Scenes From An Executive Life , livre ebook

ANURAG MATHUR
Scenes from an Executive Life
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
By the Same Author
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
SCENES FROM AN EXECUTIVE LIFE
Anurag Mathur was born in Delhi and educated at Scindia School, Gwalior, St. Stephen s College, Delhi and the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. He is a journalist in the print and electronic media and loves music, eating out and tennis-besides reading, of course.
By the same author
The Inscrutable Americans
Making the Minister Smile
Are All Women Leg Spinners? Asked the Stephanian
Travails
This book is dedicated with affection to my mother and father, Mr and Mrs R.D. and Vijaya Mathur
Chapter One
IT SEEMED THE MODERN Indian executive s life in many ways.
Where marriage was concerned, Gambhir Kumar and his wife Draupadi had been married for fifteen years. They were still married for the reason most of their friends were still married. What was the option?
There may not have been much left of what you might call love, but they didn t hate each other by any means. At least not passionately enough, or often enough, to go through the hassle of a divorce. Besides, what was the guarantee that things would be better the next time around? And of course there would have to be a next time. Being single was the pits. There were always the two boys to think of anyway-now ten and thirteen. So one might as well carry on, they figured.
Draupadi Kumar, DD to her friends, and thirty-eight years old, often thought about it.
If I could find just three couples, she once confided to her best friend Alisha, who were much happier than us and had been married as long as we have been, I think I would actually get divorced.
But she never could.
Gambhir didn t spend as much time brooding about his marriage. He was far too busy hanging on to his job and holding on to his house.
This last was a source of unending jealousy at his office because he lived in Paradise Gardens, the most expensive area in Delhi. This was far above his entitlement, but as he never tired of explaining patiently to whoever would listen among his colleagues, the house wasn t given to him as a sign that he was better then the others, it was merely because when he was hired, the Prop felt that he would be the most likely to vacate it in case he was fired.
But the company having come to know him better over the past two years, he had begun to sense that perhaps the Prop was now planning some way of easing him out of the house-for which admittedly he was paying a pittance-and perhaps renting it out at market rates with the attendant risks. Therefore shooting down all sorts of devious efforts to get him out of the place, that may or may not have originated with the Prop, took up a lot of his time.
The Prop , by the way, was the Proprietor of the company that Gambhir had the honour to serve. Prop wasn t his real name of course, but that s what everybody called him, though officially he was the chairman of the Y Corporation, their company.
Somebody had once made so bold as to ask him why the company was called the Y Corporation.
Y not? was the response.
The question of course was not put to the great man in person, for truth to tell, nobody in the company except Mr Mukul, the Managing Director-or Mad Mukul, as he was called with a near total lack of affection-had ever met him.
He sent them little notes typewritten on a manual typewriter of distinct vintage, and the senior executives, in turn, when they wanted to communicate with him, sent him typewritten notes as well. These were first sent to Mad Mukul and if he liked the idea in a note, he tore it up and sent another under his own name passing the idea off as his own. If, however, he found the note foolish, or even better, likely to get its sender into trouble, he put it into an envelope and deposited that in a basket in his cabin which a man came to clear every day.
Gambhir worked as the head of the Human Resource Department in the Y Corporation and a fairly major crisis had arisen that morning for him which he had discovered when he arrived for work.
As he strode towards his office, he noticed first that the secretaries seated along the corridor were not greeting him with the friendliness and respect that was due to somebody who was their direct boss.
He had ignored it as one of those things women were prone to do sometimes, but when he reached his door, he felt a start of fear, as though half his heart had been sliced away and was slithering towards his feet. His nameplate, which stated GAMBHIR KUMAR-HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT MANAGER , was missing. Even the outline that had developed around the brass plaque had been wiped clean.
Perhaps in some other office an executive may have attributed it to the office boy having decided the plate needed a polish, or the carpenter having taken it into his head to give it a wooden base, or a variety of other reasons. But not, Gambhir knew with certainty, in the Y Corporation.
Something, he told himself as he shut the door behind him, is afoot.
