Tales from a Travelling salesman

Peep into private secretaries No man is an island, they say. I too am not. Scores of people contributed to the moderate success of my life. Amongst them, private secretaries have contributed the most. They have been a colorful lot; some cantankerous, others candid, but all of them caring and courteous. They stood by me, protected me, and made my life more livable. They are the ones who made me gleam and glow. Evelyn D’souza was my first private secretary. She was 19 and far too young to become one. I was 23, young, restless, not knowing how to handle a private secretary. Evelyn spent more time painting her nails and talking to her friends from the office telephone line. She found my heavy Gujarati accented dictation difficult and always made me feel nervous by making faces at my wrong pronunciation. The next one, Alameda, also came from the Catholic heartland of Ahmadabad. She was keen to flirt with me but gave up once she came o know that I already have a girlfriend hidden away 500 km...

Mathematics & Me I was an average student who blossomed later in life. Amongst other subjects, I was weak in mathematics, Sanskrit, English, and pretty much all other subjects. Ironically, I was good at social studies, perhaps destiny’s way of telling me where my career would lie. I had a cousin brother in my class who kept me company in poverty of math skills. Algebra troubled us; geometry terrified us, Arithmetic welled up our eyes with tears. We struggled hard but could barely remain floated. We would score 35 marks in the math tests. We came up with a tragically funny scheme of reversing that to 53 to tell our homes. We felt miserable when we scored 22 and 33 respectively in the next test. This was the last straw on the back of the proverbial camel. Homes were not amused. Hailing from modest families, both of us understood the importance of improving our maths or face life’s ire. Failing in life was not an option. A ray of hope appeared when a new teacher joined our s...

Government Gambit   A chance encounter is what it takes to bring on unforeseen change, as it happened on that rainy afternoon circa 1989. Working for the Government of India resulted from one such encounter for me.   I was in Baroda (now Vadodara) for a routine visit that I frequently made from Calcutta where I was posted. In the corridor of the head office building, I ran into the Chairman of the company I worked for. A gentle soul, he enquired how was I doing and if I would like to be deputed to the Ministry of Petroleum & Chemicals as a Deputy Secretary cum Project officer.   I was quick to ask him if this would help my career, and his equally quick response was that it would. The die was cast there and then in the lobby. I stepped into a cabin nearby to telephone my wife in Calcutta and asked her to pack.   On my way back to Calcutta, I visited Shashtri Bhavan in New Delhi to meet senior bureaucrats of the Government of India. They all wel...

Making of a salesman   No one wants to become a salesman by choice. People who fail elsewhere opt to become one. I too became one by default. Having missed my calling of becoming a medical doctor, destiny perhaps chuckled while it made me a medical representative, to sell medicines, in my case cosmetics too.   My fate was sealed on a hot, dusty summer afternoon when I cycled down to the Parsi holy temple of Jamnagar where my first interview for a salesman's job was held. A tall and immaculately dressed Parsi gentleman interviewed me twice for the job that I desperately wanted. The interview changed the course of my life that summer afternoon and lit a spark that propelled me into the world beyond my realm.   Mr. Dastur agreed to give me the job provided I improve my spoken English, become more presentable, and learn manners. He asked me to become a gentleman salesman.   I was sent to Mumbai–then Bombay circa 1973–for training and brushing off the...

Career conflicts   What makes a career? What mars it? Do talents and hard work do the trick or destiny and the hand of fate intervene? I do not have the answers. I wonder if anyone has. To people I mentor, my message is simple; plan for the best, but be prepared for the worst.   My own professional career is a mishmash of events I planned and events that I did not. For every turn I wanted to take, life made me take a unique twist. My dream was to become a doctor but missed it by a whisker. Perhaps I was not smart enough to raise the bar that far. From then on, events took over. I drifted like a piece of wood in a mountain stream.  Finally, I landed in an MBA program that had just come into the vogue then. Campus placement was not yet invented, but few smart companies wrote to the Course Director to recommend a fit candidate if they found one. Thus I found myself inside the lovely and wooded campus of a premier textile company called Calico Mills, Ahmadabad f...

  Superannuated Ever since I turned 60, people have been curious to know when would I retire. Most of them were my ally and benefactors, so there was no easy way to say none of your business. The 60 turned in to 65 and I was still working 9 am to 9 pm, going places like a buzzing fly. There was a heightened and enigmatic level of curiosity now about my quitting work. At 67, people were asking me on my face whether I intend to hang my boots at all. Not that I did not want to leave full-time work. I was just waiting for the timing of my own. This moment finally arrived, and I superannuated as they call in office jargon. Leaving work that I did not enjoy was easy. I am a lazy and un-ambitious person from the beginning and mostly reached where I did by drifting. This is God’s truth. I am happy when left alone and on my own devices. This exactly was my plan; be my man, not do anything, not answer to anyone but myself, and learn to fall free with no one to catch me but my fate. I began ...

  Delhi Diary Circa 1976, around 6.45 pm of a winter evening, my meter gauge train from Ahmadabad arrived on the cold and crowded platform of the old Delhi railway station bringing me for the first time to this grand old dame of India. Apprehensive and nervous, I alighted from the train, looking around as if someone is there to receive me. No one was. I took a cycle rickshaw to a hotel in the heart of Chandni Chowk booked by someone who did not know that it was next to a popular whorehouse. Gingerly, I climbed rickety stairs and opened my hole-in-the-wall room in this city established in 1206 by an invader from Kazakhstan. I kept coming back here and fell in love enough to live here for five fulfilling years. Unlike other well-formed Indian cities, Delhi is an amorphous city, blended and re-blended, invaded and re-invaded by Afghans, and Uzbeks, Britishers, and Punjabi refugees created by the partition. As a casual and lonesome visitor to this epitome of history, I lived in taverns...