P G Wodehouse at Lucerne in Switzerland

The Anglo-Swiss Club Lucerne (ASCL) in Switzerland is a social club open to people of all nationalities who wish to meet other people and make new friends using English as the language of communication. Its members comprise people from diverse countries, besides Swiss nationals who have an interest in the English language and culture.

A Juicy Introduction

Yours truly recently had the opportunity of speaking to the members of the club about Plum and his ouvre. Chris Starling, the President of the club, kicked off the proceedings by introducing me to the audience in my own words:

Ashok Kumar Bhatia is a management guy by profession and a romantic at heart. Two maladies he claims to suffer from are – Professor-itis and Wodehous-itis. 

A postgraduate in Physics as also in Management, he spent close to 35 years in the corporate sector, unlearning quite a few management theories. Whenever he left a company, the management was relieved and delighted to have got rid of a deadwood. He has been a promoter director of several companies, all of which you will never hear of.

Once he hung up his corporate boots, he became an active blogger and an occasional author. Two books he has unleashed so far upon the unsuspecting public happen to be ‘Surviving in the Corporate Jungle’ and ‘I Am Something: Developing a New Leader Mindset’ (co-authored with Prof G P Rao). Besides, he keeps coming up with articles and essays on management, P G Wodehouse, movies, and other topics. Unlike Bertie Wooster, he never won a prize in Scripture Knowledge at school, but does write about management lessons from Indian epics and scriptures.

He does not claim to be an expert on Wodehouse. He is merely a fan of the one of the greatest humourists we have had in the recent past.

He is presently associated with two NGOs: SPANDAN (India), which propagates human values in management; Conscious Enterprises Network (UK), which brings together people who believe in working for the realization of Sustainable Development Goals.

He hails from the North of India, though settled in the South at Pondicherry for more than twenty-seven years. Often, he can be found infesting parts of Norway and Switzerland.

As a speaker, he has already been hooted out at several management institutes of repute. Whichever city he speaks in, the local farmers as well as the supermarkets do a roaring business by getting rid of rotten tomatoes and bad eggs in bulk. His audience loves to throw these at him.

You do not see him wearing his protective gear today, for the simple reason that he has full confidence in the innate sense of decency which all of us at ASCL possess. 

A Plummy Presentation

The presentation that followed comprised the following:

1. PGW’s Life in Brief

2. Wodehouse and Switzerland

3. Literary Style and References

4. Major Characters from Novels and Stories

5. Some Quotes

6. Jeeves and Wooster: A Video Clip

Some Useful Links

A list of Wodehouse-related links was handed out to all the participants. It included the names and website addresses of various PGW socities across the world.

Spreading Sweetness and Light

One of the greatest concerns which leaves a Plum fan quivering internally like an aspen leaf while delivering a talk on the God’s gift to our mental juices is that of being struck by interim bouts of uncontrollable mirth, leaving the hapless audience baffled, bewildered, mystified, perplexed and puzzled, and the organizers desparately rushing to call in a loony specialist of the stature of Sir Roderick Glossop. Add to this the sheer irony of someone like me with a constipated look and sounding like the Honorary Vice President of the Global Association of Morons presenting the Master Humourist of our times, and you get a recipe with a rich potential for disaster. However, an eventuality of this kind was avoided, thanks to Chris Starling gracefully pitching in to read out the compilation of a few quotes from Plum’s stories and novels. His skillful and well-modulated reading of the quotes left the audience in splits.

Overall, the audience was delighted to discover the joys of reading Plum’s works. After the formal part of the presentation was over, many of them sat through for an extra fifty minutes, so as to savour the video clip till its end, in full.

Effusive thanks to the speaker followed. It appeared that the speaker, duly aided by Chris Starling, had been able to deliver some satisfaction. He was ostensibly chuffed at having spread some sweetness and light amongst the members of the club. Sure enough, he was grinning from ear to ear, looking like a cat which has had too much of cream.

Notes:

The Drones Club tie you see me sporting in one of the photos was organized by Thomas Langston Reeves Smith (the absence of a P in Smith may kindly be noted).

PGW’s caricature courtesy Suvarna Sanyal, India.

Photos by Garima Goel.

Advertisement