Corporate Carnival (5 page)

What a ridiculous name, I thought. I furrowed my forehead and shook my head.

‘We are still somewhat new,’ he said defensively. ‘We have completed two projects in Rajkot and one in Baroda. We have taken up one project each in Baroda and Ahmedabad. My two sons are taking care of the whole thing.’

‘Why “Milk”?’ I asked.

He smiled a clever smile. ‘My elder son is Mehul, my wife’s name is Indu. My second son is Lalit and my name is Kanti. M-I-L-K,’ he said, simpering. ‘And that’s not all. Milk contains protein to build the body, to make it big and strong. My company MILK has all the things needed to construct buildings, to make them big and strong.’ By now he was bursting with pride.

I was appalled. Milk builders? Like protein for the body? How tacky can one get? But he was a prospect. And he seemed like a nice guy. I forced my facial features into an approving smile, hoping to convey admiration. It worked.

‘Yes,’ he said with a hideous smirk, ‘I thought of it myself. And very soon we will be constructing a hundred-storey building in one of the major Indian cities.’

‘A hundred floors!’ I exclaimed. ‘But will the infrastructure in our cities take such buildings? I mean, power, water, parking, roads… and what about the fire brigade? Can they reach such heights if needed?’

‘Jai bhai, we are builders,’ he said. ‘The municipality gives specifications for construction. We will meet them, no problem. But if the fire brigade cannot reach the top floor, that is not my problem, it is their problem. I can do my work but I cannot think for others. If I start worrying about roads, fire brigade and everything else, I will not have time for construction.’

I got Kanti’s account forms completed and then realized this was going to be my lucky day. Kanti put me onto a friend of his in Mombasa, who had recently sold his hardware business. Ramesh Doshi was a gentleman who looked every inch a Gujarati and spoke every bit like one too. ‘My name Ramays,’ he told me. ‘You pleajh come home for the deener, Jai bhai, I want to make the wheel.’

‘
Make
a wheel? Why?’ I asked, not unreasonably.

‘Because to geeve thees thees thees things to the dhikra and thees thees thees things to the dhikri. After my dayth, you understand, geeving to the faymeely. Making the wheel. The Kantibhai said you wheel haylp me make the wheel. Wheel you?’

Now I understood. ‘Oh, a will! Yes, of course I wheel, er… will.’

‘I am saventy-ate,’ he told me, changing the subject. ‘Steel I am speaking the Englees. Bayter than my dhikra also. Good, na?’

‘Very good,’ I said, wondering how his dhikra, his son, would speak.

‘I am speaking the good Englees becaujh my teacher raped me.’

My heart sank. I didn’t want to hear a sad story from this sweet old man. This was one problem with meeting people in places like Kenya. Stories about crime were in abundance. They tended to depress me. And worse, when you met people in a group, they would try to outdo each other, with the result that within half an hour, your ears were filled with half a dozen appalling crime stories.

‘Yays,’ he continued. ‘Every time I am speaking the wrong Englees, my teacher, he is raping me on my knuckles. With foot rule. Like thees. Tak! Tak! Tak!’

I heaved a sigh of relief.

5

Blackbeard the Pilot

E
ven before I reached the Mombasa airport, I got a call from Kochar. ‘Jai, when are you coming back to Nairobi?’

‘I’m heading for the airport now,’ I told him. ‘I will be in Nairobi in about two hours.’

‘I will meet you at the airport. I am taking you straight to open a new account with 20 million dollars. I have already spoken to the people concerned, the pilots. It is legal pilot money. So you will have no problem. They are ready with the cash.’

For the entire flight, I thought sweet thoughts about Dilip Kochar. There had been a moment, a year or two ago, when I had felt like breaking something on his bald head, but I realized now that it was just my immaturity. The man was pure gold. Naturally, when his investments had halved overnight, he had lost his cool – but who wouldn’t? And what was wrong with having his picture on the wrapper? It wasn’t a bad idea at all. And if he looked a tad grim in the picture, so what? I needed to curb my tendency to make an issue of things and go by the facade rather than appreciate the real worth of something. Twenty million dollars was a nice bit of jam. It would take care of this month entirely. And if the client was a pilot – an employee with a clear source of income – it would be so much easier to convince compliance. But how could a pilot have so much money? Perhaps he had won a lottery. Kochar did say ‘legal’ money. Maybe it was a fund of sorts… The only snag was that he said they were ready with the money. There was no way I could open an account in less than two weeks, pilot or otherwise.

