Put them out in the sun….

This is going to sound ridiculous, but it happened. Apologies for the long story, But I am reliving this as I tell this and I still panic. 

14 years ago, back when I was a 22 year old garment chemical salesman in a small company, I managed to win an account with a notoriously demanding French MNC. It was a reasonable account but was prestigious for our small company
. In the day of crowded, smelly sweatshops, their manufacturing plant had rolling landscaped lawns, outstanding work conditions for their uniformed workers and a demanding but fair management. 

The plant head was this tall handsome Frenchman, Guillaume who would ask salesmen for the chemical formula for the products they sold. (I am a polymer engineer, and I knew enough to sound intelligent - He said to me "if your company had hired bright people like you earlier, we would have been a loyal client by now".)

It was a fun visit - I got friendly with all the plant engineers and even ran into the Guillaume's super glamorous wife, Louise - she looked ten feet tall to me - with high cheekbones and gorgeous clothes. I heard she handled the front end of merchandise and schmoozed with clients all over Europe. She looked the part for sure. 

Anyways, two weeks after they started buying our product,  I got a call from my GM - "Prameet, you have to run to Guillaume's plant right now. He has a problem and he doesn't want anyone else but you". 

I didn't know whether to feel flattered or sentenced but I knew my job was on the line. I raced to the plant where the mood was grim. Guillaume came out to meet me holding yards of printed fabric "Your product has ruined an important shipment for me! this fabric stinks!" and by god, it did. It stank of a combination of rotten eggs and dying fish. "I have got a 100,000 units of this - " "Is this the guy from that damn company?" Louise stormed in - cigarette dangling and as tall as a skyscraper "I am going to SUE you guys - I am losing 900,000 Euros on this shipment alone! Get out and fix this or you are not going to leave this plant." 

I made my way out to the massive shop floor  - where all the equipment was shut and silent (The worst sight to see on a shopfloor) with yards of stinking fabric everywhere like some sort of horrible germ attack. The tech guys wouldn't even make eye contact with me. I got them to start running the machines so I could tinker around. Was like a death row request. 

I walked around the shop floor for the four loneliest hours of my life. Changing temperatures, chemical dosages and whatever else I could try. I must have looked a sight muttering to myself, looking under

equipment runs, taking pH at different points. And the fabric line just kept humming. And stinking. It was late afternoon and it started to finally to get better, and the smell had come down to a mildly unpleasant odour instead of knocking you out. I still didn't know what I got right, but at least something was working. 

I met Guillaume and explained my theory and what I had done. He was a tech guy at heart, and in spite of himself he got interested in my abstract explanations of how polymers cross-link and some times don't. I actually made it sound that it was because he was using a GOOD product that he had process issues and his tech guys and his equipment needed to be calibrated to it. In the state I was, I believed it myself.

But he ended by saying "okay I understand this and think we can make it work from here. But Louise will kill me if don't salvage what we have already made. The shipment has to leave tomorrow and it takes three days to make all this again".

  
It was then that I said it - the six words that were either going to be genius or put me in prison. 

"Put them out in the sun." 

He blinked at me.  "Wot!" 

I don't know what made me say it - the green sunny lawns that I could see from the windows probably. But I knew it was the dumbest thing I could have said. 

Promising a do-or-die simple solution instead of getting him to re-run the fabric with some satisfying changes in process or dosage - which may or may not have worked but at least would have looked intelligent - is tech support suicide. 

I decided to push on and built a whole reasoning behind it and to my amazement, he agreed. The next half hour saw about 20 workers scurrying out with hundreds of yards of fabric and laying it end to end across the beautiful lawns.  I stood there and supervised this ridiculous operation trying to look calm and cool and like this was an everyday thing but honestly I was in danger of collapsing from the panic I was feeling. 

In the midst of all this, Louise came out and her eyes went wide in shock "what the fuck are you doing?" I began to splutter before Guillaume explained to her very quickly in French that I had a solution and was trying something that could just save them from their irate customer. 

She looked like we were trying an African tribal ritual to save them. I guess it was a measure of her desperation that she didn't throw me and Guillaume out (At this point, Guillaume was suffering from a version of the Stockholm syndrome  - we were well beyond a client-salesman relationship now. We were saving the world together). 

