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Corporate elegance: Asian Age
Mumbai, July 25: Like a yokel come to Babylon, there I was this Monday, pulled out from my slum in Prabhadevi, to the elegance of the dizzying heights of corporates in commercial Mumbai.
Mumbai, July 25: Like a yokel come to Babylon, there I was this Monday, pulled out from my slum in Prabhadevi, to the elegance of the dizzying heights of corporates in commercial Mumbai.
Thanks to the achievements of Huda Fakih, Margaret Guru, Harshad Zatakia, Prachi Dandekar and others. These are not names in any household, apart from their own or even in the popular press. They are the medal winners in the Special Olympics held in Dublin recently. The corporates who supported them to and fro, were being thanked in turn for their generosity and idealism. In deeply carpeted board rooms, men and women who control several thousand crores, stood impeccably dressed, along with the head of Special Olympics, Asia Pacific, Raj Bajaaj, and his tornado of moving and shaking, Pervin Dasgupta who got four CEOs to meet the group. While I tried to merge with the woodwork. In my Rangoon shirt with cloth buttons, except that I wore the colour of the age in startling saffron. While the others in impeccable charcoal and grey business suits, complimented the smart blazers of the victorious special athletes, proud with medals around their necks.
HDFC in their quiet, understated way has always married form with content. As the first to reach their corporate office on the fifth floor of Raymond House, there was enough time to appreciate the bust of founder Hashmukh Parekh. An oil lamp was lit in front, even at 9 in the morning. There were also flowers floating in a small bowl, as simple as the great man himself. Whom I remember striding the corridor of the finance department of Mantralaya, in his large thonged sandals, as he set up the ICICI as well. In keeping with his uncle’s style and substance, Deepak Parekh, chairman of HDFC, insisted on reaching his office before the mentally challenged sportspersons, so that he could be there to receive them. Meeting him after many years, I was able to thank him for his quiet help as director of the Breach Candy Hospital, where he was able to knock off a lakh of rupees from the hospital bill of my handicapped daughter who spent a month there recently. Downstairs in the banking hall, while photographs were taken, speeches made and the athletes honoured, I remembered my early days in the city in the MLA Hostel next door. It was difficult enough to get a room to stay in, even though on an official posting.
One evening I came back from work, as under secretary, rural development, to find that my belongings were neatly tied into a small bundle and deposited outside the door. Clearly, an MLA who had priority would create a fuss and the manager named Warty thought he had his job on the line. It didn’t matter to him if I was thrown out. I remember spending the night on a bench of the Gateway of India, rather than routing out more respectable friends for a room for the night.
When Deepak Parekh in the middle of all that cheerful opulence and immense concern from his huge assembled staff, asked me to say a few words on behalf of Special Olympics of which I am a state trustee, what with a combination of many things, I was too choked to speak. Fortunately, Raj Bajaaj, Former MD, Otis, with an ease born of long corporate practice, seized the mike. For details of 162 countries with 1.2 million athletes represented by 7,000 at Dublin last month. How there were 60 other host cities, in that small country, 38,000 volunteers and how the Irish government enhanced their budget of 300 million dollars in their disability bill to several times more. How our own Union minister Ram Naik has announced one crore for the 110 medal winners and thanks to the spectacular performance of our 88-member contingent, sports for the mentally handicapped will finally get its recognition in the country.
The elegance of the corporate office of the Tatas is of another kind. The deep powerful hum of over 100 years of philanthropy that goes with all their achievements was equally understated in the board room on the third floor.
Farokh Vandrewala, managing director of Tata Power was being thanked by Special Olympics for their contribution. The happy young sportspersons revel in cameras, lights, presents of chocolates and goodies. Vimal, 29 years old, who won a silver medal for swimming is let out of the remand home in Mankhurd, only with a chaperon. It was time for the corporate world to understand the huge efforts made by social welfare institutions of the state government, where an orphan like this young lady was picked up abandoned in the streets and nurtured three decades later in all her disabilities to Olympic excellence.
