Michael My Friend

                                           

How I landed in Dubai was definitely a quirk of fate ,having had a reasonably good career in the the office automation industry in India ( HCL/ Modi Xerox )and later Mudra. This after a six year stint as a Gunner Officer in Indian Army

But then if it said that if it has been written that jis ghat ka paani peena likha hai , wus ghat ka paani zaroor pioghe.

The quirk of fate was that one of the very senior persons whom we had recruited as Vice President in Mudra , one of the largest Indian Advertising agencies, was the ex Vice President of Brooke Bond.I was on the recruiting panel with the Chairman & MD. being the CMD’s  Executive Assistant with the title of Corporate Manager.During his company tenure, he took a liking to me.

Later when he left the company, he had joined a Dubai based company as the CEO , to launch ITC products in Dubai. One day out of the blue he called me in India and asked me to join him and to make money he said!

I had no experience in the retail food industry, but he had great faith in me and insisted I join him to head sales and launch the now famous ITC oil brand – Sun Drop.

Now starts the Dubai story. From the time of the offer to the time of my receiving a letter of offer, things changed rapidly. Something had happened to the deal with ITC ,and it fell through, and because he had given his word to me he fixed me up with the sister company which had the distribution of Brooke Bond tea.But the terms of offer had changed, but the dice had been cast and I landed in Dubai.

I remember that I was picked up at the airport by one Kersi  who happened to be a fairly senior person with a title of Sales Executive,( which was the first shock) but later on came to know that he was a close friend of the company owners, and had run his own business in Bahrain, but presently with this company.I probably have jumped the gun.He put me in Hotel Astoria and asked me to rest and he would pick me up the next day.

The next day he picked me up  and took me to the office in Karama where I met a typical Punjabi Dubai crocodile ( impressions gathered later) who was heading the tea division. The next few days passed in a haze with visa processing and the associated rigmarole.I stayed with Kersi who was single – his family lived in Mumbai, had a business in Bahrain,which he closed & had big Chickoo gardens in Daman. He just had a visa to maintain NRI status. He was kind enough to accommodate me till I found a flat of my own.The distinct first impression I had the first few days in the flat , was the quietness and only the swishing noise of cars going on the road.

Yes I did find a flat,took a few months to get a licence ( another story my itself) my wife joining me, and me re learning  my sales ,along with the van sales team in the retail market, but then Brooke Bond was the leader in the Sada Chai market while Lipton was the leader in dip tea . Our tea was there in every store /supermarket /grocery & of course the 1800 tea shops at that time.As market leaders we had no problem. The going was good. But in all this my mentor would never once speak to me ,because he was involved in one hush hush project based out of Jebel ali I would know much later what it was to be.

The Unilever company, of which Brooke bond was a part of, suddenly decided to pull the rug out of the company I worked by revoking the distribution rights. The secret project was to  compensate this. I was in a quandary.My mentor too passed away suddenly.

Just as I was wondering about my next step, there came an offer from a company which was owned by one of the prominent NRI ‘s Abdul Wahab from Kerala. They had managed a tie up  with Manu Chabaria’s company Jumbo Global which wanted a distributor for a new brand of tea & rice , they wanted to launch in Dubai.So there I was again leading a sales team, this time to take on the might of Red Label. It was truly a formidable task.For almost we two years we battled it out, but were at the loosing end and on top trouble was brewing in India about  the companies owned by Chabaria – Shaw Wallace/Dunlop etc. Soon the distribution fizzled out and there I was between the devil & the deep sea.

Meanwhile the company had started a Commodity trading division with a few senior guys from ITC Commodity trading division which had closed down. I was transferred to this division without the faintest idea about commodity trading, when out of the blue the Head of the division because of his previous association in ITC Bhadrachalam which is based in Hyderabad, tied up with a Hyderabad based company called NCL to market their cement boards. He promptly handed over the responsibility of establishing the market to me.

I had truly fallen from the frying pan into the fire, having no idea of building materials or selling them. So my army training came into the fore – when the going gets tough, the tough get going – and I got going.After doing a market research we zeroed upon the pre- fab manufacturers with the aim of getting them to use the cement boards instead of plywood.Armed with a test certificate of a local lab about the fire resistance I made a list of all the prefab manufacturers in the city and started visiting them day in and day out.

Al Qouz was one area in Dubai other then Sharjah,where there were a few prefab manufacturers  located , so I made a beeline for that place and Dufab was probably among the first I visited. There was a Nair & a Chowdhury running it and Nair was quite encouraging and would  take the time out and listen patiently to what I had to say. He also started to use the material.

