by Karan Bajaj
‘You seem to be quite the psychologist,’ said Sarkar stiffly. ‘Is Dr Phil taking lessons for the Indian Army now or what? Why don’t you share your theory on Barkha Dutt’s couch instead of shooting off here?’
Vinod looked as if he was ready to explode.
‘Care to throw a few words of explanation my way?’ I said from the back of the car.
A brief silence followed.
‘Just keep it to yourself, okay?’ Sarkar said finally. ‘I am Byomkesh Sarkar’s son.’
The name sounded familiar. Oh no, it couldn’t be. The brilliant Richard Branson-ish, charismatic Indian serial entrepreneur who launched new ventures with the same speed as he changed the bikini models by his side. So this was where it came from—the sharp intelligence, the natural aptitude for numbers, the disdain for authority and the natural leadership abilities. Also explained why Shine Sarkar was conspicuously absent when Byomkesh Sarkar visited the IIM campus for a lecture on entrepreneurship in his trademark flashy private jet. Come to think of it, Byomkesh had even alluded to feeling a ‘special connection’ with the IIM, which I had mistaken for the usual let’s-all-feel-good-about-ourselves speech. I didn’t even know he was married, he always had the latest number by his side—which was perhaps the real reason why we had got in this mess today.
‘Have you ever discussed anything with him?’ said Vinod. ‘Maybe it was your mother’s fault, maybe she left him, maybe she had an affair. Who knows?’
‘Again, don’t speak without…’ began Sarkar. But I cut him off. I had more important questions on my mind.
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ I asked.
Both of them fell silent.
‘It didn’t seem important,’ said Sarkar.
‘Important enough to tell Vinod, though,’ I said.
Another long silence.
‘Look, it’s not all my fault,’ said Sarkar eventually.
‘When is it ever your fault?’ I said testily.
‘Well, you always seem so… so self-involved. Don’t get me wrong. I know you care about me, us, Vinod and I, that is. But you always seem so caught up in your own problems, you just don’t seem interested in anything else,’ he said.
Vinod didn’t contradict Sarkar for the first time that night. It hurt.
We drove in silence the rest of the way and reached the campus late in the night.
‘Tea?’ said Sarkar tentatively.
‘I’ll pass,’ I said. ‘I’m heading to my room.’
‘Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said. It’s been a crazy day, even for us,’ said Sarkar.
I knew he had meant exactly what he’d said.
‘No, it isn’t that. I think I just need to do my own thing for a while,’ I said.
Was I really so self-centred, I thought, as I walked back to my room. Maybe I was just going through a ‘phase’, a convenient word that explained most irresponsible behaviour. Or maybe the reality was much simpler. I had led a privileged life. Unlike Vinod, I hadn’t ever had to take care of a widowed mother and a younger sister, financially or emotionally. Unlike Sarkar, I never had a troubled relationship with my parents, real or imagined. I had never been forced to think of a cause greater than myself, perhaps that’s why I remained so completely immersed in myself. Sarkar and Vinod had been right when they, like Dad, had called me ‘soft and self-centred’, even if not in as many words. Every day, I saw Sarkar sink farther and farther into an abyss, but I had never held out a hand to him. Why then did I expect him to unburden himself to me?
As usual, though, running away was so much easier than confronting the problem. For the rest of the semester, I buried my nose in my books and kept away from parties, drinking, dope—and Sarkar and Vinod. In less than a month, I’d have to report at the Shivam Chemicals head office in Mumbai for my summer internship, and I couldn’t wait for it to start. Or rather, I couldn’t wait for the semester to end. A year ago, if someone had said that I would be dying to peddle shampoos and sanitary napkins in rural India by the end of the year, I would have looked at them and wondered whether like me, they too were losing their minds in Manhattan.
But here I was—anxiously awaiting the end of my torturous first year at business school and the beginning of my internship, selling soap in the hinterlands of India.
