The Hindu Business Line : If you want to do business, there is a mafia to cope with

STORY so far: It appears as if all giants were heading in one direction — India — when it came to BPO. I realise that jobs wait for those who are ready to work. Not those who simply sit and dream. In the meantime, there is a biotech fair where I learn an important lesson — that when key people come to see what is showcased, the top staff have to be around to talk about the company's products.

Episode 39

Around 4 p.m. the best thing to happen in most offices is the snack in the canteen. A small break is so refreshing when you know you have worked through the day to deserve it. That is what I had found out when studying for CA.

You know the volume of materials and heaps of suggested answers that students pile up on their tables and racks. Then there are pages and pages of class notes busily taken down at a coaching point from daybreak to late evening.

To sit and study all that, at a stretch, would be too much violence. My formula was to study for about an hour, have a chai, then one more hour, some music, then again, some eats, a quick nap, and so on.

There are many who vehemently oppose naps as if they were a great sin. They could be the ones who could snap any time.

Bosses often see canteens as a massive time-waster, without realising that workmen who may be apparently idling with coffee cups in hand, and gossip in the air, would be able to work faster when they return to their posts. Not taking into account the odd ones who loiter everywhere except in their assigned place.

Over a plate of hot pakoda, Gupta was telling me how the work was going on at the new call centre site. "Will we meet the deadline?" I asked him.

"Definitely, Swati," he said.

"Training is going on for the new recruits," I told him. "In the conference room."

"Oh, that accounts for all that hustle-bustle I saw when I came that way," he said.

"Are the computers in?" I queried.

"Should be reaching anytime now," Gupta replied, looking at the watch. "I am going to the site to oversee. Want to join?"

"Give me five minutes," I said, "I had asked Chandru for some reports on receivables. I'll push him on that." And I needed some time to touch up my make up before going out, you see.

********

"Doing business is never easy," Gupta spoke as he drove towards the Technology Park.

"Skills required are changing too fast," I responded, as if I knew everything and as if I had an opinion on almost anything.

"No, Swati," Gupta, "that's just half the story. You don't understand."

"I'll be happy to know," I said in feigned seriousness, "from the enlightened one."

"Okay," Gupta took that in good humour. "First we run from pillar to post for the required formalities. From one government department to another."

"But the staff were on strike," I noted.

"There was a skeleton staff present," Gupta replied. "Which didn't make any great difference, because in government departments, more the number less the work."

"If the CM introduced e-governance, our lives would be far better off," I mused aloud, wondering if, with an eastward wind on, the airwaves would carry my thoughts all the way to Fort St George.

*********

"I am Chip Thup," that chap who came with a striped T-shirt introduced himself to Gupta, looking at me quite condescendingly. "We want to see your boss."

"What for?" asked Gupta very politely.

"For the mamool," said Thup, spitting something right and left, true to his name.

And he took out a small and sharp pocket-knife to straighten his eyebrows.

"Annachi," a henchman of Thup came up to talk. "One would do."

"One what?" asked Gupta naively. And I chuckled within myself, because it was only about an hour ago that Gupta was telling me that I didn't understand.

I could understand that these fellows were on an extortion racket. `One' could be `one lakh per month' I guessed. The best thing to do was to buy time. Provided they didn't pull out all their pocket-knives in one go.

*********

At the mailbox:

"Question: What is the peak of globalisation?" Well, that's from a forwarded mail from Shiv who sends me some real wise stuff off and on. Sometime back he had fretted: "Men have lost their morals and are too deeply engrossed in matter and spirit. The fire is out."

Okay, getting back to the immediate question, the answer is: "Princess Diana's death." How come? This is how: "An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian who was high on Scottish whiskey, followed closely by Italian Paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles, treated by an American doctor, using Brazilian medicines.

"And this is sent to you by an Indian, using Bill Gates' technology, which he stole from the Japanese. And you are probably reading this on one of the IBM clones that use Taiwanese-made chips, and Korean made monitors, assembled by Bangladeshi workers in a Singapore plant, transported by lorries driven by Pakistanis hijacked by Indonesians and finally sold to you by Chinese!"

To check on that would be lot of research, yet it makes a good read.

(To be continued)

Swati_CA@hotmail.com

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