BLURRED VISION: GRATITUDE: Letters from a Grandfather to his Future Generations. Chapter 17

My dear Family n Friends:

Breaking News:-

Nepal:

The massive earthquake in Nepal has been described as a Himalayan Tragedy…Pun intended. It brought to mind the historic May 31, 1935 Earthquake in Quetta Baluchistan. This was before Papa ji shifted his base to Quetta. But the devastation was still there to see after several years. A makeshift town had come up called Tin Town. The day was marked with religious prayers n gatherings each year.

Jasbir:

My sister No. 1 turned 75 on 27 April. She celebrated the big day in Melbourne with her son Mintoo and daughter Mini. We wish AG many happy returns. Lots Love Sis. God Bless you.

Pritam Singh Ji:

Today marks the 50^th anniversary of the passing away of Sukhjit’s Father. We remember him fondly.

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And now on to my journey in Forbes:

On my first day at Forbes Building, the good retired Maj General, knocked, entered my office and struck a pucca, pucca salute welcoming me! Aha, I had got the Army; I recalled my days in the Military Office in Poona.

Mr. SY Gupte who had been in touch with me earlier was to be my immediate colleague. He was a soft spoken, diligent man and he took the brunt of the IR paper work. The Office staff comprised of Mr. Poredi, Mr. Ponkshe. Sheila Raman supervised the office staff and also functioned as Secretary. She had no Stenography in her skill set and that was provided by Zanobia Mirza. There were Personnel Managers located in Group Companies: Gankar at Patel Volkart, Talashilkar at Goodlass Nerolac, Hukeri at Gokak Mills. In years to follow, Mr. Khanapurkar joined IVP in place of Trivedi. .

As I mentioned earlier, steel shelves housing leather bound Labour Law Gazettes n Journals took up the only solid wall of the office. They were a symbol of the “Labour” orientation and I was determined to change that orientation. The Law books had to go. Thankfully, my predecessor had obtained permission to carry away some of those. The rest were moved by Mr. Gupte to his office since he would now be the only user.

I had a nice blank white wall.

At the HO we had a Management trainee, Bharat Dabholkar. He put in his papers soon after I joined. In mock seriousness, I asked him if he was leaving because of my joining. He laughed and said: No sir, I want to make my future in advertising and the theatre. He went on to be the Bharat Dabholkar, successful ad man and theatre n movie personality. I recall inviting him to stage his play Bottoms UP at the 1997 Indian Paint Conference that I convened. It was the year I was retiring as Managing Direction of Goodlass Nerolac Paints.

It is a small world, I keep discovering: Bharat’s daughter got married into a business family that lives in our building. And we have an invite to the latest edition of Bharat’s Bottoms Up this opening week. He has sent me some lovely pictues of his.

I had been introduced to Forbes thru Mr. DM Kothari then Managing Director of GNP. They used to occupy a whole floor in the building. By the time I joined, they had moved to the newly constructed Office Building at Lower Parel. In fact, the introduction was first done by Bipin Desai who was a friend of Nalin Thakor. Bipin, an affable man who later became my good friend, headed the Wine Division.

Of course the person to dominate my work life at Forbes was Girin Khandwala, soon to be the Chairman of the Group. He had embarked on a campaign to dislodge the current Trade Union leader and the plan was well advanced when I joined. Workers at the Head Office had already formed their own internal union and that was a done deal. The process was a more difficult and drawn out at the factories. A wily IR man from Gokak Mills was masterminding the nuts n bolts of weaning the workmen. It was messy and not something to be proud of.

The workers who had ‘disowned’ that Union leader had formed their own internal Union and had engaged a lawyer to take care of their interests in the Industrial Courts. This was the Union Lawyer who had handled the defense of the sacked Refinery worker, albeit quite unsuccessfully. And for the 3^rd and not final time, PK Rele was the Company lawyer!

Astad Parakh was the Director in charge of the manufacturing Units where this battle was underway. So I had a lot to do with him in the early days. Also quite often there would be War room conferences chaired my Khandwala.

One day, Khandwala, Parakh and I had gone on a visit to the Factories at Chandivali. After some discussions in the Manager’s Office, we took a break and Khandwala was walking away from the office. The Manager came out to say that there was a telephone call for the MD. Khandwala was at distance from me so I called out: Girin, there is a call for you. He turned around, walked towards me, put his hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eye and said: Mr. Khandwala to you. He was that to me for the rest of his life.

That much for the Americanization process of the Company, I said to myself. In fairness to him, he was as much for change, as for maintaining the culture. So on paper, managers continued to address each other with an ESQ after our initials. So he was GK Esq and Astad was ANP Esq. It was Esq whether legible or not.

‘How many times do I have to tell you,’ he said, in a very proper accent ‘that gentlemen are always addressed as “Esq.”, never, never, never as “Mr”? …. Notes Hugh Gantzer in his story The Blue Hills Where the Sun Never Sets.

The campaign of workers forming their own internal trade union ultimately worked its way into reality. Mr. Gupte had been negotiating a wage Settlement with the Union leaders. While I was aware of the contours of the Settlement, and costs entailed, I had not looked at the detailed arithmetic of it. One fine morning, as we were getting ready to move to the Factories to sign the settlement, Gupte came to be worriedly saying: “there is a problem… The average cost is okay, but some workers are getting only a pittance and the Union wont accept it”… Last minute but one: So I confided to Astad and without batting an eyelid he suggested: well just let us state that the minimum gains are guaranteed at so n so an mount. Phew. That was quick n bold thinking on Astad’s part and that was his trademark. He did not beat around the bush and usually came to the point fairly quickly. It was a pleasure working alongside him.

My senior colleagues in the Forbes Group were all very different personalities. Yet they pulled together quite well. But do remember that there is always an exception to the rule.

Forbes story continues......

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Picture Gallery follows;

Please pardon any errors in captions.

But do please point out the errors.