10
Selling Soap to Raja Bhaiya in Benares
April 1, 2001, half past ten in the morning, and I found myself battling sleep as usual, not in class this time but in the plush corporate offices of Shivam Chemicals in Mumbai. I had come straight from Bangalore after a curt end-of-term farewell to Sarkar and Vinod and felt too drained to show any sign of warmth to the thirty-odd summer interns from other top B-schools across India. In any case, a cursory glance indicated that there were no interesting female prospects, and lots of bright-eyed engineer-looking guys. Clearly, lack of diversity and chronic overenthusiasm were afflictions that dogged all the B-schools in India.
The perfunctory introductions were made with the usual cute ice-breaking exercise led by human resources that mostly serves the purpose of making people even more uncomfortable than they are, thereby, logically, freezing the ice completely. The question this time was, ‘If you could choose, what animal would you like to be and why?’ I began to doze off as the usual, predictable B-school stuff followed (‘a dog because I’m loyal’, ‘a swallow because I love to fly fast and high’, ‘an eagle because I’m always focused on the target’) before Manu, the balding, serious-looking dude next to me, said, ‘I would like to be Pamela Anderson’s lap-dog because… because… do I really need to say why?’
I sat up in my chair. Well done, my friend, that sets the bar, I laughed silently as the others tried to mask their astonishment at his brazenness with polite titters. The suits from Shivam looked at each other uncomfortably before they too broke into polite, embarrassed smiles. I was next, and taking a cue from Manu, said, ‘A cow, I love the way they stand stoned all day doing nothing in the fields.’ More snickers. A bunch of harmless ones later, Murali, a long-haired guy who looked pretty stoned to me, drawled, ‘Don’t want to be an animal, don’t like them.’ From anyone else it would have appeared banal. From this guy with his lazy, ‘fuck you’ tone and rock-star hair, it was actually funny and quite a few of us burst out laughing. This was getting to be fun. I felt the last few days at the IIM draining away from me.
The human resources manager, an eager-to-please young woman, was a bit frazzled by the sudden turn her harmless exercise had taken. She tried to get the proceedings back in control.
Of course, what better way to get a B-school gathering in control than to harmlessly drop the ‘C’ word: careers? It is no secret that IIM students live and breathe for placements, and nothing, absolutely nothing, not even descriptions of the kinkiest, smuttiest sexual acts, could get their attention like talk about a Pre-Placement Offer (PPO), job offers made to a select few interns immediately after their internship. Shivam Chemicals was one of the best companies on campus and getting an offer from them would have made the years of bonded labour that led to business school worth it. Everybody strained to listen.
Her talk was appropriately vague and full of the usual management bull: ‘All thirty of you are from the best business schools in the country. You are all brilliant, and I would like everyone to give themselves a hand for doing so well in your chosen fields.’
I hated this everyone-gets-a-trophy-in-summer-camp kind of crap and didn’t think it merited an acknowledgment. Over-eager jobseekers clapped hard, though. Every action was vital now, the suits could be judging every move.
‘Shivam Chemicals will be privileged to welcome some of you back into our offices after summer internship. But, (there is always a ‘but’, I thought), please don’t consider it a reflection of your competence if you are not extended an offer. Maybe there wasn’t a cultural fit.’
I could never understand this ‘culture fit’ stuff. For me, it was just a polite way of saying, ‘Tough shit. You are just
not good enough to work here.’ I mean there were so many ‘cultures’ —there were ‘cultures’ of companies, ‘subcultures’ of departments within companies and even ‘sub-subcultures’ of functions within departments. So which culture were you supposed to fit into? And why didn’t people ever talk about not fitting into the ‘culture’ of the IIM? Maybe I was much more damned competent than Chetan or even Sarkar, but just didn’t fit into the ‘culture’. That’s why I was so miserably fucked there. How about that?
She droned on before bald Manu cut her short. ‘Just how many offers are you planning to give this year? Simply speaking, how many of us will get an offer?’
She was expecting that question. More drivel: ‘Shivam Chemicals is not committed to a defined number. We will evaluate each candidate as an individual, and if there is a strong cultural fit we would like to invite you back to grow the legacy of this company.’
