

The report reached the table of Superboss by next afternoon, without any further additions by Mr X, who corrected the grammar somewhat on page numbers 2 and 3, thereby distorting the meaning somewhat. The report then travelled to the HQ via the internet within seconds. It has been months since the mail delivery was confirmed but we have not heard anything further on the topic so far. We can only presume that the HQ is studying the report ‘in depth’ and will evolve a ‘strategy for implementation that is appropriate for the needs of the time, keeping in mind the urgency of the matter.’

The summer yielded reluctantly to mild Indian winters, bypassing the monsoons this year. The air-conditioner in our office continued to whizz ineffectively – it did no harm even in winters, and we were so used to its whizzing, that we did not really want to turn it off.

***

 

The day of enlightenment

Nobody knew who had floated the idea of calling the yoga Guru to the office for a de-stressing, spiritually enhancing course, but it was certain that no one admitted to being the father of the idea.

The Guru, when he arrived, did not inspire confidence, or spiritual or peaceful thoughts.

When the overweight, shrewd-looking, shifty-eyed Guru arrived with half dozen disciples, including one pretty young thing in tow, the top management glanced at each other furtively and bowed.

Since the decision for the course on spiritual upliftment of the branch managers was ultimately taken by Superboss, it had to be right. Since the Guru was finally approved by Superboss, he had to be perfect, and deserved reverence.

All work for the day was suspended, all meetings cancelled. The environment had to peaceful and non-materialistic. The Guru was costly, and it was in the interest of the company to utilize the benefits of his wisdom to the maximum possible extent.

“X will sit near that girl,” murmured Mr A sotto-voice, “he is hardly going to have too many spiritual thoughts today.”

I glanced at Mr X, and knew Mr A was right. Though Mr X was the arch-rival of my boss Mr A, and in the past there have been skirmishes in which the two have charged each other with crimes they did not commit, in this instance, the facial expression of Mr X gave him away. He was positively smitten by the pretty disciple, and seemed to want a private discourse from her.

The conference hall was converted into the meditation centre, and for once, the huge chair at the head of the table was occupied by the Guru and not Superboss. The later seemed to be miffed with this, and it was evident he had not foreseen his demotion. He glared at Mr A, who was heading admin for the time being, for not thinking ahead and arranging for two huge chairs at the head of the table. Superboss sullenly sat at one of the smaller chairs, and had his first brush with spirituality – how to soothe a wounded ego without throwing a tantrum.

When everyone had settled down in strict accordance of seniority, the Guru surveyed the scene haughtily and began his discourse with an Aum.

That was the only Sanskrit word to be used that day. After the Aum, the Guru began in clipped English, trained no doubt during his earlier avatar as a corporate hunk. Though I have not researched the background of the Guru, it is my belief that he must have been a marketing guy, and would have realized that Guru-dom can be a lucrative consultancy service for corporate clients. And he was right in his assessment. We were paying him handsomely for the day.

From that point onwards, it was all downhill. The Guru harangued us for hankering after material gains and not devoting sufficient time for really important things in life. Like, laughter. Not that the Guru practiced what he preached – he sat all annoyed and bitter and gave a long discourse on laughter. Mr X tried to implement the instruction in right spirit. He first smiled at the pretty disciple, and then, to make it more authentic, laughed out loud.

That disturbed the Guru, who changed the subject and for the next hour spoke on the need for controlling our basic nature. Discipline, he said, was key to a balanced life. All the while he kept looking at Mr X with barely concealed hostility. Not that it had much of an effect on Mr X, who kept smiling at the disciple, oblivious of the consternation he was causing to the Superboss, who seemed to have divined the cause of irritability in the Guru.

And as if that was not enough, Mr X decided to get a clarification.

“Um, sir, I mean Guruji,” he began, “is it not necessary to let oneself go, at least once in a while, to let our nature take its own decisions, so that we are free of bondages of the mind. I read Osha said so.” With that he looked at the disciple for approval.

It is not clear what irritated the Guru more – name of Osho, the question or that glance towards his gorgeous disciple.

With barely concealed hostility, Guru answered: “That is the sort of muddle headed thinking one expects in a place driven by greed and base instincts. I find the aura of this company reeking with self-serving and petty souls, who must meditate hard to overcome their limitations of soul and spirit.”

I do not know whether that answered the question or not, but that was what Mr X got by way of elucidation. I cannot say I understood it, but it seems Superboss did, and he nodded his head vigorously and glared at Mr X. Mr X looked expectantly towards the disciple for further clarification, but was met with a cold stare. It was then that he realized that he had blundered and scored a spiritual self goal.

Keen observer that he is, my boss, Mr A decided it was time he intervened.