I saw Kochar almost before I saw the airport itself. He was literally on the runway. Apparently he had connections with the airport staff.

‘C’mon, let’s go,’ he said as soon as he saw me. ‘Need to be on time.’

‘Dilip bhai, it is really nice of you to do all this for me. I got a positive response from Kanti Shah as well.’

‘You had better take extra care of my account. It has recovered a good bit, but in two years we have made zero returns. In the next one year, let us see some growth. Otherwise I will come to Dubai and tell that beautiful boss of yours a few things. Your Peggy will think she has been caught in a storm.’

‘Leave that to me, Dilip bhai, I will do my best for you. But tell me about this pilot. Which airline does he fly? How did he run into all this money?’

‘What pilot?’

‘The pilot you spoke to me about. The guy we are going to meet.’

‘What are you talking about, young man? I think the prospect of such a big account has melted your brain a little. I never spoke about any pilot.’

‘The 20 million dollars that’s coming in. You said it was legal pilot money.’

‘Not pilot, dumbhead, I said legal
pirate
money. Which pilot has 20 million?’

‘P-pirate!’

‘Yes, pirate. But it has been negotiated by a leading law firm, so there is no problem. It is fully legal. You must have seen it in the papers a few days back. The Somalians had initially asked for 30 million but the Europeans negotiated 20 through these lawyers.’

‘B-but Dilip bhai! I can’t open a pirate’s account! They’ll laugh at me! I’d be sacked if I even asked.’

‘Arre
,
bakwas! Don’t be a cartoon, yaar! It is perfectly legal. The law firm is handling the matter, so what is the problem? I’m telling you, it was in all the papers, everybody knows about it. It is fully official.’

‘No! I can’t open this account. I
won’t
open this account!’

‘Bloody fellow, don’t behave like an idiot. If you don’t open it, someone else will. Do you think you’re the only banker in town? Hundreds of bankers are waiting to pounce on such deals. And don’t worry, man, you will not actually be meeting the pirates, only the lawyers.’

‘No! Please stop the car. I’m getting off. This is illegal.’

‘Abbey gadhe, what illegal? When your bosses’ ancestors took the Kohinoor diamond, was it legal? When they wiped out the wealth of all the countries they colonized, was it legal?
Ghanta!
This is a normal thing that keeps happening here every month. Where do you think all the ransom money has gone? Either into property or into banks. This is reality. If you want to do business, you have to turn a blind eye to such things.’

‘A blind eye? Well, maybe I should wear an eye patch like the client! Stop the car
now
.’ ‘Damn it, are you man or mouse?’ ‘It doesn’t matter!’ I hollered. ‘
Stop the car
.’ ‘You’re a wimp! You’re a little girl!’ ‘I don’t care. I’m getting down. Stop the car.’ ‘You… you scaredy cat! You son of a jelly!’ ‘Stop it
now
!’ He stopped and I jumped out.

‘Jai, try to understand,’ he said, gesticulating furiously. ‘I have committed to them. I will have mud on my face if I don’t take you there.’

‘You said there were hundreds of other bankers!’

‘Yes, there are!’ he screamed. ‘I should have just gone to one of the experienced mzungus. Some good white man dhoriya banker instead of a half-baked fellow like you who has probably not even tasted his mother’s milk! You’re a darpok ding-a-ling… a spineless spaghetti!’

He changed gears and glared at me one last time. ‘You will never be a success.
Pakadke baithe raho!
Hold onto your thing and sit in a corner. Nincompoop! Chikne chutiye!
Khrwaaaagh, thhooo!
’ he went, and spat out a ball of saliva and tobacco within an inch of me.

I turned on my heel and moved away. An angry screech of tyres made it clear that he was doing the same. My ears burned with what I had just heard. I couldn’t see my cheeks but they seemed all red and heated up. I was pretty much in smoke. I stopped, breathing heavily. In front of me, all I could see were two boards. They had words written on them in letters of fire. The first one read: ‘Vision Statement – to kick Dilip Kochar’s ass’. The other read: ‘Mission Statement – to kick Dilip Kochar’s ass so damn hard that his spine sticks out through the back of his neck’.

I stood for a moment, contemplating the two boards. All around me people were walking briskly to their respective destinations. A few who had seen the final altercation between Kochar and me hung around waiting for my next move. A beggar was making persistent demands of my wealth. Hawkers milled around trying to interest me in peanuts, bananas, a picture of ‘The Last Supper’, scrolls with Arabic writing on them, dark glasses and folding umbrellas.