Oh please, spare us this. Couldn’t you have at least come up with a marginally honest answer? I raised my hand.
‘Does that mean all thirty of us can get an offer if we fit into Shivam’s culture?’
She stumbled on that one, knowing that the politically correct answer was ‘Yes’, but saying that would make her come across as an idiot.
A dapper, suave-looking suit, who had earlier introduced himself as the head of Shivam’s laundry business, bailed her out. ‘Look, let’s be realistic here. I’m sure you guys know that every year we give no more than five offers after internship. This year is no different. Maybe four offers, maybe five or even six, but it is going to be in that vicinity.’
Silence greeted that statement. I could see other minds churning like mine. Being in the top five among thirty interns was equivalent to being in the top twenty per cent or so of this collection of overachievers. In business school, I wasn’t even in the top fifty per cent of the class, and this was a selection of thirty of the brightest and smartest across the IIMs. Unless success in Indian corporations was based on entirely different factors from success in B-school, I was going back without a pre-placement offer from my internship. As if I cared, I thought, did I really need to collect another meaningless job offer to find meaning in my life? Something caught my eye. I looked to my side to see Murali, the rocker dude, dozing off. He had slept through the information session. I liked him immediately.
The discussion immediately caused a perceptible shift in the mood and the familiar B-school testosterone came into play again. Everything went downward from there. Week One of summer internship is usually a time for catching up on your sleep, forging new connections and wining and dining on the company’s expense before you are packed off to lonely outposts in the hinterlands. There would be big-picture orientation presentations about the company, which even less hardened cynics than me wouldn’t care about. Why care who your CEO in the German headquarters was (and which nubile secretary’s pants he is trying to get into, Murali added) when you are a lowly summer intern making photocopies in rural India? But trust overambitious B-school freshmen to ruin this idyllic period. Every speaker in the orientation was assailed by questions, each question meant to demonstrate the superiority of the questioner, each questioner trying his or her hardest to grab every spare point available towards the goal of getting a job offer—which didn’t even exist yet.
Bloody irrational, I thought, increasingly irritated by the interminable questions, didn’t they realize the internship assignments don’t begin until next week? Who is going to give them a job offer for asking for details about the company’s expense-report filing system? Be nice, I chided myself immediately, don’t be self-centred. Unlike you, these folks have worked hard to get here, not everyone is born with a silver spoon up his ass. But the relentless volleys of questions about each and every strategy of the company, its many operating units, its profit and loss statements, even its office facilities and mail-rooms, broke my resolve to be nice. I felt more like a misfit than ever, finding myself in the middle again: neither as cool as Murali who slept shamelessly through the session, nor halfway as ambitious as the rest.
Finally, it was time for the last session of the day, an overview of the security systems in the corporate headquarters. Very basic, idiot-proof stuff—‘This is your visitor’s badge. This is where you buzz into the building. This is how the door opens. This is how you get out.’ The chief of security leading the session had a jaded, lazy air about him. Left to his own, he would probably say, ‘Look, these bastards at Shivam Chemicals shouldn’t worry a flying fuck about security. They aren’t producing nuclear weapons, they are making detergents and toilet soap. Not like the ISI or the CIA will steal their highly confidential bleach formulas. So my humble advice to you is to sleep through this stupid session. Please don’t make it any more painful for me than it already is.’ He probably couldn’t say what he really thought about the session, though. So he launched into a detached, uninspired monologue and ended mechanically with, ‘Any questions?’ He didn’t seem to expect or encourage any questions, though.
Yes, I have one question, I thought, can you please tell me where I can score some marijuana in Mumbai? You see, I have kind of broken up with Shine Sarkar, my usual source, although that sounds terribly gay and melodramatic. Anyway, he is in London doing a useless banking internship. But I desperately need a couple of joints for the next few days if I have to survive the orientation. Can you help with that, please?
Instead of me asking about things that really mattered, a bespectacled, overenthusiastic fellow intern asked a question in his cocksure baritone. ‘What about tailgating? That is, if someone follows me when I go in after buzzing my access card? How do you prevent that?’