The next  I visited was Space maker. I still remember there was a youngster named Raju a typical Palghat Brahmin. He gave a long winded introduction to the company & British ownership.I requested him to arrange a meeting with a to a senior Indian person in the company where I could talk about my product. He made a call and then took me to a Senior manager and introduced me to Mr. Michael Noronha.

That was my first meeting with Michael. He was friendly and  after a good cup of tea & getting to know each other he heard me out patiently and said he would definitely give it a try.

The rest as they say was history.Business aside , we developed a good friendship  & got along famously.  He would invite me & my wife, for many a weekend & all important occasions ,like Christmas /Easter ,with great warmth and love lubricated with lots & lots of whiskey and some excellent food , cooked by Michael himself.His fish curry was legendary . Lorretta his wife was equally a wonderful person & friendly , who would make us feel so much at home .We would have endless discussion on many things of the world .He also introduced us to a lot of his friends whom he would invite along with us to his home

There were picnics with barbeques  and outings. I still remember the wonderful cup of tea on wonderful morning on a trip to Hatta to a farm house of his friend., which he had made with absolutely fresh milk. The taste lingers in my mind.

On a another trip to a park, we  had an accident and a dent in our cars, while backing out of parking,if I remember rightly. There were no cops around, and I remember days later we enacted the accident and called the cops to get the papers made for the insurance.

Another get together vividly comes to my mind. We were invited to one of Michaels friend’s Fernandes house in Sharjah. After any party at Michaels house, I would always drive back to our home in Dubai, even after having drinks, which of course was a crime in Dubai as is elsewhere.But I called it the Russian roulette. On that particular party I did not drink, as just a few days back I was diagonised with high sugar,  and had stopped drinking. After that party we were driving home and a  cop stopped my car and checked my alcohol level which was nil  and I drove off. Talk about Russian roulette!!

On a New year’s eve  Michael arranged ,an overnight stay at well known  resort named Barracuda in Ajman , where he introduced me to his longtime pal Padmanabhan ( Paddy) & his wife Vasantha. We had a barbeque with copius amounts of good whiskey.At about midnight they received a call from their daughter Seema  in Bangalore, to wish them a Happy New year! Little did we know at that time that Seema would become our daughter –in law and they  would become our relatives.Such are the quirks of fate.

The times spent with Michael & his good spouse Lorretta were some of the best times always fondly remembered ,during  my entire stay in Dubai .

it was Michael who gave a major filip to the product I was handling by using it in a major project he was doing Since he worked for a British  company, this was noticed by others and culminated in a major order for the Dubai airport.

But unfortunately the boss who I was reporting in typical Gulf infection syndrome, hogged all the glory& the probably the incentives that came along with it .I was tremendrously disappointed ,This set the tone for my leaving Dubai, which is is a different tale by itself.But it was Michael who was the key person who had influenced a major construction company to use the product.

The best part of my nearly 10 year stay in Dubai was easily the friendship of Michael which I cherish till this day.My heart felt thanks to Michael & Lorreta for being a part of my life.

Thank you Sir.

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Dr.SIPPY’s Magic Mixture

                                        

It was in the early part of the eighties we used to live in Colaba Bombay, near the Post Office Nearby the fresh flavour of the potato chips being fried in Victory wafers a shop at the corner of the lane which lead to our apartment ,wafted in the air.

Just near the post office the road  bifurcated , one leading to the famous CharagDin store which produced colourful shirts, and further  down to the Reclamation Bay with its skyscrapers .The other lead to the Sassoon Dock with a fishy smell when one went past it ,down to Colaba area with the famous landmarks like the Strand book shop/Leopold café/Regal theatre .

 At the beginning of the road was Dr. Sippy’s clinic. He was a very popular paedriatic doctor as the hordes of people standing outside the clinic in the early hours proved .They waited patiently till the shop was opened by the pharmacist at about 9am. Once he settled down he would ask every one to stand in a line and give pieces of paper with a number on it. One could take the number and return later .

It was  a small shop which was bifurcated with a portion for the pharmacist to sit and in the other the doctor  sat.The doctor himself would come in past 9.30 am and start seeing his patients who ranged from babies to small kids with the usual cough, cold & fever which kids normally are afflicted with.

There was very little place to sit there ,so could wait outside or return later depending on the number you got . Sometimes in the morning session the papers issued could easily go way above 50. He would have an equal amount if not more for the evening session. The doctor would take about 10 to 15 min per patient so one could calculate roughly when their turn would come.  He would look at the baby/kids and check the pulse ,tongue as he played with them and soon dished out a prescription which could only be read by the pharmacist.