The seventh floor of the Hong Kong Bank building at Flora Fountain has what is called, The Melting Pot. This is where their corporate wizards lunch if they can get away from the meter ticking away hugely, adding to the enormous riches in the vaults. Chief operating officer Sanjay Bhasin had just been called away to give vocal assent to the most recent embellishment of the RBI. While he was away, waiting for the formal press conference to start, the athletes were photographed against beautiful towers of the Bombay University building. Tall, lissom Malini Thadani is their head of public affairs and certainly gets well over a lakh a month. Certainly a happy move from her days in the income tax department where honesty is best rewarded with a large number of influential friends. While pop Hindi music swirled and nine happy, young, successful athletes danced, my former colleague tells me how at the Revenue Service Training Academy in Nagpur, she could never understand why only she and not any male probationer was asked to hand over flowers to every visiting chief guest. I was about to remark that it was probably because she was the best looking among everyone. Then stopped just in time, since now in corporate environments sexist remarks can cause huge problems. I also thought that she may be ideal to go across to the NCPA where the fashion week is in progress. To form a picket line and protest that since men who walk the ramp display their boring bare breasts, it will be a lot more interesting if women did the same with their much more interesting parts of the same anatomy.
The HSBC felicitation was a very happy one. Their country head, western India, Radhakrishnan has a cousin, now old and ill, who I replaced as assistant collector when I first came to the state. Head of training, Shekhar Sawant is an old buddy of unusual ebullience. He went to each of the athletes and shared a quip and a jest. Our friends say that when we get together, no one else has a chance to say anything. This time, we let the sense of the occasion flow over us and held back our fervent chatter whenever we meet after the passage of years. NDTV was there. The young medal winners answered kind questions about their performance with newly found confidence. Chief operating officer, Sanjay Bhasin, I often see on the golf course.
The icing on a lovely corporate cake was ABN Amro country head Ramesh Sobti, who in his white cuffs and collar and blue shirt with matching tie clearly has the modern breed of CEO dynamism. I can only think of Deepak Chatterjee, presently secretary, commerce, who combines a strong dress sense with a fully aware sense of purpose. Rarely do senior civil servants bother about their dress. Only the present granddaddy of them all, B.G. Deshmukh, former cabinet secretary, now a director in Tatas, bothered even from his early days about wearing the right thing for any occasion. The ABN Amro board room was a good place to end the day, as splendidly as it had begun. The deep, assured purr of corporate engines, multiplying wealth, providing state-of-the-art services, increasingly aware of social responsibilities in a world where they stand at one end and most everyone else at another. The athletes were taken to the vaults to look at all the money. They have already inherited the kingdom of the spirit.
Thanks to the achievements of Huda Fakih, Margaret Guru, Harshad Zatakia, Prachi Dandekar and others. These are not names in any household, apart from their own or even in the popular press. They are the medal winners in the Special Olympics held in Dublin recently. The corporates who supported them to and fro, were being thanked in turn for their generosity and idealism. In deeply carpeted board rooms, men and women who control several thousand crores, stood impeccably dressed, along with the head of Special Olympics, Asia Pacific, Raj Bajaaj, and his tornado of moving and shaking, Pervin Dasgupta who got four CEOs to meet the group. While I tried to merge with the woodwork. In my Rangoon shirt with cloth buttons, except that I wore the colour of the age in startling saffron. While the others in impeccable charcoal and grey business suits, complimented the smart blazers of the victorious special athletes, proud with medals around their necks.
HDFC in their quiet, understated way has always married form with content. As the first to reach their corporate office on the fifth floor of Raymond House, there was enough time to appreciate the bust of founder Hashmukh Parekh. An oil lamp was lit in front, even at 9 in the morning. There were also flowers floating in a small bowl, as simple as the great man himself. Whom I remember striding the corridor of the finance department of Mantralaya, in his large thonged sandals, as he set up the ICICI as well. In keeping with his uncle’s style and substance, Deepak Parekh, chairman of HDFC, insisted on reaching his office before the mentally challenged sportspersons, so that he could be there to receive them. Meeting him after many years, I was able to thank him for his quiet help as director of the Breach Candy Hospital, where he was able to knock off a lakh of rupees from the hospital bill of my handicapped daughter who spent a month there recently. Downstairs in the banking hall, while photographs were taken, speeches made and the athletes honoured, I remembered my early days in the city in the MLA Hostel next door. It was difficult enough to get a room to stay in, even though on an official posting.