She shrugged "I don't believe this. I don't care - you have two hours to try whatever the fuck you want. After that I am calling your company management"and stormed back into her office. 

There hasn't been any other day where I willed the hot Indian sun to be as hot as it could get. I just sat there watching the fabric gleaming whitely in the sun. I didn't have the guts to walk out and smell it to see if it was getting better. If a miracle was going to happen, I wasn't about to review its progress every 20 minutes. Best to give God some time and space. 

Guillaume couldn't take the stress and skulked back to his office to read up a couple of chemistry books and smoke his pipe.

Two hours later, Louise walked out - "how is it looking?" I had no heart to say anything "why don't you look for yourself?" trying to look as assured as I could. 

She sent a woman scurrrying out to get a patch of the fabric. Guillaume walked out as the woman came back. My heart hammered like a dam as Louise snatched the fabric from her and sniffed it.  

"Its still smelling!" 

Guillaume took it from her and sniffed it deeply. Paused and broke into a broad smile "C'monnnn louise! its not!" and turned to me beaming. "You were right". 

I just shrugged. I might have looked calm or whatever but honestly I just couldn't say anything. I just wanted to collapse. I took the fabric to smell it for myself but honestly I can't say if I smelled anything or not. I had smelled a ton of that fabric day and my nasal sense was dead as a doornail. 

All I could feel was relief and a feeling that I needed to get on my motorcycle and ride back before I passed out. I  stopped at a pay phone on my way back and called my GM who was waiting for my call "It's solved. No problem any more. They are ordering some more product" and went home and crashed for 12 straight hours.

An argument for love…

I play squash. I obsess about it. I train. I play. I wake up mornings and play till its time to go to work. I spend money on court fees, racquets and gear. Money which should rightfully be spent on more productive things or earn a sensible interest in a bank account. I have no idea why I do this. I am not particularly good at it. I am not quick enough on my feet,my head isn’t still and my reflexes are slow.

And I think its okay.

I do it cos I enjoy it. I enjoy learning about it. On days I can’t find a partner, I go and knock the ball on the wall. On good days, the ball will fly sweetly off my racquet armed with a pace and a direction I don’t remember giving it. I like working at it and getting better, bit by bit. It’s a better other people don’t see. I do and that’s enough. It’s not a better nearly enough but the fact that I it is better wakes me up on cold mornings.

Some day I’ll play with the gift so many people seem to have – moving with languid ease and have the ball sing off my racquet. That day is seven years away, give or take a day.

And that’s okay.

A man and his vegetables

I don't know about you, sir, but I really think vegetables should know their place in life. 

(if you are south indian or a vegetarian or a woman or varying combinations of those, I think you will avoid yourself a lot of angst by skipping to other sections of this wonderful site.) 

I don't know what it is about vegetables of late, but really it seems they are fashionably in focus - a manner that is unbecoming and not dissimilar to the whole media obsession with the role of the minor spinning allrounder in the Indian cricket team. 

It is ridiculous - no matter what food article or culinary blog you read  -you cannot but avoid long flowery (excuse me) references - its either wonderfully leafy this or fibre-rich, green that or lovely juicy tomatoes or flavorful gherkins ..good grief.   in 

Try it - go see some food content - this salmon recipe from the Aussie Masterchef   - a line in here goes  - Potatoes and cucumber salad make delicious accompaniments to the honey mustard salmon"  - Eh? Potatoes?) or Eatopia's headline for chicken soup  - "Chicken Shorba is a light, clear, flavorful broth, infused with Indian spices and herbs." infused with spices and herbs - where's the damn meat eh? 

My lovely wife insists on making Thai curry with massive chunks of tasteless capsicum - ruining a perfectly good meaty curry- my poor mouth gets shocked every time it expects a nice tangy fish bite or a biteful of lamb dripping fats and flavours and finds the give of a bland chunk of capsicum in its stead. Its like watching the pipsqueak Rahane come out to bad at 45/2 instead of the masterful Tendulkar. 