I knew that bastard had an answer up his sleeve as he smirked when the mild-mannered chief of security, who seemed surprised that anyone was paying any attention to him, stumbled through the answer. The intern looked at the HR manager to ensure his point was being registered. ‘Well, I have read that companies in the US have now installed new radars which beep immediately if more than one person enters with the same access card. Maybe we should consider installing that at Shivam. Corporate security is such an important issue, after all,’ he said smugly.
The poor security chief stared nonplussed. I could have gladly wrung the intern’s neck for being such a bastard. I did the next best thing. I jumped in with my first comment of the day. ‘Actually, they have proven not to work. Goldman Sachs, my ex-employer on Wall Street, was the first company to use them, but they figured that the cost of continuous monitoring every alarm outweighs its advantages. Especially since security breaches rarely occur during office hours.’
There, that settled the bastard, I thought. I had totally made this up, but my American accent made me the last word on corporate America. The intern’s face fell. I felt elated at my small-minded meanness. My day suddenly became brighter and happier, although there was still the social hour to go.
As soon as we moved to the club room, the location for the party, Murali, the long-haired rocker dude, walked over and high-fived me. ‘Jigar, that was the best comment of the day by far.’ He grabbed a drink from the bar. ‘Jigar, what will you have?’ he asked. My post-prison resolve to avoid alcohol dissolved. Hell, what harm could a beer do? And I badly needed one to get through the social hour. I succumbed.
Murali turned out to be quite chatty and shared my annoyance at the others. ‘When will these bastards learn?’ he said, pointing to a group of interns who were trying to cosy up to the top suits. ‘They have been going on since morning, and internship hasn’t even officially begun yet. Thankfully, I didn’t have to tolerate this nonsense at my school.’
I was surprised. ‘Didn’t you guys have to attend classes there? Weren’t there grades for class-participation?’
Murali shook his head. ‘Jigar, we didn’t have compulsory attendance. I attended only those classes where professors discourage irrelevant questions. Like the statistics professor. First day of class, instead of the usual “There are no bad questions,
all questions are good questions” crap, he said, “There are smart questions and there are stupid questions. Please don’t advertise your stupidity and limit your stupid questions during class time so you are respectful of everyone’s time.”
‘I loved him immediately. There was silence, and then some smartass asked, “How do we judge without asking, which question is good and which is stupid, sir?” Do you know what the prof said? “This is exactly the kind of stupid question I was referring to. Please avoid asking such questions in class and ask me later instead.” Man, that was priceless. Jigar, I attended every class after that.’
I wished I had gone to his school instead. No compulsory attendance would have solved at least some of my problems. As we got progressively drunk, we swapped more stories from our respective campuses, our laughter getting more boisterous by the moment. With a pang, I realized I missed Sarkar and Vinod. I wished I hadn’t acted like such an ass the last month. I made up my mind to get out and give both of them a call when Manu, the bald dude, joined us.
‘Those fuckers are kissing the foreigner’s asses now, as if they’ll all get offers in New York and London after speaking to them for two minutes,’ he said witheringly, looking towards the interns who were chatting up the CEO’s American and European entourage.
We continued about how screwed up the IIM system was and what a bunch of idiots our fellow interns were. Not a single positive, meaningful thought was shared through the evening. There was no need—we were friends for a week and then we would move on, probably never to meet again. None of us was seeking a deeper bond than that, and we revelled in our shallow cynicism.
The international biggies must have been bored of the ceaseless career probing (‘What is the fast-track path to becoming the CEO?’, ‘How quickly can I get promoted?’ ‘How many years does it take to become general manager’ etc.) because they started drifting towards our rowdy corner. By then, we were drunk enough to ignore the fact that they were all big-shot directors from the ‘global offices’ of the company. Another unique Indian term, I thought. Every white foreigner, irrespective of whether he or she is Caucasian, Australian, Irish or Israeli, belongs to the ‘global office’, which is spoken about in hushed tones of awe and deference. He could be a janitor there for all they cared as long as he came from the ‘global office’.