Corporate Carnival (3 page)

3

‘Tsunami’ Andy Hits Dubai Shores

A
s a somewhat belated first wedding anniversary present, Mina and I took Peggy, Kitch, Galiya and Rachel out for a celebratory drink to the Buddha bar at the Dubai Marina, followed by dinner at Asha’s, a restaurant that is apparently owned by the legendary Indian playback singer of that name. Rachel had been our colleague at Myers York. After spending a little over a year in Australia, she and her newly acquired, scholarly looking fiancé – a specialist in alternative energy – had decided to give the UAE a try. She had put on a little weight, especially, as Kitch was quick to notice, on her legs and hips, prompting him to dub her ‘thunder thighs’.

I was delighted to see her again. It was good to have her adding to the sunshine around here rather than remain ‘thunder down under’. I hoped I would get to see a bit of her, though her fiance’s project on alternative energy seemed likely to be based out of Abu Dhabi. The conversation initially centred around the forthcoming investment ‘circus’ as Peggy labelled it – the Sir Sidney do.

We decided to be practical about the whole thing. If a show was what was required, we would put up a jolly good one. We had just three clients: Saxena, Harsh and one of Kitch’s. But so what? We could ‘create’ some good clients and get them to meet the chairman. All we needed were a few guys with enough knowledge of English to reply to the old man when asked a question. And of course, they needed to be in possession of a good suit and be able to last an hour without chewing tobacco or spitting.

The chairman was also meeting a very big Arab client, someone who had over a hundred million dirhams lying in his current account for a year. CEO Fergs had called for Kitch and me to brief us on the programme. When we went into his room, he was talking to his secretary, Susan Inglesfield. He seemed worried.

‘But has Mr Al Fadhar confirmed the meeting at eleven?’ he asked her.

‘Umm… he said “Insha Allah”, Mr Fergusson.’

Fergs looked up in annoyance. ‘I need to send the the itinerary to Sir Sid. I need a proper confirmation for eleven sharp, Susan. Please call him again and make sure there’s no room for doubt.’

Susan dialled the number from Fergs’s desk. ‘Mr Al Fadhar, this is Susan Inglesfield again. Mr Fergusson would like to be absolutely certain about your meeting with our chairman at 11 a.m. on the 22nd. I see. Er… may I take that as a yes, Mr Al Fadhar?’ She cupped her palm over the receiver. ‘He keeps saying the same thing!’ she said to Fergs. ‘Insha Allah!’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Fergs asked in a terse whisper.

‘It means “God willing”,’ Susan whispered back.

‘I know that!’ the CEO moaned, wringing his hands. ‘But I can’t go back to the chairman with that! Susan, please make sure
he
is willing. We need to be sure.’

‘Er… umm… our CEO would just like to make sure you are definitely available for the meeting, Mr Al Fadhar.’

She replaced the receiver and looked at her boss.

‘Well, what did he say? Did he confirm? Did he say yes?’ Fergs looked like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

‘He said, if Allah was willing to let the meeting happen at that time, how could he, a mere servant of Allah, not make himself available?’

It was the first time I saw a CEO clutch his head and whimper helplessly.

The thing that was worrying me, however, was not so much the chairman’s visit as the steady stream of negative news pouring in from Europe. Even as we signed up with AbAd, there was talk of Greece being in a spot of bother. Now Spain was in pain, so was Portugal and we received depressing bits of information almost daily. When we took the decision to join two months ago, the idea of working for a big European bank that seemed to have escaped the worst of the 2008 crisis had been a major plus. Now the question everyone was asking was this: after America, was it Europe’s turn next? There was talk of contagion and a barrage of media reports about the indebtedness of European countries, even some of the larger ones like Italy.

There was another issue that was troubling me. At Myers, the entire system was focussed around opening accounts and doing business. Out here, it seemed that different forces were working in conflicting ways, each with a point to prove. It was like a game of football with several teams, multiple goal posts and no referee.

‘It’s great being together again, Peggy,’ I told her later, ‘but honestly I’m beginning to have doubts about whether this is the right place for us. Europe suddenly seems far less solid than it did three months back and this place is more about ego than ethos, more about scoring brownie points than doing business.’