If you ask me -and no one does, sadly - the ideal place for these fellows is to not jostle with the kingly meats for buds and attention, and instead bring up the rear of the dish - make up a nice, unintrusive base, add some crunch here and there to bring out the contrast to the rich, luscious flavor of the meat. Any thing more - I still shudder at that capsicous memory - imagine a horrific potato that dwarfing a nifty cut of lamb in a bengali jhol - that leaves enough scars to keep three shrinks in the gravy (excuse me) for life. 

Now, don't get me wrong - veggies are good, necessary even - those are dues you must pay if you want to revel in the sensous pleasures of the flesh - but really that's about it. Any meal north of eleven am has got to be an organized place, with the rank and file in, you know, rank and file! So make sure you run a tight galley when you are dealing with these infernal fellow - cut them down to size even, and let's have some pomp and ceremony in that delightful chicken curry you are making for your friends or that lovely lamb Rindang you plan to unleash on your in-laws. 

SD

“China Jaayega?”

the two words that started my love affair with SD -  a raucous, good-looking Bengaali  - and one of the most insightful men I ever met. These words are mostly unremarkable in today’s world of globe trotting companies and individuals, but miraculous said as they were, to a callow 22 year old lab scientist over the day's second goldflake and cup of tea in an dusty industrial suburb of Bangalore in early 1999…. The proposition representing a small company’s international ambition with a budget in the 100s of dollars rather than the buffered millions we speak of today….

Whether it was raw potential or budget constraints .. we never ended up discussing… SD always made me believe it was the former. He introduced me as a prized talent in meetings with our competitors and partners… companies ten times bigger than we were, sent me on hundreds of days on travel costing scarce dollars in the bylanes of Asia ...dollars that needed him to justify every penny of that expense (in a company that would have preferred its employees work for free). Always with a smile and boundless faith ….. with results and jobs uncertain….I heard later that he went to the dispatch dock and choked up when he saw a 16 MT container being loaded with my first sale to a customer in Guangzhou…. the fact it meant so much to him...that we were managing to survive.. told me that his faith could not have come without some fear. 

SD encourages dissent - especially passionate dissent. He looks at you with an animated expression when you speak...its the passion that's making him curious... in moments like this it seems he is wanting to understand your very soul.... he's reading a thousand things about you... testing different theories about you in his head.... fitting them in with people he's met before... he's tireless in his curiosity... and expressive in his amazement and surprise at your thinking. It makes you reach deeper ...think harder and express more....stringing little thoughts together....into a bigger and bigger thought.... incredibly indian in its to and froing..with its animated 'absolutely's' and "of totally'' ....its an energy filled frenzy even about arcane concepts like business and "dhanda" .... ending in an expression filled orgasm of insight and conclusion. 

SD learned his life lessons I think as a teenager…. Selling movie tickets in black to buy booze and smokes….well down a path no self respecting middle class Indian boy ought to go….. but ended up developing a rare love of humanity in all its forms. I do mean all its forms. This father of two lovely boys and husband to an incredibly beautiful wife he kidnapped when he was 23, shares his joie raucously. He throws his heart, home and family open to all….. His wife V plied us with home cooked food and intensely intellectual conversation… both of them dissecting your quaint personality with insight and finesse and laughter…. open with their attitude…. All the while deprecating of any praise coming their way…secure in their world and knowledge of themselves.  Even today as I write this, I feel almost treacherous… talking about a relationship that we have referred to in joyous mostly unsentimental terms.

I didn’t hear a word of criticism in the four magical years I spent with SD…. Not even when he made write a business email to a customer for an entire day, dissecting every word.... nudging me from self involved flowery to the useful…gently… ever so gently. I have seen SD transform people like this …. people drained of verve by a harsh life …from cynical jaded view to one of enthusiasm and possibility. 

I have no idea what lies behind this…he still remains one of the most enigmatic people I’ll ever know…. Whether it was his unconventional teenage years in  Shillong….or ten years in Mumbai of the 80's in what I am sure must have been a culture shock for 19 year old from the east…but this I do know – He does it with love of people…one from incredible faith and amazement at what they can do… its clear eyed and objective yet unconditional… I think its that faith from people like SD which makes people assess themselves objectively…harshly even…creating a hunger that pushes you to do better for yourself. SD and V make me question a thousand times in the ten years since..  … how much can you love humanity? with all its quirks and failings .... can you truly love it? 

If you want to change lives, start... start with one.