Either he had been sacked, or was about to be, or some sort of major activity was imminent, he sensed.
Perhaps I m just being paranoid, he chided himself, setting his elegant, still handsome figure into the chair. Maybe it s nothing, he said aloud, trying to calm his uneasiness. Besides I would get more warning.
The Prop prided himself on being an enlightened employer who had never yet sacked an employee. Potential recruits were often told this at the interviewing stage, hinting at a lifetime s tenure. Of course the fact was that when the Prop did want to remove someone, he made their life so full of misery that they had no option but to resign.
So this, wondered Gambhir, might be the beginning of the end.
But, hard as he tried, he could think of no reason why the Prop should want to sack him. As far as he could tell, his performance had been first-rate and the company had shown every sign of being pleased with him, including a large bonus, of which more later.
But then in the Y Corp, a man s performance frequently had no bearing whatsoever on whether he was to be sacked, promoted, demoted, or left to rot. And signs of pleasure from the company could turn into signs of displeasure with alarming rapidity.
At such times the executive concerned found who his true friends in the company were, and like people in all walks of life who get into trouble find, they discovered that they had none.
Gambhir began to understand the attitude of the secretaries he had passed who had suddenly become so busy.
Could it be Singhal s doing? he wondered, speculating about his arch-rival and b te noire who currently had Mad Mukul s ear. What exactly is on?
His phone rang and Mukul s secretary enquired if he was free to see the MD right now.
Gambhir walked down the hall to Mukul s room, knocked and went in to find Mukul seated there, along with Himmat. Gambhir winced. Himmat was a legend in the company for being a complete duffer, a man who was incapable of carrying out the simplest of duties, or coming up with an original thought, or even managing a contribution during a discussion that wasn t numbingly foolish. Perhaps for precisely these reasons and the fact that he was very well connected socially through his wife, a very senior bureaucrat s daughter, he was Mukul s blue-eyed boy.
Hello, hello, hello, greeted Mukul with the completely fake friendliness for which he was celebrated. Tea? Coffee? Have a sit? Smoke? He was slightly built and balding.
Gambhir sat down carefully, declining the rest of the offers.
Lucky guy yaar, said Himmat enviously. New start eh.
What are you talking about? enquired Gambhir, politely addressing the question to Mukul.
The MD smiled.
A brilliant move by the chairman, he marvelled. It ll set a trend worldwide.
They ll teach it at the IIMs, agreed Himmat.
He pushed one of the Prop s distinctive red pieces of cheap paper across to him. On it was typed:
Every time I improve our employees human relations, they leave the company for a better job. So why I should? Abolish Human Resource Department with immediate effect.
Gambhir was stunned. The Y Corporation was fairly large, extremely diversified and employed oyer seven hundred people. It was inconceivable that a company this size could be run without a Human Resource Department, whatever name you chose to give it.
He carefully pointed this out.
Mukul shrugged.
The Prop s made up his mind. What can I do?
Flawless reasoning, added Himmat, reasonable for once. What are you planning to do now?
Gambhir stood up.
Perhaps I should prepare a note for the Prop, he suggested.
Mukul shrugged again.
A new beginning, Himmat s voice followed him out. Lucky guy yaar.
Gambhir felt a confused bitterness.
If I have to leave this place, he thought anxiously, where will we go?
He tried to calm himself. There was no cause for such alarm. They could stay for a while with his parents in Dehra Dun or with DD s folks in Mumbai while he looked for a job. These weren t as easy to find as people imagined, but something would turn up.
He passed Singhal loitering outside his nameplate-less door.
All well? he asked with a gleeful smile. You re looking like you ve seen a ghost.
Gambhir gave him a scornful look and went in. So he knew too, he thought. As usual the person concerned is the last to know.
He had carried out enough such corporate executions himself to know how they worked. Being on the receiving end wasn t very pleasant.
He sat behind his desk and let worry gnaw at him like a rat at a piece of cheese.
They didn t have very much money saved up. DD had no qualifications or