For a moment, I thought I would ask Mina to send a car to pick me up from here. I was about a kilometre away from her house. Under most circumstances, that is what I would have done. Thoughts of getting mugged were never far from my mind when I was in Nairobi. Then I decided otherwise. This was my wife’s home. She was born here. Her family – the four of them – had lived here all their lives. They had gained a lot from this country. They had lost nothing except two fingers of my father-in-law, when he was shot at during an attempted burglary. Suddenly my thinking changed.

I was safe in this place. I may not be a son of the soil, but I was their damaad
,
their son-in-law. These Africans – small, big, black, brown, well-dressed or otherwise – were my brothers and sisters. They would not harm me. It took me half an hour, but I walked home.

Mina opened the door. ‘Jai,’ she said after just one look at me. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I am fine,’ I replied. ‘I’m not going to let that buffoon spoil my day.’

‘Who? Dilip uncle?’

I stared at her. How on earth did she know?

‘Someone from his office just brought a ton of chips with a note that says, “Jaibhai, please don’t mind. Very sorry. Dilip”.’

I looked at the hundreds of packets of Moto Moto chips, at the forbidding picture of Dilip Kochar on each one of them. I read the note and I looked at Mina’s bemused face. Then I sat down and laughed my gut out.

6

Winning Over Sir Sid

A
bbott-Adriaan Bank had decided on the world’s first (and so far, only) Armani hotel as the venue for the chairman’s visit. It was his first visit to the country. More than anything else, it was symbolic of the importance that AbAd attached to the region. In a sense, I could understand the rush to get the chairman to ‘inaugurate’ the bank’s private banking business in the MESA (Middle East and South Asia) territory. They wanted to reinforce the perception that, at least as far as AbAd was concerned, things were getting back to normal and businesses were growing.

Visiting senior bankers were not a scarce commodity in Dubai. In the last few years, investors had seen more economists, fund managers and product specialists than camels and sandstorms. Indeed, after two major crashes in the last decade and several smaller ones, after several forecasts went wrong and several predictions turned out to be mere predilections, there was little or no appetite among investors to brave the traffic and listen to another ‘expert’. Even the wining and dining wasn’t worth it. Drunk driving in Dubai could lead one straight to prison, no questions asked. There wasn’t even a facade of a tolerance limit; one whiff of suspicion and in you went to count iron bars with nothing to look forward to except the biryani that would be served on Friday. As for the dining that came along with the presentations, well, most investors who were worth anything were probably already suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure or high cholesterol, in some cases all three. It was probably keeping this in mind that the bank chose Armani, at the base of the world’s tallest building, as its venue for the chairman’s party, hoping, no doubt, that novelty would sell.

Clients had been allotted tables and were expected by half past seven. The chairman had a flight to catch at 1.30 a.m. and the plan was to wind up by 11 p.m. That night at nine, there were about twenty-four employees (three of them from private banking), eighteen spouses of employees (two of them from private banking) and fourteen clients (
ten
of them clients of private banking). Simply put, in that first one hour of the event, we turned into stars. CEO Fergusson must have realized the predicament he would have been in had it not been for our clients. As a result, he fawned on Peggy and the rest of us like he had never done before. He laughed with us, patted us on our backs and was at his suave best with our clients. He praised us to the skies and told the chairman that we were the jewels in the crown of AbAd Dubai, its main hope for a bright future. The CEO had ‘mandated’ fifty clients from the local premier bank, twenty-five from the NRI team, twenty-five from the investment services team and ten clients from us (the ‘fledgling private bank’ as he had referred to us in his email). Our ten had arrived in the first thirty minutes of the party. And while a few of the local bank’s clients did stream in after 10 p.m, there was little doubt that, by then, impressions had already been well and truly set in Fergs’s mind as well as the chairman’s. The show had flopped. There could be no late recovery.

When Mr Fergusson spoke, he addressed an audience that consisted primarily of his own employees and their spouses. This was followed by a musical performance by a threesome: a svelte, dark-haired young lady on the violin, a middle-aged man on the saxophone and a youngish fellow with a sculpted body and ponytail on some kind of a drum which he placed between his legs. Towards the end of their performance, they increased the tempo and tried to get everyone involved. My sister Kitty (yes, she and her husband Shree were among our ‘clients’ that day), who can never keep still when there is music, had already been clapping and swaying, but now she left the table and started dancing. Sunny Singh promptly joined her, delighting the musicians with some impromptu bhangra steps.

