Recently, your truly had the privilege of addressing members of the Rotary Club of Pondicherry Mid Town. Business lessons from some of the cartoons created by the inimitable R K Laxman and Mario Miranda were presented.
Since the orange juice served before the talk was not laced with an appropriate tissue restorative, yours truly was all of a twitter. At such occasions, one tends to get tongue-tied, much like a Gussie Fink Nottle when he runs into a Madeline Bassett. Nevertheless, the Wooster policy of a chin-up attitude comes to one’s rescue. Services of one’s nerves of chilled steel have to be called upon. It also helps not to have any giggling girls in the audience.
This is how yours truly was introduced to the audience.
“Mr Bhatia is a management guy by profession and a romantic at heart. He did his MBA in what he labels as the pre-Jurassic period of management education in India.
In the 42 years he has spent unlearning management theories in the private sector, he spent quite a lot of time with Tatas, Hidesign and HCL. Whenever he left these companies, the managements there were absolutely relieved and delighted. He has been a promoter director of several companies, all of which you will never hear of.
As a speaker, he has already been hooted out at several IIMs and other leading management institutes. Whichever city he speaks in, he makes the vendors there very happy, because the audience buys rotten tomatoes and eggs in bulk, so the same may be thrown at him. Organizers of his talks are invariably on the lookout for body scanners which can be used to screen the audience before they enter the auditorium.
He still has some grey cells left. These keep the flow of creative juices going on. He creates movies on topics of family interest. He has a regular blogger on various subjects – management, movies, P G Wodehouse, etc.
We may call him a wordsmith and a management thinker. He has even published a book entitled “Surviving in the Corporate Jungle’ – first in Portugal, then in India. He claims he is not a descendant of Vasco da Gama.
He claims to suffer from two maladies – Professor-itis and Wodehous-itis. He is not wanting to be cured of these.
He is a non-resident Puducherryite. He is a harmless creature otherwise.”
The talk ended with some brilliant questions posed by the attentive audience getting handled by a jittery speaker.
A Drones club atmosphere prevailed thereafter, what with a lavish dinner getting served and some bread-crumb-throwing getting practised by those present on the occasion.