“Swamiji, you have opened our eyes. How divinely right you are in your grasp of the situation. If we can but implement but a fraction of what you say, much of our miseries will vanish. May I take the liberty to propose that we conclude our morning session and proceed for lunch, swamiji?”

Superboss looked at Mr A approvingly. Swamiji looked at Mr A approvingly. The pretty disciple looked at Mr A approvingly. In fact all of us, with the notable exception of Mr X, looked at Mr A approvingly. Personally I was happy to escape the difficult path of spiritual upliftment.

At lunch I excused myself from attending the later session, on a pretext of urgent work, and Mr X was sent on an errand that Superboss suddenly remembered.

The next day, a happy Mr A remarked that the Guru was good and meaningful, and Superboss had the right idea of calling him. Some of us, he added, need to look within ourselves more and cleanse themselves.

When I asked him what the second session was all about, he said he had unfortunately dozed off due to heavy lunch and did not get to listen much of it. One thing I must point out about my boss – he knows when he does not need to lie. And to that extent, keeps his conscience sparkling clean.

***

 

I thought I knew you, stranger

All those smiles

And holding of hands

And looking deep

Into the eyes-

And I thought

I knew you,

Stranger.

 

We live alone

Like planets,

Near and far

Never meeting;

All those dances

Around the fire

Had made me think

I knew you,

Stranger.

 

When you had come

In my dreams

To sign the pact

Of togetherness-

I awoke

And thought

Now I know you,

Stranger.

 

I knew you not

I knew that not.

 

The look, the smile,

The innocent eyes,

The dreams

The dances-

I will remember, always,

And think,

I knew you,

Stranger.

 

***

When the music stopped

The constant noise –

The humming, the chattering, the clanging,

So irksome, so irritating –

Is what keeps me alive now.

 

The music, the songs, the rhythm

I lost long ago.

I am deaf

To the songs of the birds,

To the splashes

That the waves make.

The pitter-patter of the raindrops

Fails to move me now.

 

The sound of the grating prison gate,

The metallic boom of the boots,

The abuses of the condemned

And the silent cry of the owl at night

Keep me alive now.

 

***

Doomsday: The endgame

With great expectations, or let us say, apprehension (for we must be politically correct at all times) the world approaches an important date – 21^st December 2012. Not only is the reputation of Mayan calendar makers at stake, the credibility of the entire astrology-soothsayer-spiritual-celebrity complex is under the spotlight. They have thrown their weight behind the doomsday, and would rather die than see it fail.

Everyone is suspicious of the solar system, but I wonder why. It has served us well during our short history. It has been around for millions of years, and yet, many of us feel it is unstable and will spring a surprise on us one of these days. On 21^st of this month, for instance.

Some speak of mysterious planet/s, some of solar flares. No one really believes the gobbledygook of the astrophysicists and scientists, who, frankly, believe in nothing. No one trusts their multi-million dollar telescopes. They may claim to see galaxies billions of light years away with their telescopes and by calculating the red-shifts and what not, but we feel they are most likely to miss planets in our neighborhood.

Our suspicion also falls on the earth’s crust, and its faults. It has the ability to conjure up quakes and tsunamis at will, and behaves like a spoilt child at times. But does it have the firepower to totally self-destruct?

I personally feel we humans possess the power to cause a lot of damage to ourselves. But are we on a verge of collective madness?

Disease and pestilence, those biblical scourges, also operate pretty effectively in short run. Before it is tamed, an infectious germ can cause a lot of damage. Diseases are not glamorous, and definitely not Hollywood material, but you never know with medical science. People never really had too much faith in the doctors knowing much – and it is not surprising that most people now rely on google for diagnosis. The point is, that if a sudden and new strain of viral/bacterial infection starts to afflict the world, the doctors and the patients would waste their time googling for cure, and by the time the authorities get down to funding the actual research, it might be too late.

But UFOs are the most likely agents for an unlikely end, in my humble opinion. Consider the facts- aliens do not love us, and may have extraordinary weapons. They may even want to clear the planet for occupation, like some people did with the red-Indians.

And when I say facts, I mean facts. Can anyone seriously say aliens love us? Even if you disregard movies like ‘Aliens’, in which we can clearly see them exhibiting a great degree of hostility against us, do you have any proof that they love us? If they did, would they not have extended a hand of friendship? Would they not be watching our movies and complaining that they are not as bad as they are shown in the movies?

No, I must say it like it is – the aliens do not have our best interests in their hearts, and can cause mischief on 21^st December. In fact that was the intelligence that the Mayan Secret Service must have gathered, and that is where we must guard ourselves.

So, let us take out our tents, and our binoculars, and our shotguns. And let us light a fire, and have some coffee and wait for the @#$%^&. And yes, I almost forgot, since we will be on a vigil to save the world, let us apply for a holiday for the rest of the month.

***