The beats quickened and as the finale cruised towards a crescendo, Sunny kept pace, showing an incredible reserve of energy. With a terrific sense of timing that I had never suspected of him, he broke into a series of lightning-fast Punjabi moves, with his own booming vocal accompaniment that went ‘Aha hadippa, Oho hadippa’ and finally ended with ‘Oye balle balle balle balle, brrrrrah!’ Coinciding with the last notes, he did a little hop, skip and jump and landed, perfectly poised, in front of the chairman with both hands raised, index fingers pointing skyward, ending in a neat little bow.

There was a standing ovation from the limited audience and a special hug for him and Kitty from the chairman’s wife. Dinner was followed by the chairman’s speech. By now the number of clients had grown and equalled the number of employees. But Sir Sid had decided, I think – not having had the opportunity to meet those who sauntered in after the musical performance had started – that private banking was the only business of note in AbAd’s Dubai office. He described the business as ‘a brilliant initiative’ and spoke highly of us and our clients. He promised to increase our budget within the region. He referred to Peggy as an ‘exceptional talent’. He even said – he had probably had one too many by this time – that our clients and their families would be given free annual holidays to exotic locations.

He told the gathering that he had been most impressed by the quality of our clients. Too often, he said, private banking clients were boring old moneybags who couldn’t think beyond the stock market and real estate. But here were highly sophisticated clients who were as knowledgable as they were wealthy and could talk freely of everything from World Cup football to alternative energy, from the intricacies of the auto industry to Indian classical dancing. He proposed a toast to them and predicted that the business would be a thundering success. Finally, he promised that before the end of the year he would arrange to invite to Dubai to meet with our clients, any Indian film star of our choice. ‘Maybe Shahrukh Khan,’ he said impressively, ‘Amitabh Bachchan or…’ – he paused for effect – ‘even the queen of Bollywood and Big Brother,’ – another pause, hands spread wide for maximum impact – ‘… Shilpa Shetty!’

On that note, Sir Sid left for London, but not before presenting to each of our clients a gold coin with the AbAd logo on it. These had been earmarked for certain key NRI/investment services/premier banking clients, but at the chairman’s suggestion it was given to all the private banking clients instead. Each of our clients had a picture taken with the chairman and the fifty-gram gold coin, some of which appeared in the papers the next day.

At about half past ten, the head of the NRI team, the premier banking head and the head of investment services sidled out sheepishly along with the head of compliance and the head of finance. The regional CEO stayed back to pump our hands and wish our clients a very good night. The chairman shook hands with all of us. He and his wife extended an invitation to Peggy to visit their farmhouse in the UK on her next visit. They left on a high, waving at all of us and blowing kisses in Kitty’s direction.

We had pulled it off big time!

On the day of the function, we had actually opened only seven accounts. Two of them lived abroad. Of the five who lived in Dubai, one was Kamal Lalwani, whom we had decided not to invite. He was too full of himself – both literally and figuratively – very cocky and not the type of chap you would want your chairman to meet. The second was a client of Kitch’s who, notwithstanding his wealth, looked like something the cat found in the bin. The third was Sunny Singh, who had been invited and who attended, dressed in all his splendour, looking like an erstwhile Maharaja of Punjab. We had also invited our clients Saxena and Harsh, who were old friends and well-wishers from my Myers days. Others were relatives and friends, chosen for their personality, their ability to speak English and their general reliability. Two of them were, of course, Kitty and Shree, who had stopped in Dubai on their way to South Africa to see the FIFA World Cup. I had promptly roped them in, much to Peggy’s discomfiture and to Kitty’s delight. The idea of fooling the chairman of a multinational bank appealed greatly to Kitty. While Shree initially dragged his feet, he was fine once he found that the suit he had borrowed from Kitch fit him perfectly and that the chairman was a football fan. Others included Kapoor at his flamboyant best, Rachel looking gorgeous, and her fiancé Tim, who held his own with Sir Sid with his ideas on solar energy and wind farming.

Flushed with our success, we left the hotel to find some place to celebrate with our distinguished group. I was delighted. Shree had kept the chairman enthralled with the latest on the odds that bookmakers were offering on Brazil, England and the others. My dear sister Kitty, looking charming, perhaps even stunning, in a black and orange salwar kameez with mirror-work, had so enchanted Sir Sid with stories about the dance school she was running in India, that he wanted to send his grand-daughter to India to ‘learn Indian dance and absorb the great Indian culture’. Then there was Kitch’s cousin Ravi, a Dubai-based social worker of sorts, who looked like an Indian version of George Clooney. Kitch’s brother Andy had wanted to come to the party as well, posing as a rich man’s son, but Kitch wouldn’t hear of it.

