Making peas pulao for lunch Made me pen this story soon after. |
I joined one of the top consumer market research firms in the country after my MBA in 1997. There about three and a half agencies there then I must add. This was at the Calcutta branch which was considered to be the university of market research in the agency which liked to think of itself as the university of market research. And possibly was.
Everyone, including the office head, worked crazy hours. Night shifts were discussed with pride after people trooped in at noon and took a smoke break first. Luckily, the office head had told me that I needn’t be in office just because he was. That I could leave when I was done. A lesson in people management I carried to all the jobs I held in the years that followed. I admired the way his clients hung on to his every word and I aspired to be like him one day. Not the crazy hours though.
He loved food. On the first day we went out to a posh new place (Seville?) beside Zaranj, for the farewell of the team member I was replacing. The food came in plates covered with cloches. ‘Did you expect a hot woman to come out from under it,’ he said cracking a joke to put me at ease. Woke folks, ignore this please. He took great care of his women employees.
I noticed that none of the plates were sent back completely clean. Unlike what we’d do in college when we went to biryani joints with meagre savings. ‘Table etiquette demands that you don’t finish your food it seems,’ said a wide eyed 23 year old me to a close friend later.
The office canteen was run by a ferret man whom we called mesho. Uncle in law. On offer was home styled Bengali food. Knowing the big boss’s interest in food, he’d ask all including us lowly trainees, if our lunch was satisfactory. Shob theek toh!
Late evening (6.30pm) meant we could order snacks on the job … sandwiches and patties from Begum Fries (the office peon’s way of saying Bake’n Fries), or mutton rolls from Zeeshan, anjeer milkshake and dosas from the posh vegetarian restaurant downstairs. Mishti from Gupta Brothers, khasta kochuri and doi from Mithai.
On Saturday you could order from the restaurants around. Some went for Chinese from a place whose name eludes me. For me it was chicken bharta or mutton rogan josh from Kwality at Ballygunge. Peas pulao was a constant.
I eventually got bored with the work (it was research on cigarettes, cigarettes and more cigarettes), my friends had moved out and my office head and my mum both accommodated my request to move to Mumbai. I was too junior to qualify for an office farewell so the boss man threw me one at his house. Years later he came to my book launch in Delhi.
Mumbai was different. It was about work, work and work. And far more seat of the pants stuff than what the hallowed portals of our Calcutta office could think of. I realised soon that you’d get dirty looks of you asked ‘what’s for lunch?’ Not that it stopped me from asking that in town halls when I became part of management. I’ve worked in 5 agencies (4 Market and 1 ad and a couple as a consultant) and not a single one had a good canteen. Most would make even make Maggi into something which Nestle should have sued them for.
Then one day I realised that I’d had enough. It was time to leave the agency world. The coffee just sucked.
I did come across the occasional agency boss in Mumbai who appreciated food. One was an ED in the ad agency I worked in. He fondly asks K about me when they meet at events. He had spotted our budding romance before we had ourselves back in the day. I loved the way his clients trusted him and looked up to him. He is the second and only other person on whom I modelled my managerial style on.
What I did realise through all of this is that an army marches on its stomach. So when I became a boss, I’d take my team to the Bowling Comoany at the end of a year where we did well. Or to interesting local joints if we’d go for meetings at Fort or Nariman Point. And once I took my deputy, who’d got a dressing down from my boss, to KFC. Bought us burgers and milkshakes and said, ‘let’s eat. We will sort this later.’ We did.
We were liked by our clients for the work we did, won awards too, remained mavericks in office.
The funny thing is that food is sexy now. In Mumbai too. At times I feel tempted to say, ‘who’s your daddy now?’ But that’s the thing about happy calories, they make you the bigger man.
PS: I must add that I can’t imagine working in Kolkata again after fast paced Mumbai and that a lot of what I learnt in my agency days, both bad and good, forms the core of my work as a consultant in #finelychoppedconsulting.