‘Frankly, Jack, I couldn’t agree more. But let’s give it a year, please, sweetheart. I think there’s some change on the way. Hopefully, if we build a good team, we will be able to create an impact. While the rest of them focus on fudging figures, maybe we can work some real numbers.’

The following week was busy. Mina and I flew down to Chennai for a family get-together to celebrate my father’s sixtieth birthday. There were about forty of us tucked away at the Fisherman’s Cove resort an hour away from the city. We read out speeches and anecdotes about my father, much to his embarrassment, staged a small skit based on incidents in his and my mum’s life, gifted him various things (none of which he would ever use) sang songs, played volleyball, swam and generally pigged out.

My sister Kitty told us that she and her football fanatic husband Shree were planning a ten-day holiday in South Africa during the FIFA World Cup which was to be held there later in the year. They had already spoken to our uncle Kaushik who was the Director of UniFoods Africa, the African division of the Dutch foodstuff giant in Johannesburg. I decided I might join them there. Not to watch football, but to meet the chap Kapoor had recommended.

After a few days of merrymaking, Mina went to Brahmadesam to check on the farm, while I had to escort Kitch’s brother Anand to Dubai.

Anand was to take up a job with one of Kitch’s father’s friends. His family was anxious to get him settled into a good job as soon as possible. He was just a couple of years out of college and some of his ‘achievements’ had already unnerved the family. While at school, he was the scourge of his teachers. Kitch told me his parents were once called to the headmaster’s room in the presence of a seething couple, parents of a girl whom young Anand, all of twelve with wide-eyed innocence, had invited to ‘come and sit on my lap’. Two years later, with the first flush of adolescence yet to abate, he was suspended from school for writing a love letter to his teacher.

When I first heard this story, I thought, here was a man after my own heart. I too had lost my innocent heart to a teacher in high school, though I had never dreamed of putting my thoughts down and presenting it to ‘ma’am’. Kitch’s father had to use all the force of his networking and his skills of persuasion to get Anand into another school, away from the woman of his dreams. In his first year at college, the young man, moved by the plight of the victims of the tsunami that hit the coast of Chennai, moved a few truckloads of homeless and hapless fisherfolk to his college. Those hundred-odd people loved their new mansion. They spread out in style, occupied every room in the college and refused to budge, thereby necessitating the cancellation of all classes for a week. When the distinguished principal came to plead and negotiate with them, he was firmly told by the fishermen that the college had been given to them by ‘Anand sir’ and that they would be damned if any bald-headed son of a whore tried to get them to move. A second suspension in three years was very much on the cards and would certainly have come through if the media had not picked up on the event and turned young Anand into a local hero. He was interviewed on a couple of television channels and was hailed by the regional press as a messiah of the downtrodden and emerged from the whole scene as the Great Young Indian Hope. The principal felt, under the circumstances, that any action against Anand would generate negative publicity for the college, apart from turning the youngster into a martyr and a celebrity, and decided to let him stay on.

He was a sweet chap to talk to; all humility and respect, very earnest, curious, straightforward – almost embarrassingly so – and always full of cheer. He certainly didn’t look like someone who had brought his college to a standstill for a week.

We were to leave the next day. Anand was driving me to his house so I could meet his parents. He stopped some distance away from the house, outside a pharmacy. ‘I say, Jai anna, can you do me a favour?’ he asked, looking me straight in the eye. ‘Can you buy me a Durex ten-pack?’

I stared at him dumbly, then at the steering, the rearview mirror and the accelerator in that order. Was he asking what I thought he was asking?

‘You see, anna, all the pharmacies and groceries here know the whole family. It is a little embarrassing for me.’

‘Okay,’ I croaked, feeling decidedly uncomfortable.

What exactly does one do when the kid brother of one’s best friend asks for something like this out of the blue? Besides, we were leaving the next day, so what on earth was he planning to do? But I walked into the pharmacy, feigning nonchalance. Between you and me, I don’t even buy my own condoms. Mina does it for me. As I pointed and mumbled, the shopkeeper drew my attention to another one. ‘New in the market, sir,’ he said helpfully. ‘Paan-flavoured. Madam may like it.’