‘Let’s go
home
and celebrate, guys,’ Kitch said. ‘I’m starving. The décor and the music were lovely, but somehow the bigger the hotel, the less I like the vegetarian choices. I’ve got plenty of drinks at home for everyone and I can eat some curd rice.’

‘With VK,’ Galiya added.

Andy joined us at home with a young Filipino lady in tow, and promptly proceeded to have a go at the scotch. The kid was really living it up.

‘I love this bank,’ Kitty announced as she raised a toast to the private banking team. ‘It’s such fun. I thought banking was a boring business with forms and documents and numbers. But see how easily we impressed your chairman. I had him eating out of my hand. I think, after dancing, banking is the thing I like best.’

Peggy smiled. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘believe me, the banking I have always known is all about business and fourteen-hour days. I have never seen banking as it exists in this bank. It’s all about meetings and hype. But you look terrific, sweetheart. Any chairman would have been taken in by you today.’

In a corner of the room, right next to the corridor that led to the bedrooms, Andy was sitting on a two-seater sofa, smooching the young lady and simultaneously kneading her bare calves. I shuddered at the audacity of today’s younger lot, and remembered his mother holding my hand a few months ago, fervently pleading with me to take good care of her son. ‘Please teach him to be responsible like you,’ she had said. And I realized that I hadn’t so much as given the guy a second thought in all these days.

Suddenly a small figure with tousled hair and sleepy eyes appeared from the passage. It had a thumb in its mouth. The other hand clutched a fluffy pink rabbit. It was Olga Dharini Krishnan, the pretty little daughter of Kitch and Galiya. She stood just behind the smitten couple who were deeply absorbed in their task, and registered a formal complaint with an abrupt announcement.

‘Too many people. Too many noise!’ she said in her squeaky two-year-old voice. I know you will say that it is not possible for a sitting person to jump and I will admit that this is true in most cases. But if a person is taken completely by surprise when he or she is totally engrossed in something, it can happen. Andy and the girl rose as if a bomb had exploded under them. For a brief moment, they seemed to rest in midair, like a couple of levitating, embracing yogis. Then they came crashing down.

There was a stunned silence. It hadn’t occurred to us that we had been making far more of a ruckus than was appropriate after midnight in an apartment with a sleeping child. We stared at the kid. The kid stared back. ‘Too many noise,’ she repeated. Then, replacing her thumb in her mouth, she walked back to her room, with Galiya jogging after her. The rest of us tried hard not to make the sound of a dozen adults doubling up with laughter.

The heady success of the chairman’s do lasted several days. In the aftermath of the glow, we sauntered around like my former colleague Philippe used to do at Myers. Philippe was then the top revenue producer there and he spent most of his time sitting in his office with his feet up on the table and a wireless device stuck to his ear. When he did swagger around the office, the others hurriedly got out his way for fear of being snubbed or barked at.

Now it was our time under the sun. Peggy showed us an email that had been sent to the various heads of departments. It contained a stern rebuke from Fergs for failing to bring in the required number of clients and compared them unfavourably with us. Peggy got promoted to the mancom, the revered and greatly feared management committee, an all powerful body that could make or break ideas, products and careers.

Peggy couldn’t believe that an issue as ridiculous as this had catapulted her into the limelight. I knew she had never felt too comfortable in this new setup, where office work consisted predominantly of a series of meetings, almost all of them with colleagues. Clients were rarely met by senior employees. Indeed, the heads seemed to shy away from clients, neighing like a frightened horse and running for cover if a client so much as approached them. They were very uncomfortable with clients, especially if there was a chance that they may have a grouse. They kept proudly busy with internal back-to-back meetings. That was their zone of comfort and they liked staying there. Of course, when a client offered his yacht to the senior management of the bank for a weekend or put their families up at his resort complete with booze, food and spa, they lapped it up. But they drew a clear line at meeting a client face to face or listening to his ire. That was left for the minions, the officers and front office soldiers. That’s what they were paid for.

If there were more than two participants at a meeting, they were referred to as ‘conferences’. Poor Peggy had to spend a good four to five hours a day on these. ‘I have never attended such unproductive meetings,’ she told us. ‘Many of the decisions made at these hour long meetings could just as easily be made over a quick phone call or a couple of sensible emails. Sometimes no decisions are made at all. It
kills
me.’