The pharmacist himself would read the prescription and then slowly get out of his chair , pick out a few pills put it in a white marble mortar and smash the pills into powder with a pestle. He would then pick up a small rectangular bottle and paste on it the number of doses cut out on a paper. He would then ladle the powder into the bottle and pour a liquid into the bottle, cork it and vigourously shake the bottle and hand it over the counter to you. The mixture invariably was pink in colour.The fees for the consultation and the medicine would be about Rs. 10/-

In a couple of days the kid got well. As long as we were there , our son who was a baby, had that mixture for various ailments which babies get from time to time.

To this day we remember it as Sippy’s Magic Mixture.

Yellow Paper

Today the Yellow legal pad is well known and widely used all over the world,by lawyers, artists and in fact by all. The origin of which by itself is interesting and can be googled.

My introduction to the Yellow sheets of paper was as a very young boy when I saw reams of it being used by my maternal uncle for his studies. This yellow paper which I later came to know came out of the packing for the x-ray films which were imported for the radiology dept in the Christian medical college – CMC hospital as it was & is famously known .It was the Go -To hospital in the country in the early 60’s.

The hospital itself is in a town named Vellore . The town is about a 100 plus km away from the metro city Madras ( now Chennai) in the southern state of Tamilnadu. The joke about the  town was that it had a fort and everyone called it a fort  without a king, and in that a temple without a God and a moat without water. But then the town was famous all over the country for, was the CMC.

There were doctors from abroad and from all over India in CMC. The medical college itself was easily the best and it was a given that if you got an admission, your medical career was assured and would progress to the very top.

Surprisingly enough all the three of my maternal uncles Edward, Galen, & Shepherd ( the names were probably after the Edward the King/ Galen after  the  physician & surgeon in the Roman empire & of course Shepherd after the Psalm23 ) were working in the CMC hospital.Edward in Adminstration, Galen in Pathology Lab& Shepherd in Radiology but then it may have been because my grandfather  Mr. Gangadharan used to be the Superintendent of the water works in Vellore and he probably had a lot of influence in the CMC hospital.

I never knew my grandfather much, but whatever I remember of him was in a white shirt tucked into a khaki half pant, a stockinged feet, brown shoes and a Sola Topee. This was the British era dress in the India in those days.And yes! He had a hobby of repairing watches.

I have distinct  memories of seeing him hunched over a watch with the magnifying eyeglass closely poring over a watch under a table light. I now realise the hobby would have required precision hand movements. I also vividly recall the pinch he would give with his grown thumbnail when at times I would enquiringly touch an open watch at the table. Another favorite of his was his pet dog Lassie, which died exactly after a year his master passed away.

The house itself was a of a typical design of the older times,in that town, with a huge thick door like a temple door with a small corridor leading into the house with an atrium  courtyard and the corridor moving directly out on to a open garden area at the end. Just before the garden area was a well and directly opposite was the kitchen where wood was used for the cooking. If I remember right there were about four rooms altogether in the house.

Now coming back to the yellow paper. It was Shepherd uncle who was working in the radiology dept in CMC ,who would bring the yellow paper (which would have been thrown out)from his dept and used them for practising maths .He would burn the midnight oil,  I learnt later that he was studying for his higher degree reams of these papers filled with mathematical notations.

Inspite of all this ,It was he who introduced me to the classic movies like Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, Samson & Delilah. He would take me to these movies  to  Dinakaran theatre which screened only English movies,and in the interval, treat me to mutton pokaras which was sold outside the gates of the theatre ,and handed over through the gaps in the iron gates. Surprisingly,inspite of decades, the taste lingers in my mind and I don’t think I have eaten such  pokaras to date.Sometimes after a tiring bout of studying in the late evenings, he would  treat me to a glass of masala milk. I remember seeing big vats of boiling milk in the shop, to which some flavours were added and the guy would give steaming glasses of milk , topped by cream.It was delicious.

Time passed and I left Vellore  with my father a Naval Office who was posted in other cities. I lost touch with Shepherd uncle directly for quite sometime and it was much much later ,I came to know that he had completed his Msc degree in Madurai, and later did a stint in Australia before he pushed off to the US the details of which I do not know.

During this time I had been through College , joined the army, and opted out of army to start a life in the private sector. It was after years of humongus effort put in ( akin to the movie In” Pursuit of Happiness”) to make a mark in the career I chose, did I learn to appreciate the effort which Shepherd uncle would have put in to make the journey from a small town in South India against all odds to the USA and to get a Phd there and do yeoman service in hospitals there and settle there, and giving his sons the opportunity, for which he has had to struggle for.

In my mind  the yellow paper became the symbol of the struggle,& success for him to break through a level of mediocratic existence to a path of dynamic growth.