I gulped down my surprise. I could understand paneer pizza and McAloo Tikki, but paan-flavoured condoms? What next?

Anand’s parents seemed rather pleased with the way things had panned, though they were still a little apprehensive. ‘Jai, you are like a son to us, just like Kitcha,’ his mother told me. ‘We are depending on you to take care of Anand and show him the right path.’

I felt like a modern-age Gautam Buddha. I wondered what I had done to be put on such a pedestal. I found out soon enough.

‘We want him to work hard and achieve success. After two or three years, we would like him to get married to someone within the community, just like you have, so sensibly. Of course, we are very happy with Galiya. We could not have asked for a nicer girl as our daughter-in-law. But Jai, I don’t want both our sons to get married to foreigners. We cannot keep having Stephen and Gloria or Abdul and Jaibunissa as our… what is it you say in Gujarati for sammandhi? Vevahi? What will we talk to them about? What relationship can we ever hope for? Whenever we are together, we will just have to sit and stare at the ceiling. We are not like Westerners. We want to remain in close touch with our sons all our lives. So their wives and their families are also important. We want our own people. We sacrificed this for Kitcha. Anand is a good boy, but maybe he is impulsive and a little… mischievous.’

I wondered how much they knew about the ‘mischievous’ part of his life. ‘Kitch and I will do our best,’ I assured her, making up my mind to leave the bulk of the responsibility to Kitch. After Anand’s recent request to me outside the pharmacy, my level of confidence in myself to ‘take care of him’ was not very high.

In the meantime, from somewhere nearby, a noise that could only have been made by a thousand half-crazed monkeys was reaching a crescendo.

‘Aunty, what is that noise?’ I asked. ‘I have been wondering ever since I stepped inside the compound.’

‘Oh, that’s the municipality school behind our house. They provide free primary education, mainly to children from low-income families. We are used to the noise. In fact, we feel uneasy on weekends, without the children shouting. Go take a look from the balcony.’

I did, and watched open-mouthed. A few hundred children, all aged between five and ten, were running around in a frenzy in an area dotted with desks and chairs and covered overhead partly by an asbestos sheet and partly by a tree. Some of them were running around the place clockwise, some the other way. Some ran over desks, some under them, and some ran at random. A few kids were beating up some others and getting kicked at in return. Two of them were pulling each other’s hair. Some were turning cartwheels. A few were swinging their school bags over their heads, some were banging their fists on the desks and a small group of diligent students were trying to dent their desks with the pointed end of their pencils. But all of them, irrespective of their choice of activity, were screaming. It was the one thing that united this diverse group of young thinkers. A few of them saw me, smiled and waved excitedly. I waved back.

‘They like our family because of Anand. For the last four years, he has been buying sweets for them regularly. He distributes them every Monday. That gives them an incentive to attend school after the weekend. Anand has made us promise to continue this practice when he goes to Dubai. With his Dubai salary, he wants to make it twice a week.’

My respect for the young man went up several notches. This was obviously a guy with his heart in the right place.

On the flight to Dubai, Anand dug his elbow into my ribs and, nodding towards a light-eyed airhostess, said, ‘That one looks hot!’ A few minutes later, pointing at the lady sitting in front, he whispered, ‘Y’know, I get really turned on by black bras!’

He seemed completely at ease with me. I was the one who was getting unnerved. I started reading a book. Maybe then he would stop sharing his most intimate thoughts with me.

‘Jai anna!’ he whispered. ‘Have you ever been with any black and white women?’

I looked up, startled. ‘Black and white women? What do you mean?’

‘You know, black women… white women? Have you been with them? Not
now
,’ he added hastily, noticing the shocked expression on my face. ‘I meant before Mina, before marriage.’

‘Mina is the only woman I have ever
been
with, as you put it,’ I replied coldly. It’s best to nip these things in the bud.

‘Really? Kitch told me you used to be on the wild side, if you know what I mean.’

‘Kitch,’ I declared, ‘is an ass.’ I went back to my book, looking at the words with what they call unseeing eyes. I made up my mind to give Kitch a good talking to.