One evening I came back from work, as under secretary, rural development, to find that my belongings were neatly tied into a small bundle and deposited outside the door. Clearly, an MLA who had priority would create a fuss and the manager named Warty thought he had his job on the line. It didn’t matter to him if I was thrown out. I remember spending the night on a bench of the Gateway of India, rather than routing out more respectable friends for a room for the night.
When Deepak Parekh in the middle of all that cheerful opulence and immense concern from his huge assembled staff, asked me to say a few words on behalf of Special Olympics of which I am a state trustee, what with a combination of many things, I was too choked to speak. Fortunately, Raj Bajaaj, Former MD, Otis, with an ease born of long corporate practice, seized the mike. For details of 162 countries with 1.2 million athletes represented by 7,000 at Dublin last month. How there were 60 other host cities, in that small country, 38,000 volunteers and how the Irish government enhanced their budget of 300 million dollars in their disability bill to several times more. How our own Union minister Ram Naik has announced one crore for the 110 medal winners and thanks to the spectacular performance of our 88-member contingent, sports for the mentally handicapped will finally get its recognition in the country.
The elegance of the corporate office of the Tatas is of another kind. The deep powerful hum of over 100 years of philanthropy that goes with all their achievements was equally understated in the board room on the third floor.
Farokh Vandrewala, managing director of Tata Power was being thanked by Special Olympics for their contribution. The happy young sportspersons revel in cameras, lights, presents of chocolates and goodies. Vimal, 29 years old, who won a silver medal for swimming is let out of the remand home in Mankhurd, only with a chaperon. It was time for the corporate world to understand the huge efforts made by social welfare institutions of the state government, where an orphan like this young lady was picked up abandoned in the streets and nurtured three decades later in all her disabilities to Olympic excellence.
The seventh floor of the Hong Kong Bank building at Flora Fountain has what is called, The Melting Pot. This is where their corporate wizards lunch if they can get away from the meter ticking away hugely, adding to the enormous riches in the vaults. Chief operating officer Sanjay Bhasin had just been called away to give vocal assent to the most recent embellishment of the RBI. While he was away, waiting for the formal press conference to start, the athletes were photographed against beautiful towers of the Bombay University building. Tall, lissom Malini Thadani is their head of public affairs and certainly gets well over a lakh a month. Certainly a happy move from her days in the income tax department where honesty is best rewarded with a large number of influential friends. While pop Hindi music swirled and nine happy, young, successful athletes danced, my former colleague tells me how at the Revenue Service Training Academy in Nagpur, she could never understand why only she and not any male probationer was asked to hand over flowers to every visiting chief guest. I was about to remark that it was probably because she was the best looking among everyone. Then stopped just in time, since now in corporate environments sexist remarks can cause huge problems. I also thought that she may be ideal to go across to the NCPA where the fashion week is in progress. To form a picket line and protest that since men who walk the ramp display their boring bare breasts, it will be a lot more interesting if women did the same with their much more interesting parts of the same anatomy.
The HSBC felicitation was a very happy one. Their country head, western India, Radhakrishnan has a cousin, now old and ill, who I replaced as assistant collector when I first came to the state. Head of training, Shekhar Sawant is an old buddy of unusual ebullience. He went to each of the athletes and shared a quip and a jest. Our friends say that when we get together, no one else has a chance to say anything. This time, we let the sense of the occasion flow over us and held back our fervent chatter whenever we meet after the passage of years. NDTV was there. The young medal winners answered kind questions about their performance with newly found confidence. Chief operating officer, Sanjay Bhasin, I often see on the golf course.
The icing on a lovely corporate cake was ABN Amro country head Ramesh Sobti, who in his white cuffs and collar and blue shirt with matching tie clearly has the modern breed of CEO dynamism. I can only think of Deepak Chatterjee, presently secretary, commerce, who combines a strong dress sense with a fully aware sense of purpose. Rarely do senior civil servants bother about their dress. Only the present granddaddy of them all, B.G. Deshmukh, former cabinet secretary, now a director in Tatas, bothered even from his early days about wearing the right thing for any occasion. The ABN Amro board room was a good place to end the day, as splendidly as it had begun. The deep, assured purr of corporate engines, multiplying wealth, providing state-of-the-art services, increasingly aware of social responsibilities in a world where they stand at one end and most everyone else at another. The athletes were taken to the vaults to look at all the money. They have already inherited the kingdom of the spirit.